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Today I was reminded of why I never go to the bank unless I absolutely have to. I go to the bank today to pay my parking ticket and it went downhill from there. My first warning sign was a teller who could not fucking speak English and just mumbled shit at me, and apparently she couldn't understand English either. What part of "I need to pay a parking ticket" is so fucking hard to understand? After she mumbles some more shit at me which I vaguely make out as "I don't know how to do it" I say "well get someone who can do it!", and after wandering to the back of the bank she got another teller to help me.

And so I tell this new teller the same thing, "I need to pay a parking ticket", so she takes the ticket and starts typing stuff into the terminal. She asks me if I'll be paying from my account (did I mention that this new one also spoke barely understandably English with a heavy accent?) to which I replied "yes", and she swipes my card through the reader and types more stuff into the terminal. And then she just look at the screen and stops everything..

Her: Do you work?
Me: yes
her: do you have a job?
me: yes, why?
her: well, you have a lot of money in your account
me: so?
her: well, you should invest it or something, we have...
me: yes, I know, and I don't care
her: but you should invest your money in some mutual funds and..
me: I'm aware of my options and I'm not interested
her: we also have other investments such as term depos...
me: listen, I'm here to pay a traffic ticket not to see a financial advisor, understand?
her: but why have all that money in your
me: is my ticket all paid for and done yet?
her: ummm....

At this point she stamps everything and gives me the reciepts, and I'm thinking "fuck this shit, I have nothing better to do today, it's customer complaint time!". I asked the helpful receptionist at the front if I could see the manager regarding a customer service issue with the tellers. I met with him after a short wait and I told him of the issues I had trying to get the ticket paid at the tellers. He starts apologizing for my inconvenience and starts going on and on about how he values customer feedback and my business and I'm thinking "how stupid do they think I am?", so after he ran out of breath I say "listen, apology accepted, but I think it would be a lot better if it didn't happen in the first place", and then I gave him my standard speech on the stupidity of having non-English speakers in customer service positions. And I left after telling him to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Who was the witless moron that put the wrong language person there the first place?

And geez, If I don't know something, at least I can BS my way through someof it.

And then the bank wants to sell you something? Fuck them.

Egh that's stupid!

I hope it never happens to you ever again. You do realize why the 'No Speaka Engrish' people are there in the first place?
Political Correctness.

Next time it happens, withdraw your entire huge wad of cash from their bank. That'll teach them to fuck with you and your money.

NO PROFIT POUR J00

kojikun wrote:Next time it happens, withdraw your entire huge wad of cash from their bank. That'll teach them to fuck with you and your money.

NO PROFIT POUR J00

Excellent idea!

i thought that only happened at mcdonalds.

The worst is when you go round to the drive-thru at Taco Bell. Heavily accented pseudo-English through a bad intercom system is NOT fun.

Honestly, they should keep non-English speakers in positions where they don't have to interact with the customers, until they learn to speak English clearly (and this goes for mumblicons too). This is not racism or bias, but simple truth and common sense.

salm wrote:i thought that only happened at mcdonalds.

I wish, for whatever reason the service industry is full of people who can't speak or understand proper English, my bank is just the latest one to join the trend. I can't understand why they'd have customer service people who can't speak the language, you'd think that it pisses off customers which wouldn't be good for business and generally makes the company look unprofessional. If they can't speak the language they should be in the back shuffling papers or doing something where they don't have to talk to people.

As for the bank I only have a few thousand in there so it's not like they're making a killing off me. And they're the only bank that doesn't rape me with service charges so it's worth it for now, but if I keep running into these dumbass tellers I'll be having some second thoughts.

Just a thought, but perhaps the reason we have the prevalence of non native speakers in service industry postions is because the vast majority of the available job pool in that industry is composed of the non native speakers. Thus we will inevitably run across them because empoyers can't be very choosy about what they get. Most english speaking folks DON'T want to work at McDonalds or Taco Bells, so they don't apply for these jobs.

Its easy to say "Hey put an English speaker at the front" but if the emplyer is having trouble finding one is that really his fault or is it simple market forces driving this decision?

Stravo wrote:Just a thought, but perhaps the reason we have the prevalence of non native speakers in service industry postions is because the vast majority of the available job pool in that industry is composed of the non native speakers. Thus we will inevitably run across them because empoyers can't be very choosy about what they get. Most english speaking folks DON'T want to work at McDonalds or Taco Bells, so they don't apply for these jobs.

Its easy to say "Hey put an English speaker at the front" but if the emplyer is having trouble finding one is that really his fault or is it simple market forces driving this decision?

sure, that counts for fast food restaurants. i don´t even care if they´re not able to understand everything because a big mac is a big mac in most languages. but esspecially in a place like a bank where the employees are handling my money they should really be able to understand what the hell i want them to do. if i tell them to transfer 20 Euro for a parking fine to the city and they transfer 2000 Euro to some scheich in dubai instead because they dont understand what i´m saying we have a serious problem.

Stravo wrote:Just a thought, but perhaps the reason we have the prevalence of non native speakers in service industry postions is because the vast majority of the available job pool in that industry is composed of the non native speakers. Thus we will inevitably run across them because empoyers can't be very choosy about what they get. Most english speaking folks DON'T want to work at McDonalds or Taco Bells, so they don't apply for these jobs.

Its easy to say "Hey put an English speaker at the front" but if the emplyer is having trouble finding one is that really his fault or is it simple market forces driving this decision?

True, for fast food service and such I can see your point, but this was a freakin' bank I dealt with today, in this case the largest bank in Canada. There's literally millions of dollars changing hands with customers there every day, and I find it unacceptable to have someone who can't speak English handling those transactions. Messing up my food order is one thing, fucking up my finances goes far past being a minor inconvenience, and if they did my first thoughts would be "lawsuit". It's not as bad as having a completely unqualified person flying jumbo jets, but I'd have to say it's up there.

I've never encountered problems with non-English fast-food employees where I live, but I've been further South, and noticed it.

Which brings me to my next question: In Mexico, do 7-11 employees only speak English?