| Published: Waubonsee Insight |
| Date: October 2005 |
| Section: Opinion/Editorial |
Comments: The legendary 'french fries' article, as it appeared in the October 2005 issue of Insight.
This article moved me into the limelight of Insight, as I immediately became public enemy #1 with many people on campus, including a few who personally delivered death threats, another couple who vandalized my car and still a few more who wrote some, well, interesting letters to the editor.
Ironically, at the time, I was only doing the website for Insight. After I received such a huge response from a normally apathetic student body, I stepped into a more active role in the paper and eventually became Editor In Chief. Some of the letters to the editor called for me to be completely removed from the Insight staff; instead, they cemented my resolve to stay and continue to publish my opinion, whether it was 'politically correct' or not. |
 |
By: Ian Essling
If you are like me, you have to find a friend that speaks Spanish, and have them tell you what that title means. But I'll save you the trouble; it translates to something along the lines of "do you want fries with that?" and illustrates the quickly growing and very disturbing trend of fast food restaurants employing non-English speakers as their frontline order-takers and food-servers.
In the past few years, immigrants have quickly swelled the ranks of fast food servers, and a large number of these new workers seem to know very little, if any, English. The fast food industry has been severely damaged by this trend, though not in the obvious way of monetary loss. No, they've taken a hit in the more important and often forgotten area of customer service.
I've dealt with language issues at fast food restaurants for years, but last week I had problems three times, at three different places, and I've decided that enough is enough.
First, there was Wendys. The person behind the counter could barely understand a word of English, and while we were trying to order, he continually pushed buttons for things we had not ordered. When we looked at the receipt and asked that he take off the extra food he charged us for, he looked at us with a dumb look, scoffed and shook his head.
I'm not a big fan of paying for something I didn't get, so I asked to speak to someone working that night that actually spoke English. But I was in for a shock; no one did. The best English speaker on duty had a hard time stringing together one coherent sentence. Frustrating? You betcha.
Ten minutes of arguing and explaining finally got the chicken salads removed from the bill and got the two burgers and drink we were missing added to the tray. But as our server went back to collect the food, him and his buddies making the sandwiches were reeling off long strings of Spanish that I had no hope of following.
Laughter floated up to the counter, and I felt a bit disconcerted; after all, he could have been telling them "hey, these Gringos up here are giving me a hard time, why don't you spit in their burgers for them and see how they like it," and we would never have known.
While I would like to think positively in a situation like this, I had a right to be concerned, given the attitudes shown to us at the counter.
McDonalds has never been a shining gem of customer service; it's a running joke about never getting a correct order from McDonalds if you order any sort of special. Apparently, ordering straight from the menu doesn't work so well either, when the employee on the other end of the drive-through intercom can't speak English. The wrong drinks and incorrect change spewed from the window the second I pulled up to it. Seconds later, after being chastised for not giving me the items I ordered, out comes a bag of food, complete with the wrong sandwich.
Now I'm thinking that they've miscounted the cars in line and are just giving me an entirely wrong order. I essentially reorder everything on the spot, telling them what I'm supposed to have in the bag, and the woman packing the bag shakes her head and basically tells me I'm wrong. She points at the screen and explains exactly what she thinks I ordered. Only problem with her explanation was that the entire thing was in Spanish!
The dumb look I gave her was only partially feigned; she had misread my order and did not catch her translation mistake until a manager came over to see what the hold up in the line was about.
But the worst was still to come. A Burger King in Aurora became the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, and prompted me to write this article. My family stopped just to grab a couple of drinks and unfortunately, even a simple order like that was hard to make. The drinks come out the drive-through window, we pull away, and what was supposed to be a plain iced tea is actually raspberry flavored.
We head inside to get the correct drink, as in this case it was more then taste; the drink was meant for someone who is allergic to corn syrup. The woman behind the counter says, "Very sorry, I get tea," and promptly fills up a new cup from the plain iced tea dispenser. Guess what? Whoever filled the dispenser couldn't read English too well, and raspberry iced tea is coming out of both sides. "Very sorry," says the woman, "We not see package, we make mistake. It take twenty minute fix, you want wait?" No, we don't.
What astounds me about this is that a mistake like this could kill someone! If a diabetic had ordered plain and gotten raspberry, they would be getting a lot more then a rash by taking in that much sugar and not knowing it. When we mentioned this possible situation to the woman, she replied, earnestly, "We give you Diet Coke?" Further questioning yielded the unsurprising fact that she knew about four phrases in English.
I'm sick and tired of not being able to communicate with the people who are supposed to be serving ME, the customer. English may not be the "official" language of this country on paper, but for all intents and purposes, it is the primary language. Congress holds its meetings in English and the Constitution is written in English.
Immigrants, especially in the service industry, need to learn English. People tell me; oh you should learn Spanish so you can talk to them. My response: maybe if I were going to Mexico, then I would learn Spanish so I could communicate in the language of the country. So perhaps people coming up here should learn to speak THE LANGUAGE OF THE COUNTRY???
To an extent, I'll deal with people in certain industries not knowing a word of English. You want to speak Spanish to my garbage cans when you pick them up in the morning? Knock yourself out, it's not causing me problems; ironically, those garbage men are probably getting paid better then McDonalds employees anyway.
But in ANY kind of service industry, where Spanish-speaking employees need to interact with the general population (the majority of which speak English!), then they need to know enough English to effectively and quickly communicate with their customers. It's that simple.
Claims of "diversity" are falling on deaf ears when those of us who speak English as our primary language cannot even get a hamburger and fries without going through an extremely frustrating and time consuming ordeal.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had a quote earlier this week that seems quite appropriate:
"As an immigrant whose second language is English, I know the importance of mastering English as quickly and as comprehensively as possible in order to be successful in the United States."
Food for thought.no pun intended.
| 
