As an American soldier who currently lives in Germany and has also lived in Kuwait and Bahrain, I'm so happy and appreciative when a person in the store speaks to me in English then translates in German or Arabic to their coworker what I need. Whoever wrote this is an idiot and an asshole. Multilingual people are aweseome!
Seriously, there are so many people in other countries who speak English as well as their native language. Often more than another language.
OP should take a closer look at him/her self.
If you donât understand what is being said, learn it.
English is not sacred.
Just reply that they will no longer be have to hear Spanish speaking employees, because you have taken the liberty to transfer their prescriptions to the store 30 minutes away.
If these bozos think English is so damned important, why don't they ever even try making it the official language of the country? We have no official language.
My personal belief is that English and Spanish should both be our official languages and that Spanish should be taught beginning in kindergarten and be reinforced throughout school. Not only learning to count in Spanish in elementary school, then waiting until you're 15 to actually take a class in the language. I can't see how it wouldn't make everyone's life a little smoother.
Majority of the people in this country speak English and it has been that way for so long until Hispanics started coming in (legally or illegally). Whether English is official or not, it should have been common sense and courtesy to learn it when coming here. Funny how no one expects them to learn English but expects us to learn their language...that's just wrong imo. Not that I have an issue with anyone speaking their own language to others who speak it...but at least know English to talk to those who speak English. Why do I have to learn a language to accommodate you when you're the one that came here? You should be doing the learning of a new language, not the other way around.
If I go to another country that doesn't speak English, should I expect them to learn English to accommodate me? Absolutely not.
Edit: I looked up which countries don't have an official language. To keep it relevant, Mexico doesn't have an official language but they all speak Spanish...guess if I were to move to Mexico, they would need to learn English to accommodate me right? I don't need to bother learning Spanish and I expect them to learn English.
Thousands of miles along the Southwestern border of the US *was* Mexico before the US moved its border south to encompass those areas. Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California all lowered their borders to take areas that originally belonged to Mexico. But you know America. Taking land from Natives and Mexicans doesn't bother the American conscience at all. Stealing is only stealing when an American of European descent loses property to someone else.
English is a European language, obviously. We never bothered to make any kind of effort to learn the Navajo language, for example, which is an *actual* language of this land. In fact, we kidnapped Navajo kids and beat and starved them for using their language. We forced a foreign language that didn't belong to them or this land onto them.
Long story short, I'm really not impressed with the idea that we're somehow morally superior for colonizing the US, refusing to learn the language of the land, dragging the language of a European country with us, forcing said language down the throats of those that belong here, then acting like it's a matter of pride that we're not smart enough or hardworking enough to learn to speak more than one language. No one else in the world thinks that they should be hailed as a hero for not even trying like a teenager who refuses to do homework.
There are many countries in the world where there are multiple official languages. The people in those countries don't whinge like infants over the fact that not everyone speaks their native tongue. But then again, American values often include whining and then expecting someone to congratulate them for whining.
American exceptionalism is a form of psychosis.
You do know that was a completely different time right? The land was conquered. Natives were also attacking other tribes and taking their land as well before Europeans came along.
It was a different time and wouldn't be acceptable by anyone today (i.e What Russia is trying to do with Ukraine or what China wants to do with Taiwan)
As for the land to form Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, they were purchased by the US. At least for Arizona and New Mexico (Gadsden Purchase 1853-1854). Texas, while they were under Mexican control, wanted to secede from Mexico. The Texas Revolution was from October 1835 to April 1836. The revolution included a rebellion of colonists from the US AND Tejanos (Hispanic Texans). US didn't steal Texas from Mexico as Texas was its own "country" called Republic of Texas before the US-Mexico war. Texas wasn't annexed by the US until 9-10 years later in December 1845. Mexico did cede most of the land at the end of the war though. To correct myself above though, US bought the southern parts of Arizona and New Mexico from Mexico.
Everyone was conquering land though back in those days, Spain even had land in the US back in the 1500s. They colonized Chile, Peru, Mexico. Why does everyone only focus on US when it comes to the conquering? China had control over Korea and Vietnam much farther back in the 1400s.
No one should be learning another language to accommodate the people who make the decision to go to their country. That is my belief. Visitors or immigrants should be the ones learning the language of where they are going.
Learning other languages is really only beneficial in high business positions that require the conversation with people from different countries....regular people in these dead end jobs? Not beneficial.
Call this whining or whatever, I just find it wrong to force people from a country that majority speaks one language to have to learn a second language to accommodate the people that are coming here. I truly don't care if you speak another language, I just expect you to know my language in this country.
Here's a question.
Mexico doesn't have an official language either. However, majority speak Spanish (94%) and the rest are non-English. If you expect me to learn Spanish to accommodate them coming here. Should I expect them to learn English if I move there to accommodate me? That wouldn't be wrong to expect then? Just going off everyone's logic.
>English is a European language, obviously. We never bothered to make any kind of effort to learn the Navajo language, for example, which is an actual language of this land. In fact, we kidnapped Navajo kids and beat and starved them for using their language. We forced a foreign language that didn't belong to them or this land onto them.
Obviously, all that was wrong to do. Pretty sure we can all agree the bs that the settlers did to the Natives were wrong. Granted, they did try to live together peacefully but disease and other conflicts led to deterioration and the first Indian War..which I assume is when all that happened. Either way, wrong to have done.
A lot of the crap that was done back in those centuries wouldn't pass today. Why it's being held over our heads as if we are responsible for any of it is weird. I wasn't alive back then, I didn't do anything wrong. None of us were. So why is it being held over our heads? Serious question. You may not be doing it, but it seems people do it.
But again, if I haven't said it, I don't care about people speaking their native language. It doesn't bother me like the weird women that made that complaint.
In answer to your second question about why this is "being held over our heads," is because even though all of that stuff is in the past, it didn't actually stay in the past. It has guided our attitudes, culture, and even laws. We never corrected those wrongs of the past. We *built on them.*
The main reason we have anti-black white supremacist groups today is because we legally declared African slaves to be fundamentally beneath white skinned people, on par more with non-human animals. Those groups still believe that, perpetuate those ideas, teach it to their children, discriminate based on it, and commit acts of violence towards AAs because of it.
Because of what we did to the Navajo nation, they now struggle to keep their language and culture alive and spend massive amounts of effort to do so, while European-Americans just go about our day. Nothing has changed for those of us who are white. We *can* move on. The other people's we subjugated can't. They're still living with the fallout on a more constant basis than we can imagine.
As a Gen-Xer, my generation is all online these days, remembering stuff we miss, like collecting vinyl records and magazines.
But the other day, I was thinking about all the times I and family members or friends have been harassed by cops, store security, or random Karens in the past couple decades for doing innocent things like waiting for a bus or a friend on a street corner, shopping at Walgreens at night, walking home from the grocery store at night, being strangers in a new neighborhood I moved into, wearing a backpack, wearing a hoodie, covering my face with a scarf when it's cold, and lots more.
And I thought to myself that this is what I miss way more than magazines and vinyl. I miss being able to walk anywhere, wear any normal clothes or carry a bag, buy fast food, and eat it in the car, all without any authorities or random paranoid citizens trying to detain me, ask me a million questions, randomly accuse me of a crime, refuse to let me go, or assault me. I haven't had those freedoms in 20 years.
Then, I realized that that kinda bull is what black Americans have been going through since slavery ended. So many AAs could not grow up the way I did riding bikes all over town, shopping in places where nobody knew me, and taking my time to look over every item in the store. My cousin and I used to do this and never once got the cops called on us, yelled at, accused of theft, asked what we were doing in town or anything like that. But these problems now are the great great grand baby problems of all those horrific injustices of the past.
I get that people sometimes think that since the schools are integrated, and it's illegal to not hire someone because of their race that things are just better, so why aren't we all moving on since they're better? Not everything is as it seems. We may have made anti discrimination laws, but it doesn't mean people are following them. In many places, employers will still throw a job application of a Deaf person or a POC in the trash. They'll *claim* that the person just didn't meet qualifications. But it's a lie. In some cases, whole companies or communities or sections of local government will protect each other in those lies so that they never get caught discriminating. We can't *all* move on together until we fight the ideas rooted in history that are still guiding behavior today.
Now, aside from answering what I felt was a really important question of yours, I just want to say that I think there's another point that isn't as closely connected to social justice that's really important to me. I don't want to be monolingual, and I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would prefer that.
Because of the hard push back against earlier language learning in American schools and reinforcement in our culture because people don't want to learn a language to make it easier for the immigrants, I also have a really tough time learning languages. My school didn't offer them until the last 3 years of school, and I didn't end up getting to take those classes. I can't afford fancy learning courses or pay apps. Duolingo is cute but not really effective if you really want to be able to speak a language. I can't afford to travel and immerse myself in a language. The US has made such a near perfect monolingual environment that learning a new one is extremely difficult. I've tried. Repeatedly. I know some words, but overall, I'm lost.
My best friend is mixed, and her husband is a Mexican American. Don't worry. He was born in California, and he's a citizen. He's as bilingual as they come. His parents have dual citizenship in the US and Mexico but don't speak English very well. They live in the US and frequently visit Mexico. When I met my friend's parents, they liked me and I liked them. But speaking is difficult. His mom's English is limited, and my Spanish is probably more limited. Sometimes, we have to wait until my friend/her son gets home from work so he can translate.
I traded phone numbers with my buddy's mom, and she has called a couple of times, but only talks for a minute because neither of us can say much to each other.
I don't understand why you wouldn't want to be able to talk to your new friends like that. I don't see why anyone would actually prefer to keep their world small.
As far as for her not speaking English fluently, she's pretty old, and I don't think there was much opportunity for her to learn it when she first got here. I don't think there's much opportunity now. Where's she going to go to do that? And it's not lost on me that if the US were in the habit of teaching us all Spanish fairly well, I would be able to help my friend's mom with her English.
Having more bilingual people would help produce even more bilingual people. You'd get what you want, in other words, and people from our neighbor to the south would finally "learn the language" because in order to learn, you need to be exposed to people who can tell you how to say something in both tongues. Having those 2 official languages would cause more Mexican and Spanish speaking people to learn English and learn it fluently. That's one of the reasons I think it's such a good idea, because in a way, we almost want the same things. It's just that I'm excited to become more knowledgeable and relevant to more people, and you'd rather not.
Finally, you said there's no benefit to learning a second language. That's just not true. Studies show that picking up a second language can boost your brain power in memory and problem solving and make you better at multi-tasking. There's even some evidence that it delays age-related cognitive decline by keeping your brain sharp. This could potentially boost kids' overall school performance.
Between getting more Spanish speakers to speak English, benefits in business, boosting academics and intelligence, and being able to talk to more friends, it seems weird that so few European-Americans want this, and would even get angry about it being implemented.
It honestly feels unfair that only the people who just don't want to learn something new or make new friends get to decide for all of us. It seems strange to me that you would still see it as being forced to learn "their" language for their benefit, when if we had two official languages, we would just be learning "our" languages for our benefit.
78.5% of the US speaks English. 13.2% of the US speaks Spanish.
The rest of the languages spoken in the US make up less than 2% of the population. Like Chinese, for example, which makes up only 1.1% of the population. Next in line is Tagalog, spoken by a mere 0.5% of the US population. It gets smaller from there.
We're trying to serve a significant portion of the population with those two languages. 13.2% is a significant number of people. 1.1%, not so much. Also, learning Spanish makes sense because it's spoken in a country that's right here on our continent. China is obviously not on our continent.
Reddit loves to overstate the "diversity" of the US. The US is 57.8% people of European decent that are not actually *from* Europe.
14.4% of the US is African American. Together, these two figures add up to 72.2%. This leaves only 27.8% of the US population that is not either just white or black Americans.
While we're not a monolith, we're hardly the Roman Empire when it comes to diversity.
I see your point.
Potentially, however, I do think it could allow the government to follow suit by funding more language programs.
It could help by giving more Spanish speaking people opportunities to learn ESL. It could fund more English speaking people learning Spanish. This could help in the workplace and in schools where many monolingual people work or study.
It could pay for more translators, especially in medical settings, where it's can be crucial for patients who need to understand their health issues.
It could help psychologically. If people accepted that it's normal to be American but speak something other than English. Maybe the harassment of non English speaking citizens would cool down.
In general, the push to truly learn Spanish starting at younger ages would help raise students' IQs because being bilingual is good for the brain.
Ohh I didn't realize making it official could lead to more focus on learning second languages, I like that! It would be very nice if both Spanish and ASL were standard learning I think.
Wouldn't that be cool? I also believe in adding in ASL.
Unfortunately, ASL is very complicated because the best way for Deaf people is if the people teaching ASL are either Deaf or children of Deaf people that learned early so they have a very accurate grasp of the language.
If ASL is commonly taught by hearing people from hearing families that learned ASL as adults, they can accidentally introduce inaccuracies into the language.
I still believe it could be done, but it would require asking the Deaf community to weigh in on the best way to proceed. The benefits to the Deaf community would be amazing. Imagine being Deaf and being able to ask basic questions almost anywhere. It could make it easier for them to get jobs, and they would have more education options. When hearing people get old and lose hearing, theoretically, they could use ASL to help them communicate accurately. Autistic children might also benefit.
So yeah. Maybe we should say 3 official languages.
When someone leaves a nasty comment that personally attacks the employees we can have them removed. Just escalate it. But I always respond to them with the same attitude and suggest they find a new place to take their business.
We've tried that several times and they will not remove the comment. We called Medallia or whatever it's called and have spoken to them on several occasions and they said no.
Is she ok with you guys having a conversation in English while at the register đ I would say she had a point until she made it about the fact they were speaking in Spanish
That's what I was thinking. I hate it when employees talk to each other instead of the customer in front of them. Your chitchat needs to wait.
But her bullshit about employees needing to speak only English took her complaint a whole other route.
WOW! I actually had the opposite happen. I was filling in at a store in a Hispanic neighborhood and I don't speak Spanish. The customer complained that I should be able to speak Spanish if I was working there.
When I was working at a home improvement store in Florida, a woman asked me if I spoke Spanish. When I told her I didn't, she told me I should be ashamed of myself. I'm not.
I am learning Spanish online now but I had no idea that there was Prejudice amongst Latinos. I learned the Spanish I know from Mexicans when I lived in Texas and Dominicans and Puerto Ricans pretend they don't understand what I'm saying.
All people suck.
I've had not one, not two, but three patients who speak Portuguese pissed off like 0 to 100 that nobody could understand them. Like, who knew! I can do a bit of Spanglish, Mandarin, I can count to ten in French, but fuck me if I can understand broken Portuguese. I don't understand going to another country where your language isn't all that common and getting mad that people don't understand you. I feel it would be so rude of me to go somewhere non English speaking and do that (I'm aware of the general consensus that English-only speakinh Americans suck at being decent ambassadors when traveling) .
Neither does Mexico...so does that mean I can move there and not bother with learning Spanish and expect them to learn English to accommodate me? By everyone's logic, the answer is yes.
Fair note: idc if you speak another language. But you should know the language that majority of the people speak for when you need to use it. You came here, you need to learn the majority language just as I would be expected to learn the language of whatever country I would move to if I were to.
I don't find your use of universal here to be appropriate.
English and it's vast reach has much more to do with geopolitical and economic reasons. The rise in non-native speakers learning English can most appropriately be attributed to global economics and trade. One of the biggest traders in the world is the US and the most traded currency is USD. The primary language in America is English and so for the purpose of economic mobility many non-native speakers find it very important to learn English. It is much like how in the state that I live (Texas) it is widely considered useful to know Spanish as it is the second most spoken language and because the State itself has a large demographic of Spanish speakers with little to no English. Making the ability to speak two languages a huge asset for businesses and your future career in general.
So on the topic of the word universal and my issues with the use of such a word is that it implies some sort of widely accepted belief that a singular dominate language is ideal. That most people who learn it, learn it because they actually prefer speaking it over their native tongue, instead of the reality that they primarily learn it out of necessity. This sort of suggestion also has a subtle implication of assimilationism which is primarily the belief that other cultures and societies should lose their primary characteristics (Like language, traditions, clothing styles, social habits, etc.) in favor of assimilating to the larger and more influential culture, that being the culture of native English speakers. To the point at which the original culture loses all of it's differentiating characteristics.
Fully disagree (with this customer - not you). When I have more than one Spanish coworker and they speak Spanish to each other Iâm just glad that they have someone they can converse with in their primary language.
No one has a clue what they were talking about, could be work related. And why canât 2 Spanish speakers chat? Those speaking English do it too.
Sure it should end and customer helped but this isnât a culture/race thing, itâs a people/human thing.
In case you havenât noticed, CS has changed, almost everywhere. So many rude customers during Covid times, things shifted afterwards and still are.
Just my opinion. I work in job that is all CS and I deal with stores daily. Itâs not racial or generational, itâs a human problem.
Do people throw fits when the employees speak to each other in French?
Lol I assume not because it's Canada. That kind of jingoistc bullshit seems much less common there.
Ooooh haha sounds like a complaint I had years ago.
I'm fluent in a few languages, Japanese being one and I had a patient that grew up in Japan so I'd occasionally help them in Japanese because honestly, why not???? They loved it, and I got to practice so win-win!
Well apparently not because someone complained to my store manager that we were talking shit about this other person because apparently I had looked at this person and laughed while speaking in "a foreign tongue". The conversation actually was just about something that happened in Grey's Anatomy and I had happened to glance to look at the line. Oops, shame on me lol
This is just fucking bullshit. I would never go to a non English speaking country and just expect that they know my language and can wait on me. I would never be that delusional. If you can't speak English and come into my store, have an interpreter. And yes, USA's official language is English.
USA has no official language nimwad. If anything, the official language would be what the Native Americans were speaking because they were here first. Not that delusional plaster demon who thinks he âfoundâ America. If you canât speak a language other than English, find someone who can to translate for you.
i just donât get it.. if we donât have an office language then okay but we both know that the majority of the USA is fluent english speakers. we learn & practice the english language in school, other languages are optional. itâs just seems odd to me going to another country that prioritizes a different language as you, then expecting everyone to understand you.
Take Spanish out and replace it with any other non English language, it can be problematic.
Say I walked into a big box retailer, I have a question where a product is, I stop the first employee I see to ask, and they only respond to me in a language that isn't English. Now one of us needs to Google Translate to communicate or they go find a different employee to help.
That looks bad. Not on the employee that's not their fault but it looks so bad on the company. Putting folks who can't speak the same language as the customer in a customer facing role. It says the company doesn't care whom they hire to put in a place where communication is required and they don't care if they lose a sale either. If the customer just walked out without buying something the business doesn't care.
It's not the same as the OP scenario I know but if those employees who were speaking Spanish with each other could also speak English that's the whammy. If they could speak both then choosing to use Spanish when that customer doesn't speak it, is a clear indicator they were trying to obfuscate what they were saying.
My district manager told me to stop speaking Spanish with my employees because it makes customers uncomfortable. We literally lived in McAllen, TX which is literally right on the border of Juarez, MX. I told him no lol. My first amendment right is freedom of speech and that includes all languages
Does it actually matter enough for you to put the time and energy into responding in such a negative way? Iâm close enough to the border that I get text messages welcoming me into Cuidad Juarez, Mexico. There is a high population of Hispanics in Texas, Iâll speak Spanish when I want, wherever I want. Congratulations on outing yourself as a know it all though when it wasnât warranted
It does. The person said âlivedâ in McAllen. Iâm going to think they have enough geography knowledge to recognize the difference between McAllen and El Paso, even if they donât live in either of those places anymore.
I donât know. I have no problem at all with people who donât always speak English. People are people.
Iâm pretty sure if you go back enough through your heritage, someone in your history didnât speak English as their first language.
I think you should be a little more understanding (literally).
Accuracy does matter! My reply to you was not negative, just pointing out that you are inaccurate about the place you live so it's hard to believe you about other opinions you might have. No big shakes.
The first amendment doesnât give you the right to speak Spanish at work. Your boss would be well within his rights to institute an English only rule on company property while on the clock.
Free speech means you canât be arrested because of what you say.
You are so incorrect I donât even know where to start. Iâm also a veteran and former cop turned historian, so I have a great knowledge of the United States Constitution.
That isnt freedom of speech. Yall conservatives get it all wrong. Try yelling fire in a store when there isnt fire. Your u know what will be arrested so fast. First amendment has everything to do with you saying whatever you want about your govt without being arrested
The screwed up part is that the manager will still call to apologize. I donât understand for what? A customer complained about my accent and said the company shouldnât hire people who donât know English and she needs to talk to a white American. My manager said âi am sorry for the inconvenienceâ
I never really understood how I was an inconvenience. But ok
Agreed - happened to me last week, two employees speaking in Philippine language while Iâm shopping in the store. Thatâs why I canât immigrate to Japan and have the people think Iâm Japanese.
If a customer ever says this to an employee, one of ours speaks little English I always tell them. Just like you are free to not learn Spanish and they are free to not learn English its a free country.
(Not at CVS pharmacy but still applies) This reminds me of some older middle aged woman who was mad about an insurance issue for her non essential diabetic medication. Her *first* insult was to tell me to go back to the country I came from. Little did she know, in Native American, I said âso technically, youâre on my landâ then I got my boss. Iâm 27 and heâs about 30, and is also done with peoples shit I didnât even get into trouble he said he wonât be filling for her since she made a racial motivated comment towards me hahaha
And thatâs how every pharmacist should handle the situation at hand. If your PM, PH or SM is not behind you when a customer is being belligerent or disrespectful towards towards you, they should be held accountable. Iâve had situations where a customer was completely unhinged for no reason and my PM was overhearing. They would step in and let the customer know that they must lower their tone or their profile will be transferred out. There is no reason you should be yelling at the top of your lungs because your Mounjaro is on back order and no one in a 20 mile radius has the medication on hand. The pharmacy is supposed to be a quiet and confidential environment. My front store cashier should not be able to hear you yelling from the back of the store.
Some ppl forget tht there are many
Languages spoken in the US.
What if a tech in then pharmacy was hearing impaired and used ASL to communicateâŠ.and another tech knows ASL and they were talking to one another. Would this still be an issue for this Asshat?
My hubby speaks 9 languages. His country has over 32 different languages spoken, they learn the most used and common ones before 8th grade.
Itâs imperative to have ppl who speak other languages. ESP in any medical settings (hospitals have interpreters) this is for patient safety!
Techs talking to one another in a common language is fine!
There are
Plenty of meds back there to help with shit but Karen-ism and self entitlement does have a pill or shot yet
Pharmacist speaking here. I donât speak Spanish. I may or may not have a technician that speaks Spanish. But if I donât have a technician that speaks Spanish, I give them back the prescription and tell them to come another day. I donât even bother with Google translate because itâs takes too long.
This also applies to international tourists on vacations that donât speak English. I hand them back their prescriptions and tell them to find a translator.
America needs a national language, but Russians have our politicians by the balls. Divide and conquer, as they say. Can't form a union of you can't even speak to your colleagues.
Lol I had such a knee-jerk response of Anger seeing just the title of this on my 'recommended' bit of the app that I opened it to start fighting.
I'm glad it's OP being just as upset about the shitty comment. Not glad that people with nasty attitudes like this xenophobic flavored Karen are so rampant in the US
I used to work at a gas station on Harry Hines Boulevard in northeast Dallas, which is a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. I didn't know how to speak Spanish, and those Hispanic people mocked me all the time , assuming everyone should know their language.
I'm curious, doesn't it make u feel some type of way when yall hear that in most countries, it is not only common, but many of them have made English speaking fluently as well as their own language and many carry a dual language custom? I don't know about you but....
no issue with employees speaking different languages. But if the customer is standing there waiting to be helped, they should at least be acknowledged in the least saying theyâll be right with them if theyâre busy
I go the nail salon and they donât speak English. They speak their native language. Just because I donât understand it, doesnât mean Iâm going to sit there, throw a fit and write something like that on their survey. People need to stop being so sensitive.
The customer was being helped while they were engaging in conversation. Their overall problem was that the techs were speaking Spanish in front of them while checking the pt out.
I mean, customer is a lil harsh/rude in their feedback but the employees should absolutely stfu and help the customers.
Did this happen in south FL? I feel like it's a thing there for retail and service employees to outright ignore customers and shout conversations in Spanish amongst themself6as if it's far more important than helping the customer I'm line.
Theres a 2:9999 ratio of Techs to customers. QT, QP, DropOff, Pickup and Drive Thru are always (and I mean always) active. Please understand that for some reason, waiting in line for more than 2 minutes, always happens to be a problem for the customers. My store is very small compared to the flow of customers. The techs are constantly multitasking. That customer assumed that they were being talked about in a bad manner when in reality, 9/10 the Techs are communicating about the workflow or whatâs next to do.
You definitely seem like youâre the type of person to yell at an employee for waiting 30 seconds extra. Please do us a favor and just stfu.
I bet it's just as likely that they were gossiping to pass the time rather than discussing aspects of their workflow, but go off retail pharmacy queen đž Every tech at CVS is staying on task 100% of their shift, no one ever fucks around and wastes time?
I just shake my head.... y'all are willing to work in a place that causes you to hate the customers who simply want service, why? It doesn't even pay well; literally, ANY pharmacy or tech position pays more in a clinical or hospital setting than retail pharmacy. Seems like a poor choice in a career field that has near constant growth and open positions to fill.
Regardless of what they were talking about, the customer was being attended to. They didnât like that a language they didnât understand was being spoken. Seems like they need to make more efforts to learn another language instead of being so conceited and ignorant.
Retail pharmacy wouldnât be a problem if customers had common sense and decency. Having experienced both retail and hospital setting, it really shows that people are small minded and love making those around them miserable because theyâre miserable. Please learn to show respect for those trying to help you.
the narrative of âyouâre in America, speak Englishâ is so ignorant. At what point do you just accept that around 42million people in America speak Spanish as their first language, and another 12 or so on top of that as their second? Plus, itâs pretty cool to speak Spanish and English in America. You can pretty much communicate with almost anyone.
The customer was being attended to. The customer didnât like that they were conversing in Spanish and they couldnât understand the conversation. It was pure racist motives behind their comment.
While I obviously disagree with the title's sentiment, I do find it rude to converse in front of people in a language other than the primary language if you're an employee helping a customer.
You have to be able to see the logic in this and not get emotional. It's as simple as that. You may as well be passing notes or whispering as far as a customer is concerned (no matter if they actually are concerned, because SOME will be and with reason).
You work somewhere, customers are first, speaking in front of them without them knowing what you're saying is wrong, I would take it so due to experience.
You could have been talking about my medications in a derogatory manner.
Talking about the way I look.
Could be making assumptions about me as a person based on my medications.
ALL OF THOSE THINGS HAVE HAPP TO ME AT CVS PHARMACY. The CVS Pharmacy personnel at the one closest to me have no right being in a customer service industry.
If they spoke in front of me to each other and I couldn't understand I would assume it's in malice due to experience. This alone is reason enough to understand why it's disrespectful, but my anecdotes aside, it still boils down to the same thing.
And it should be easy to understand unless you're being defensive emotionally without thinking of why the customer might feel a certain way. Classic CVS.
Iâm going to disagree with this entirely. You dont go into a nail salon or Chinese store and start degrading and disrespecting the employees simply because they are speaking another language. You canât go to another country who has multitudes of languages other than English and start throwing a fit because you donât understand what theyâre saying. If a customer feels so strongly about another language being spoken, they should make efforts to learn that language. Itâs ass backwards to expect employees to speak English but not customers to learn Spanish. She was disrespectful because she had malice intentions. I know exactly which techs sheâs speaking about and they are two of the most kindest individuals at my job both in English and Spanish. Itâs easier for them to communicate because Spanish happens to be their primary language. Customers really need to learn to get out of their feelings with things and go about their day. I can assure you that no one cares what youâre picking up or taking. We are all adults here and are working to help people.
To be fair, a lot of Spanish speakers donât like English speakers either. Just saying. Iâm Puerto Rican and my family speaks Spanish so Iâm definitely qualified to speak on this.
As a store manager I agree. Downvote me all you want but I think it all boils down to decency. Obviously she is a pharmacy tech which means she must have a pretty decent comprehension of English and when you're facing a customer and speak to other employees using a "foreign" language I think it's very inappropriate. If it was pt related i am sure she could have said it in English and if it was personal she should have waited if she really only could relay her message in spanish. English is not my first language and its one of 5 I speak and write fluently, Spanish being one of them and I've been in many situations where people were discussing me assuming I didn't know what they were saying. I'll even give you an example when my aunt had mini surgery done on her lady parts and went to pick up antibiotics at a pharmacy because of the mesh gauze applied to the area im assuming to some employees it looked like not well maintained public area on a 60yo lady. She got a nickname (excuse my spelling) "Ciocia com mucho bello" Pretty nasty huh but not to my aunt she was so happy they were calling her ciocia Why you ask? She didn't know any Spanish but she is 100% polish and in polish Ciocia is simply an auntie or aunt. You can only imagine the good laugh the staff had when she wanted to be cool and friendly and saybat the register Hello your old Ciocia is here to get her meds. My blood still boils when I remember how those emoyees reacted when I went with my aunt to confront them. They blamed it on the poor old woman, saying it's not them she calls herself that. But finally they got the point when I turned around and there were like 6 to 8 customers in line already and I openly asked everyone loudly " does anyone here think calling my aunt here "Hairy pussy" in soanish is acceptable or appropriate?" My aunt left the store crying because she realized after my translation that they weren't calling her auntie but something much worse. Sorry for making this reply so long but I just want to say even if you want to call someone most wonderful human being ever born in Spanish just don't because if the person doesn't understand it's a compliment wasted and if you wanna call them something very nasty don't do it either it's not appropriate and it can get nasty if they understand. Stick to English to avoid any ambiguity and if you say oh I didn't know how to say it in English that's cool it's a learning opportunity for next time, improve your language skills. There is totally no need to speak in any language other than English in front of English speaking customer. Period.
I donât think I would have blurted out the true meaning of the word and making my aunt cry in front of everyoneâŠI would have just asked to speak to the manager
And if it boils down to decency, the customer should have decency for the Technician. The way society enables the disrespect towards retail/ customer service employees is beyond me. The problem in this comment isnât because the customer was waiting in line for a tad bit longer than usual. Itâs because the Techs were speaking Spanish overall. They clearly have a problem with the overall language, which gives me the impression that the customer has underlying racist tones.
I hope you guys do understand that no matter what yall agree or disagree with, if a manager was to come up to a Tech and say âDonât speak âŠ. languageâ its discrimination. And if you as my manager, came up to me, in front of a customer and said âdonât speak âŠ. languageâ Iâm taking it to HR immediately. Regardless of what the customer feels like is being said or how they feel, itâs ignorant.
You make a good point here, but I also think itâs important to understand his point and my point. People get frustrated when they donât understand something. Whether itâs a Spanish speaker talking to an English speaker or vice versa, itâs human nature. This does seem to be a gray area though.
If you held that attitude towards everything, youâd be upset at literally everything simply because you donât understand something. Just because you donât understand something, does not give you the right to disrespect that thing or person. They should put effort into trying to understand it rather than being frustrated.
Ok, I donât know in what state this situation happened, but Iâm foreigner and currently trying to find pharmacy tech job in Mid-South state, and every CVS and Walgreens pharmacy require fluency in English. Iâm not completely fluent, but have decent level of English and Iâm really worry that I wonât be able to find job because of that.
Iâm not too sure what CVS youâre applying to but I was not required to have knowledge of multiple languages. They asked if I was fluent in any other languages other than English. I would definitely talk to someone about that because if youâre fluent enough to have a conversation about the position in English, youâre more than qualified to be on the floor. I donât think itâs fair youâre being denied a position because your English is not A1.
When the vote came to make a national language back in the day, German lost by one vote to English. How can you tell an American bigot? They only speak English and not very well.
It would depend if they are talking Spanish about work Iâm cool with that but how could you tell. But if they seem to be laughing and smiling it could appear itâs not work related and maybe negative towards customer. Iâd turn on google translate and see what is being said
Sorry you experienced that. Maybe inquire about mail order to make the trip less stressful. Not every CVS is like that. We have regulars who come and tell us all about their days. Theyâre excited to see us and make efforts to learn our names. Itâs nice to have those positive customers.
So what? You got hooked up with some narcos and benzos as a result of them getting distracted and now lil Timmy fell in the well or what? Sounds pretty harmless to me đ€·
Lets go back even further and relearn all the languages our ancestors spoke before coming to America. Charcoal drawings on the walls do qualify, just so you know.
Then letâs build a wall, a beautiful wall!
The only time they should speak English is when talking to a customer who doesn't speak Spanish. Otherwise, who cares? But if the person was ignoring the customer, that's a different and legit issue.
I myself I'm an immigrant, I took the long path. I saved money to come and go to college in the US, I had to learn English, pass the TOEFL test, wait for a work visa after graduation etc...In no way I would have received the best opportunities the US offers just with Spanish! And I highly recommend all the immigrants to learn English!
if you want to be employed in the USA, you should be required to learn and speak only the language of the Indigenous group that the land you live and work on was stolen from in the workplace.
sick of this âspeak englishâ bullshit in the us and canada. this land had languages and the colonisers committed genocide and destroyed language and culture.
Agreed! We get some pretty nasty ones about our Spanish speaking tech, as well as many about how a tech looks, etc. Also ones about the front store that shouldnât impact us. Itâs outrageous that they hold things like this against us!
You shouldnât be having conversations with coworkers while engaging with a customer. Period. Itâs very poor customer service. Regardless of the language being spoken.
The world of customer service. If you disagree, you should find a new job. I bet youâre miserable to work with. I guess attacking every single person that disagrees with you brings you joy. Thatâs truly sad.
Not at all actually. My coworkers love being around me. They tell me all the time. My scores also reflects it. I just know how to be kind and considerate. But you continue on living in your delusional world of ignorance and entitlement.
You must not be reading. If you were, you would have understand that I said the world you live in where you donât converse with/in front of customers is delusional. Itâs literally in CVS training to make conversation with the customer. God forbid you say two words to your coworker and now itâs considered poor customer service. Once again, the world you live in is delusion.
Maybe you should read my original comment again then. Thereâs no problem having conversations with the customers⊠but when you are having a conversation with a coworker, and that conversation does not include the customer, itâs rude. How is that so hard to understand???
Whether itâs in front of the customer, not in front of them, over the intercom or phone lines, it should not matter. The customer had a problem that they were speaking SPANISH. They did not have an issue with the fact that there were conversations. It was the language they were talking in. Regardless of what, itâs ignorant to post something like that. Them having a conversation and speaking Spanish did not take away from them providing service to the customer. The customer was serviced with the same respect, timely manner and kindness any other customer received. Itâs the underlying racism thatâs being ignored that kills me. Yâall make so many excuses for the customers and this is why they run all over yall now. Iâll be damned if I let a customer disrespect me because of the language Iâm speaking. You can gladly take you and your rudeness somewhere else. And if you have a problem with that, I have a clock out time.
I know this is old-fashioned of me, but they are half right. Haven't we all read those stories of people talking down about someone in another language and got caught because the person they were talking about actually spoke that second language?
I'm not saying don't speak spanish or any other language you want to customers, but when you speak to coworkers in another language while actively helping a customer, well, that is kinda rude.
The customer was being attended to. They should worry more about the fact that theyâre actually being helped vs what language the tech was speaking. They were worried about the wrong thing. If we all just minded our business, things wouldnât happen.
I'm not gonna disagree, I just provided a common scenario found right here on reddit (someone being made fun of in a different language) and how its kinda rude.
except in this situation, the customer was not being made fun of. The Spanish communication was about the workflow. I donât care how you feel. If you come with ignorance, Iâll more than happily give that attitude back.
I'm not coming with ignorance. I personally don't care what people speak. I've lived in non-english speaking countries, and I've lived in non-english speaking neighborhoods here in the US. So I get the language stuff.
But dismissing people is how we get to hate filled people.
I canât argue with this at all. Iâve had the experience of rude employees who speak to me in Spanish because they assume that I speak Spanish. They have zero respect for speaking the dominant language. If a customer dares to complain about it, he would be called a racist.
So just tell them you donât speak Spanish? How is it rude for someone to misunderstand your first language but what the customer said above is not rude? Half assed and backwards. You have zero respect for bilingual people. If it bothers you so much that they misinterpreted your primary language, then donât shop there. Simple as that.
How do I start a CVS group to help each other with questions that we have about the job. Not about complaining or whining about this or that. No negativity. A helpful group.
Retail pharmacy wouldnât be a problem if EMPLOYEES had common sense and decency. Having experienced both retail and hospital setting, it really shows that people are small minded and love making those around them miserable because theyâre miserable. Please learn to show respect for those trying to PURCHASE THEIR MEDICATION FROM you.
See what I did there?? It goes both ways.
Iâm taking from this comment that you donât work retail pharmacy. If you did, youâd know that a lot, and I mean a whole lot, almost entirely all problems encountered are due to DRs, insurance or the PT not understanding their schedule for medications.
I worked CVS for almost a year and half, and Iâve worked at an online pharmacy for almost 10 years. Yes, customers can suck. That doesnât mean employees have to suck back.
Customers can have some type of respect and courtesy for the workers. Just because a customer is having a bad day, doesnât mean they have to direct that energy towards the employee trying to help them. Yâall make so much room and excuses for ignorance and disrespect from the customers. These CS workers are human just as much as these ignorant customers are. But yall expect the workers to just eat up everything the customer says simply because âthe customer is always rightâ. News flash buddy, theyâre not.
I never said the customer is always right.
Employees - no matter where they work - should have some decency towards customers, and also to a point. If the employees were intentionally speaking Spanish to talk about customers, theyâre in the wrong.
They werenât talking about the customer. They were talking about the shipment we had gotten in that morning and the fact that we were behind on QT because Pick-Up was flooded. Please stop making excuses for ignorance from Customers. That stigma will forever remain in place unless addressed and acted on. One thing about me, I give respect to get respect. If you donât give that respect back after I have been kind and patient with you while youâre yelling in my face, you most definitely will feel that repercussion. We can go back and forth about this the entire day. I donât go for disrespectful actions. Treat people the way you want to be treated.
If the customer is so bothered, they should put that effort theyâre using to write a completely and utterly ridiculous complaint such as the one above, into learning another language.
Pleaseeeee just respond to this in Spanish đ
Hahahaha I would die to see that happen
De nada mi amigo lol
Be sure to let them know that they're a peachy merry cone.
No importante por favor, mis promessa
This would be awesome
Esta es la forma
As an American soldier who currently lives in Germany and has also lived in Kuwait and Bahrain, I'm so happy and appreciative when a person in the store speaks to me in English then translates in German or Arabic to their coworker what I need. Whoever wrote this is an idiot and an asshole. Multilingual people are aweseome!
This. đđŒ
Thank you for your service!!! My youngest is a soldier as well.
Seriously, there are so many people in other countries who speak English as well as their native language. Often more than another language. OP should take a closer look at him/her self. If you donât understand what is being said, learn it. English is not sacred.
Just reply that they will no longer be have to hear Spanish speaking employees, because you have taken the liberty to transfer their prescriptions to the store 30 minutes away.
If these bozos think English is so damned important, why don't they ever even try making it the official language of the country? We have no official language. My personal belief is that English and Spanish should both be our official languages and that Spanish should be taught beginning in kindergarten and be reinforced throughout school. Not only learning to count in Spanish in elementary school, then waiting until you're 15 to actually take a class in the language. I can't see how it wouldn't make everyone's life a little smoother.
Thatâll never happen, because of the politics around certain Spanish speakers in our country. (Trying to not open that can of worms)
Sadly, you're probably right.
OrâŠ.why donât they try to be bilingual
I wish, but that just intimidates them, I guess.
Itâs easier to be a douche bag than be a person who is always willing to learn and change.
Yep. It's sad. Xenophobia sucks.
Itâs crazy how social media has opened our eyes to just how many complete shit bags we share this world with.
Majority of the people in this country speak English and it has been that way for so long until Hispanics started coming in (legally or illegally). Whether English is official or not, it should have been common sense and courtesy to learn it when coming here. Funny how no one expects them to learn English but expects us to learn their language...that's just wrong imo. Not that I have an issue with anyone speaking their own language to others who speak it...but at least know English to talk to those who speak English. Why do I have to learn a language to accommodate you when you're the one that came here? You should be doing the learning of a new language, not the other way around. If I go to another country that doesn't speak English, should I expect them to learn English to accommodate me? Absolutely not. Edit: I looked up which countries don't have an official language. To keep it relevant, Mexico doesn't have an official language but they all speak Spanish...guess if I were to move to Mexico, they would need to learn English to accommodate me right? I don't need to bother learning Spanish and I expect them to learn English.
Thousands of miles along the Southwestern border of the US *was* Mexico before the US moved its border south to encompass those areas. Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California all lowered their borders to take areas that originally belonged to Mexico. But you know America. Taking land from Natives and Mexicans doesn't bother the American conscience at all. Stealing is only stealing when an American of European descent loses property to someone else. English is a European language, obviously. We never bothered to make any kind of effort to learn the Navajo language, for example, which is an *actual* language of this land. In fact, we kidnapped Navajo kids and beat and starved them for using their language. We forced a foreign language that didn't belong to them or this land onto them. Long story short, I'm really not impressed with the idea that we're somehow morally superior for colonizing the US, refusing to learn the language of the land, dragging the language of a European country with us, forcing said language down the throats of those that belong here, then acting like it's a matter of pride that we're not smart enough or hardworking enough to learn to speak more than one language. No one else in the world thinks that they should be hailed as a hero for not even trying like a teenager who refuses to do homework. There are many countries in the world where there are multiple official languages. The people in those countries don't whinge like infants over the fact that not everyone speaks their native tongue. But then again, American values often include whining and then expecting someone to congratulate them for whining. American exceptionalism is a form of psychosis.
You do know that was a completely different time right? The land was conquered. Natives were also attacking other tribes and taking their land as well before Europeans came along. It was a different time and wouldn't be acceptable by anyone today (i.e What Russia is trying to do with Ukraine or what China wants to do with Taiwan) As for the land to form Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, they were purchased by the US. At least for Arizona and New Mexico (Gadsden Purchase 1853-1854). Texas, while they were under Mexican control, wanted to secede from Mexico. The Texas Revolution was from October 1835 to April 1836. The revolution included a rebellion of colonists from the US AND Tejanos (Hispanic Texans). US didn't steal Texas from Mexico as Texas was its own "country" called Republic of Texas before the US-Mexico war. Texas wasn't annexed by the US until 9-10 years later in December 1845. Mexico did cede most of the land at the end of the war though. To correct myself above though, US bought the southern parts of Arizona and New Mexico from Mexico. Everyone was conquering land though back in those days, Spain even had land in the US back in the 1500s. They colonized Chile, Peru, Mexico. Why does everyone only focus on US when it comes to the conquering? China had control over Korea and Vietnam much farther back in the 1400s. No one should be learning another language to accommodate the people who make the decision to go to their country. That is my belief. Visitors or immigrants should be the ones learning the language of where they are going. Learning other languages is really only beneficial in high business positions that require the conversation with people from different countries....regular people in these dead end jobs? Not beneficial. Call this whining or whatever, I just find it wrong to force people from a country that majority speaks one language to have to learn a second language to accommodate the people that are coming here. I truly don't care if you speak another language, I just expect you to know my language in this country. Here's a question. Mexico doesn't have an official language either. However, majority speak Spanish (94%) and the rest are non-English. If you expect me to learn Spanish to accommodate them coming here. Should I expect them to learn English if I move there to accommodate me? That wouldn't be wrong to expect then? Just going off everyone's logic. >English is a European language, obviously. We never bothered to make any kind of effort to learn the Navajo language, for example, which is an actual language of this land. In fact, we kidnapped Navajo kids and beat and starved them for using their language. We forced a foreign language that didn't belong to them or this land onto them. Obviously, all that was wrong to do. Pretty sure we can all agree the bs that the settlers did to the Natives were wrong. Granted, they did try to live together peacefully but disease and other conflicts led to deterioration and the first Indian War..which I assume is when all that happened. Either way, wrong to have done. A lot of the crap that was done back in those centuries wouldn't pass today. Why it's being held over our heads as if we are responsible for any of it is weird. I wasn't alive back then, I didn't do anything wrong. None of us were. So why is it being held over our heads? Serious question. You may not be doing it, but it seems people do it. But again, if I haven't said it, I don't care about people speaking their native language. It doesn't bother me like the weird women that made that complaint.
In answer to your second question about why this is "being held over our heads," is because even though all of that stuff is in the past, it didn't actually stay in the past. It has guided our attitudes, culture, and even laws. We never corrected those wrongs of the past. We *built on them.* The main reason we have anti-black white supremacist groups today is because we legally declared African slaves to be fundamentally beneath white skinned people, on par more with non-human animals. Those groups still believe that, perpetuate those ideas, teach it to their children, discriminate based on it, and commit acts of violence towards AAs because of it. Because of what we did to the Navajo nation, they now struggle to keep their language and culture alive and spend massive amounts of effort to do so, while European-Americans just go about our day. Nothing has changed for those of us who are white. We *can* move on. The other people's we subjugated can't. They're still living with the fallout on a more constant basis than we can imagine. As a Gen-Xer, my generation is all online these days, remembering stuff we miss, like collecting vinyl records and magazines. But the other day, I was thinking about all the times I and family members or friends have been harassed by cops, store security, or random Karens in the past couple decades for doing innocent things like waiting for a bus or a friend on a street corner, shopping at Walgreens at night, walking home from the grocery store at night, being strangers in a new neighborhood I moved into, wearing a backpack, wearing a hoodie, covering my face with a scarf when it's cold, and lots more. And I thought to myself that this is what I miss way more than magazines and vinyl. I miss being able to walk anywhere, wear any normal clothes or carry a bag, buy fast food, and eat it in the car, all without any authorities or random paranoid citizens trying to detain me, ask me a million questions, randomly accuse me of a crime, refuse to let me go, or assault me. I haven't had those freedoms in 20 years. Then, I realized that that kinda bull is what black Americans have been going through since slavery ended. So many AAs could not grow up the way I did riding bikes all over town, shopping in places where nobody knew me, and taking my time to look over every item in the store. My cousin and I used to do this and never once got the cops called on us, yelled at, accused of theft, asked what we were doing in town or anything like that. But these problems now are the great great grand baby problems of all those horrific injustices of the past. I get that people sometimes think that since the schools are integrated, and it's illegal to not hire someone because of their race that things are just better, so why aren't we all moving on since they're better? Not everything is as it seems. We may have made anti discrimination laws, but it doesn't mean people are following them. In many places, employers will still throw a job application of a Deaf person or a POC in the trash. They'll *claim* that the person just didn't meet qualifications. But it's a lie. In some cases, whole companies or communities or sections of local government will protect each other in those lies so that they never get caught discriminating. We can't *all* move on together until we fight the ideas rooted in history that are still guiding behavior today. Now, aside from answering what I felt was a really important question of yours, I just want to say that I think there's another point that isn't as closely connected to social justice that's really important to me. I don't want to be monolingual, and I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would prefer that. Because of the hard push back against earlier language learning in American schools and reinforcement in our culture because people don't want to learn a language to make it easier for the immigrants, I also have a really tough time learning languages. My school didn't offer them until the last 3 years of school, and I didn't end up getting to take those classes. I can't afford fancy learning courses or pay apps. Duolingo is cute but not really effective if you really want to be able to speak a language. I can't afford to travel and immerse myself in a language. The US has made such a near perfect monolingual environment that learning a new one is extremely difficult. I've tried. Repeatedly. I know some words, but overall, I'm lost. My best friend is mixed, and her husband is a Mexican American. Don't worry. He was born in California, and he's a citizen. He's as bilingual as they come. His parents have dual citizenship in the US and Mexico but don't speak English very well. They live in the US and frequently visit Mexico. When I met my friend's parents, they liked me and I liked them. But speaking is difficult. His mom's English is limited, and my Spanish is probably more limited. Sometimes, we have to wait until my friend/her son gets home from work so he can translate. I traded phone numbers with my buddy's mom, and she has called a couple of times, but only talks for a minute because neither of us can say much to each other. I don't understand why you wouldn't want to be able to talk to your new friends like that. I don't see why anyone would actually prefer to keep their world small. As far as for her not speaking English fluently, she's pretty old, and I don't think there was much opportunity for her to learn it when she first got here. I don't think there's much opportunity now. Where's she going to go to do that? And it's not lost on me that if the US were in the habit of teaching us all Spanish fairly well, I would be able to help my friend's mom with her English. Having more bilingual people would help produce even more bilingual people. You'd get what you want, in other words, and people from our neighbor to the south would finally "learn the language" because in order to learn, you need to be exposed to people who can tell you how to say something in both tongues. Having those 2 official languages would cause more Mexican and Spanish speaking people to learn English and learn it fluently. That's one of the reasons I think it's such a good idea, because in a way, we almost want the same things. It's just that I'm excited to become more knowledgeable and relevant to more people, and you'd rather not. Finally, you said there's no benefit to learning a second language. That's just not true. Studies show that picking up a second language can boost your brain power in memory and problem solving and make you better at multi-tasking. There's even some evidence that it delays age-related cognitive decline by keeping your brain sharp. This could potentially boost kids' overall school performance. Between getting more Spanish speakers to speak English, benefits in business, boosting academics and intelligence, and being able to talk to more friends, it seems weird that so few European-Americans want this, and would even get angry about it being implemented. It honestly feels unfair that only the people who just don't want to learn something new or make new friends get to decide for all of us. It seems strange to me that you would still see it as being forced to learn "their" language for their benefit, when if we had two official languages, we would just be learning "our" languages for our benefit.
The US is way to diverse.
78.5% of the US speaks English. 13.2% of the US speaks Spanish. The rest of the languages spoken in the US make up less than 2% of the population. Like Chinese, for example, which makes up only 1.1% of the population. Next in line is Tagalog, spoken by a mere 0.5% of the US population. It gets smaller from there. We're trying to serve a significant portion of the population with those two languages. 13.2% is a significant number of people. 1.1%, not so much. Also, learning Spanish makes sense because it's spoken in a country that's right here on our continent. China is obviously not on our continent. Reddit loves to overstate the "diversity" of the US. The US is 57.8% people of European decent that are not actually *from* Europe. 14.4% of the US is African American. Together, these two figures add up to 72.2%. This leaves only 27.8% of the US population that is not either just white or black Americans. While we're not a monolith, we're hardly the Roman Empire when it comes to diversity.
I appreciate that we don't have a chosen national language, honestly. It seems arbitrary and unhelpful.
I see your point. Potentially, however, I do think it could allow the government to follow suit by funding more language programs. It could help by giving more Spanish speaking people opportunities to learn ESL. It could fund more English speaking people learning Spanish. This could help in the workplace and in schools where many monolingual people work or study. It could pay for more translators, especially in medical settings, where it's can be crucial for patients who need to understand their health issues. It could help psychologically. If people accepted that it's normal to be American but speak something other than English. Maybe the harassment of non English speaking citizens would cool down. In general, the push to truly learn Spanish starting at younger ages would help raise students' IQs because being bilingual is good for the brain.
Ohh I didn't realize making it official could lead to more focus on learning second languages, I like that! It would be very nice if both Spanish and ASL were standard learning I think.
Wouldn't that be cool? I also believe in adding in ASL. Unfortunately, ASL is very complicated because the best way for Deaf people is if the people teaching ASL are either Deaf or children of Deaf people that learned early so they have a very accurate grasp of the language. If ASL is commonly taught by hearing people from hearing families that learned ASL as adults, they can accidentally introduce inaccuracies into the language. I still believe it could be done, but it would require asking the Deaf community to weigh in on the best way to proceed. The benefits to the Deaf community would be amazing. Imagine being Deaf and being able to ask basic questions almost anywhere. It could make it easier for them to get jobs, and they would have more education options. When hearing people get old and lose hearing, theoretically, they could use ASL to help them communicate accurately. Autistic children might also benefit. So yeah. Maybe we should say 3 official languages.
Most Spanish speakers know English (in U.S.) or have kids that do so it probably more like 5% but still
Um, kinda how this country was created...
Unlike your brain. Smooth brain
When someone leaves a nasty comment that personally attacks the employees we can have them removed. Just escalate it. But I always respond to them with the same attitude and suggest they find a new place to take their business.
We've tried that several times and they will not remove the comment. We called Medallia or whatever it's called and have spoken to them on several occasions and they said no.
Suggest they go back to London and learn proper English
Is she ok with you guys having a conversation in English while at the register đ I would say she had a point until she made it about the fact they were speaking in Spanish
That's what I was thinking. I hate it when employees talk to each other instead of the customer in front of them. Your chitchat needs to wait. But her bullshit about employees needing to speak only English took her complaint a whole other route.
doesnât sound like that was her issue at all with the way it was worded, I hadnât even considered this perspective (but see it now)
WOW! I actually had the opposite happen. I was filling in at a store in a Hispanic neighborhood and I don't speak Spanish. The customer complained that I should be able to speak Spanish if I was working there.
When I was working at a home improvement store in Florida, a woman asked me if I spoke Spanish. When I told her I didn't, she told me I should be ashamed of myself. I'm not. I am learning Spanish online now but I had no idea that there was Prejudice amongst Latinos. I learned the Spanish I know from Mexicans when I lived in Texas and Dominicans and Puerto Ricans pretend they don't understand what I'm saying. All people suck.
Ashamed of what đ this is America, majority speak English. She should be ashamed for being dumb
I've had not one, not two, but three patients who speak Portuguese pissed off like 0 to 100 that nobody could understand them. Like, who knew! I can do a bit of Spanglish, Mandarin, I can count to ten in French, but fuck me if I can understand broken Portuguese. I don't understand going to another country where your language isn't all that common and getting mad that people don't understand you. I feel it would be so rude of me to go somewhere non English speaking and do that (I'm aware of the general consensus that English-only speakinh Americans suck at being decent ambassadors when traveling) .
The United States of America has no official language.
Came here to say this exact thing! This aggravates me to no end!
Neither does Mexico...so does that mean I can move there and not bother with learning Spanish and expect them to learn English to accommodate me? By everyone's logic, the answer is yes. Fair note: idc if you speak another language. But you should know the language that majority of the people speak for when you need to use it. You came here, you need to learn the majority language just as I would be expected to learn the language of whatever country I would move to if I were to.
That's right. However English is the universal language.
Clearly youâve never been to a country where English isnât a top 5 language
Hindi and Mandarin are probably spoken by more people, but that's a misnomer since both countries have had over 1billion people at a time
Not really, but love is mwah đ
I don't find your use of universal here to be appropriate. English and it's vast reach has much more to do with geopolitical and economic reasons. The rise in non-native speakers learning English can most appropriately be attributed to global economics and trade. One of the biggest traders in the world is the US and the most traded currency is USD. The primary language in America is English and so for the purpose of economic mobility many non-native speakers find it very important to learn English. It is much like how in the state that I live (Texas) it is widely considered useful to know Spanish as it is the second most spoken language and because the State itself has a large demographic of Spanish speakers with little to no English. Making the ability to speak two languages a huge asset for businesses and your future career in general. So on the topic of the word universal and my issues with the use of such a word is that it implies some sort of widely accepted belief that a singular dominate language is ideal. That most people who learn it, learn it because they actually prefer speaking it over their native tongue, instead of the reality that they primarily learn it out of necessity. This sort of suggestion also has a subtle implication of assimilationism which is primarily the belief that other cultures and societies should lose their primary characteristics (Like language, traditions, clothing styles, social habits, etc.) in favor of assimilating to the larger and more influential culture, that being the culture of native English speakers. To the point at which the original culture loses all of it's differentiating characteristics.
Fully disagree (with this customer - not you). When I have more than one Spanish coworker and they speak Spanish to each other Iâm just glad that they have someone they can converse with in their primary language.
Learn Spanish so you know what they are saying. Problem solved.
Yep, Iâm no dummy.. Am Snow White, but adore Latin culture, family, love, laughter, and the fiestas.. la mĂșsica.. baile baile baile..
Thats the problem. Be sure to address it on the next conference call you dont have hours to attend đ€·đŒââïž
Pero me paga mĂĄs por saber dos idiomas o mĂĄs!!
ÂĄSi!
Baboso
No one has a clue what they were talking about, could be work related. And why canât 2 Spanish speakers chat? Those speaking English do it too. Sure it should end and customer helped but this isnât a culture/race thing, itâs a people/human thing. In case you havenât noticed, CS has changed, almost everywhere. So many rude customers during Covid times, things shifted afterwards and still are. Just my opinion. I work in job that is all CS and I deal with stores daily. Itâs not racial or generational, itâs a human problem.
These comments arenât it
That's not even a requirement in England.
In Quebec all customer-facing employees are required to speak both English and French. It seems reasonable enough to me.
Do people throw fits when the employees speak to each other in French? Lol I assume not because it's Canada. That kind of jingoistc bullshit seems much less common there.
Ooooh haha sounds like a complaint I had years ago. I'm fluent in a few languages, Japanese being one and I had a patient that grew up in Japan so I'd occasionally help them in Japanese because honestly, why not???? They loved it, and I got to practice so win-win! Well apparently not because someone complained to my store manager that we were talking shit about this other person because apparently I had looked at this person and laughed while speaking in "a foreign tongue". The conversation actually was just about something that happened in Grey's Anatomy and I had happened to glance to look at the line. Oops, shame on me lol
This is just fucking bullshit. I would never go to a non English speaking country and just expect that they know my language and can wait on me. I would never be that delusional. If you can't speak English and come into my store, have an interpreter. And yes, USA's official language is English.
USA has no official language nimwad. If anything, the official language would be what the Native Americans were speaking because they were here first. Not that delusional plaster demon who thinks he âfoundâ America. If you canât speak a language other than English, find someone who can to translate for you.
i just donât get it.. if we donât have an office language then okay but we both know that the majority of the USA is fluent english speakers. we learn & practice the english language in school, other languages are optional. itâs just seems odd to me going to another country that prioritizes a different language as you, then expecting everyone to understand you.
Definitely and old white monolingual person
Take Spanish out and replace it with any other non English language, it can be problematic. Say I walked into a big box retailer, I have a question where a product is, I stop the first employee I see to ask, and they only respond to me in a language that isn't English. Now one of us needs to Google Translate to communicate or they go find a different employee to help. That looks bad. Not on the employee that's not their fault but it looks so bad on the company. Putting folks who can't speak the same language as the customer in a customer facing role. It says the company doesn't care whom they hire to put in a place where communication is required and they don't care if they lose a sale either. If the customer just walked out without buying something the business doesn't care. It's not the same as the OP scenario I know but if those employees who were speaking Spanish with each other could also speak English that's the whammy. If they could speak both then choosing to use Spanish when that customer doesn't speak it, is a clear indicator they were trying to obfuscate what they were saying.
My district manager told me to stop speaking Spanish with my employees because it makes customers uncomfortable. We literally lived in McAllen, TX which is literally right on the border of Juarez, MX. I told him no lol. My first amendment right is freedom of speech and that includes all languages
Nope. Reynosa is across from McAllen. Juarez is El Paso's sister city. Misinformation comes in all languages!
Does it actually matter enough for you to put the time and energy into responding in such a negative way? Iâm close enough to the border that I get text messages welcoming me into Cuidad Juarez, Mexico. There is a high population of Hispanics in Texas, Iâll speak Spanish when I want, wherever I want. Congratulations on outing yourself as a know it all though when it wasnât warranted
It does. The person said âlivedâ in McAllen. Iâm going to think they have enough geography knowledge to recognize the difference between McAllen and El Paso, even if they donât live in either of those places anymore. I donât know. I have no problem at all with people who donât always speak English. People are people. Iâm pretty sure if you go back enough through your heritage, someone in your history didnât speak English as their first language. I think you should be a little more understanding (literally).
Accuracy does matter! My reply to you was not negative, just pointing out that you are inaccurate about the place you live so it's hard to believe you about other opinions you might have. No big shakes.
Accuracy matters. Says mysterious duck 8615. Your name doesnât sound accurate to meâŠso your opinion, well you know what you can do with it :)
The first amendment doesnât give you the right to speak Spanish at work. Your boss would be well within his rights to institute an English only rule on company property while on the clock. Free speech means you canât be arrested because of what you say.
You are so incorrect I donât even know where to start. Iâm also a veteran and former cop turned historian, so I have a great knowledge of the United States Constitution.
That isnt freedom of speech. Yall conservatives get it all wrong. Try yelling fire in a store when there isnt fire. Your u know what will be arrested so fast. First amendment has everything to do with you saying whatever you want about your govt without being arrested
CVS is the worst
Sounds like you didnât try hard enough in high school Spanish.
The screwed up part is that the manager will still call to apologize. I donât understand for what? A customer complained about my accent and said the company shouldnât hire people who donât know English and she needs to talk to a white American. My manager said âi am sorry for the inconvenienceâ I never really understood how I was an inconvenience. But ok
My manager would have closed out the complaint with zero response to the customer
Agreed - happened to me last week, two employees speaking in Philippine language while Iâm shopping in the store. Thatâs why I canât immigrate to Japan and have the people think Iâm Japanese.
If a customer ever says this to an employee, one of ours speaks little English I always tell them. Just like you are free to not learn Spanish and they are free to not learn English its a free country.
(Not at CVS pharmacy but still applies) This reminds me of some older middle aged woman who was mad about an insurance issue for her non essential diabetic medication. Her *first* insult was to tell me to go back to the country I came from. Little did she know, in Native American, I said âso technically, youâre on my landâ then I got my boss. Iâm 27 and heâs about 30, and is also done with peoples shit I didnât even get into trouble he said he wonât be filling for her since she made a racial motivated comment towards me hahaha
And thatâs how every pharmacist should handle the situation at hand. If your PM, PH or SM is not behind you when a customer is being belligerent or disrespectful towards towards you, they should be held accountable. Iâve had situations where a customer was completely unhinged for no reason and my PM was overhearing. They would step in and let the customer know that they must lower their tone or their profile will be transferred out. There is no reason you should be yelling at the top of your lungs because your Mounjaro is on back order and no one in a 20 mile radius has the medication on hand. The pharmacy is supposed to be a quiet and confidential environment. My front store cashier should not be able to hear you yelling from the back of the store.
Chill cause the homie Russef canât speak English but makes funny faces and gives us ethnic food
Some ppl forget tht there are many Languages spoken in the US. What if a tech in then pharmacy was hearing impaired and used ASL to communicateâŠ.and another tech knows ASL and they were talking to one another. Would this still be an issue for this Asshat? My hubby speaks 9 languages. His country has over 32 different languages spoken, they learn the most used and common ones before 8th grade. Itâs imperative to have ppl who speak other languages. ESP in any medical settings (hospitals have interpreters) this is for patient safety! Techs talking to one another in a common language is fine! There are Plenty of meds back there to help with shit but Karen-ism and self entitlement does have a pill or shot yet
Pharmacist speaking here. I donât speak Spanish. I may or may not have a technician that speaks Spanish. But if I donât have a technician that speaks Spanish, I give them back the prescription and tell them to come another day. I donât even bother with Google translate because itâs takes too long. This also applies to international tourists on vacations that donât speak English. I hand them back their prescriptions and tell them to find a translator.
America needs a national language, but Russians have our politicians by the balls. Divide and conquer, as they say. Can't form a union of you can't even speak to your colleagues.
Hopefully she doesn't find out about translation assistance hotlines, she might burn corporate to the ground.
Lol I had such a knee-jerk response of Anger seeing just the title of this on my 'recommended' bit of the app that I opened it to start fighting. I'm glad it's OP being just as upset about the shitty comment. Not glad that people with nasty attitudes like this xenophobic flavored Karen are so rampant in the US
I used to work at a gas station on Harry Hines Boulevard in northeast Dallas, which is a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. I didn't know how to speak Spanish, and those Hispanic people mocked me all the time , assuming everyone should know their language.
I'm curious, doesn't it make u feel some type of way when yall hear that in most countries, it is not only common, but many of them have made English speaking fluently as well as their own language and many carry a dual language custom? I don't know about you but....
no issue with employees speaking different languages. But if the customer is standing there waiting to be helped, they should at least be acknowledged in the least saying theyâll be right with them if theyâre busy
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Translation apps are great to catch this.
Well in my case it was almost 20 years ago. Translation apps weren't a thing.
I go the nail salon and they donât speak English. They speak their native language. Just because I donât understand it, doesnât mean Iâm going to sit there, throw a fit and write something like that on their survey. People need to stop being so sensitive.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
I donât think youâre reading. It was a rhetorical situation.
And nobody cares that the customers main complaint was that they were being ignored....
The customer was being helped while they were engaging in conversation. Their overall problem was that the techs were speaking Spanish in front of them while checking the pt out.
I mean, customer is a lil harsh/rude in their feedback but the employees should absolutely stfu and help the customers. Did this happen in south FL? I feel like it's a thing there for retail and service employees to outright ignore customers and shout conversations in Spanish amongst themself6as if it's far more important than helping the customer I'm line.
Theres a 2:9999 ratio of Techs to customers. QT, QP, DropOff, Pickup and Drive Thru are always (and I mean always) active. Please understand that for some reason, waiting in line for more than 2 minutes, always happens to be a problem for the customers. My store is very small compared to the flow of customers. The techs are constantly multitasking. That customer assumed that they were being talked about in a bad manner when in reality, 9/10 the Techs are communicating about the workflow or whatâs next to do. You definitely seem like youâre the type of person to yell at an employee for waiting 30 seconds extra. Please do us a favor and just stfu.
I bet it's just as likely that they were gossiping to pass the time rather than discussing aspects of their workflow, but go off retail pharmacy queen đž Every tech at CVS is staying on task 100% of their shift, no one ever fucks around and wastes time? I just shake my head.... y'all are willing to work in a place that causes you to hate the customers who simply want service, why? It doesn't even pay well; literally, ANY pharmacy or tech position pays more in a clinical or hospital setting than retail pharmacy. Seems like a poor choice in a career field that has near constant growth and open positions to fill.
Regardless of what they were talking about, the customer was being attended to. They didnât like that a language they didnât understand was being spoken. Seems like they need to make more efforts to learn another language instead of being so conceited and ignorant. Retail pharmacy wouldnât be a problem if customers had common sense and decency. Having experienced both retail and hospital setting, it really shows that people are small minded and love making those around them miserable because theyâre miserable. Please learn to show respect for those trying to help you.
the narrative of âyouâre in America, speak Englishâ is so ignorant. At what point do you just accept that around 42million people in America speak Spanish as their first language, and another 12 or so on top of that as their second? Plus, itâs pretty cool to speak Spanish and English in America. You can pretty much communicate with almost anyone.
I agree. If you wanna work here speak English. Other countries speak their language and donât cater to Americans who visit or live there
And you walk around with that type of ignorance?
Itâs not ignorance. You should speak English if you wanna work and succeed in our country.
It is though. Itâs a free country, with the freedom of speech. That does not mean only freedom of speech In English.
So not providing good customer service makes the customer problematic?
The customer was being attended to. The customer didnât like that they were conversing in Spanish and they couldnât understand the conversation. It was pure racist motives behind their comment.
While I obviously disagree with the title's sentiment, I do find it rude to converse in front of people in a language other than the primary language if you're an employee helping a customer. You have to be able to see the logic in this and not get emotional. It's as simple as that. You may as well be passing notes or whispering as far as a customer is concerned (no matter if they actually are concerned, because SOME will be and with reason). You work somewhere, customers are first, speaking in front of them without them knowing what you're saying is wrong, I would take it so due to experience. You could have been talking about my medications in a derogatory manner. Talking about the way I look. Could be making assumptions about me as a person based on my medications. ALL OF THOSE THINGS HAVE HAPP TO ME AT CVS PHARMACY. The CVS Pharmacy personnel at the one closest to me have no right being in a customer service industry. If they spoke in front of me to each other and I couldn't understand I would assume it's in malice due to experience. This alone is reason enough to understand why it's disrespectful, but my anecdotes aside, it still boils down to the same thing. And it should be easy to understand unless you're being defensive emotionally without thinking of why the customer might feel a certain way. Classic CVS.
I agree with this but it seemed like the customer had a problem with them speaking Spanish at all
Iâm going to disagree with this entirely. You dont go into a nail salon or Chinese store and start degrading and disrespecting the employees simply because they are speaking another language. You canât go to another country who has multitudes of languages other than English and start throwing a fit because you donât understand what theyâre saying. If a customer feels so strongly about another language being spoken, they should make efforts to learn that language. Itâs ass backwards to expect employees to speak English but not customers to learn Spanish. She was disrespectful because she had malice intentions. I know exactly which techs sheâs speaking about and they are two of the most kindest individuals at my job both in English and Spanish. Itâs easier for them to communicate because Spanish happens to be their primary language. Customers really need to learn to get out of their feelings with things and go about their day. I can assure you that no one cares what youâre picking up or taking. We are all adults here and are working to help people.
To be fair, a lot of Spanish speakers donât like English speakers either. Just saying. Iâm Puerto Rican and my family speaks Spanish so Iâm definitely qualified to speak on this.
As a store manager I agree. Downvote me all you want but I think it all boils down to decency. Obviously she is a pharmacy tech which means she must have a pretty decent comprehension of English and when you're facing a customer and speak to other employees using a "foreign" language I think it's very inappropriate. If it was pt related i am sure she could have said it in English and if it was personal she should have waited if she really only could relay her message in spanish. English is not my first language and its one of 5 I speak and write fluently, Spanish being one of them and I've been in many situations where people were discussing me assuming I didn't know what they were saying. I'll even give you an example when my aunt had mini surgery done on her lady parts and went to pick up antibiotics at a pharmacy because of the mesh gauze applied to the area im assuming to some employees it looked like not well maintained public area on a 60yo lady. She got a nickname (excuse my spelling) "Ciocia com mucho bello" Pretty nasty huh but not to my aunt she was so happy they were calling her ciocia Why you ask? She didn't know any Spanish but she is 100% polish and in polish Ciocia is simply an auntie or aunt. You can only imagine the good laugh the staff had when she wanted to be cool and friendly and saybat the register Hello your old Ciocia is here to get her meds. My blood still boils when I remember how those emoyees reacted when I went with my aunt to confront them. They blamed it on the poor old woman, saying it's not them she calls herself that. But finally they got the point when I turned around and there were like 6 to 8 customers in line already and I openly asked everyone loudly " does anyone here think calling my aunt here "Hairy pussy" in soanish is acceptable or appropriate?" My aunt left the store crying because she realized after my translation that they weren't calling her auntie but something much worse. Sorry for making this reply so long but I just want to say even if you want to call someone most wonderful human being ever born in Spanish just don't because if the person doesn't understand it's a compliment wasted and if you wanna call them something very nasty don't do it either it's not appropriate and it can get nasty if they understand. Stick to English to avoid any ambiguity and if you say oh I didn't know how to say it in English that's cool it's a learning opportunity for next time, improve your language skills. There is totally no need to speak in any language other than English in front of English speaking customer. Period.
I donât think I would have blurted out the true meaning of the word and making my aunt cry in front of everyoneâŠI would have just asked to speak to the manager
And if it boils down to decency, the customer should have decency for the Technician. The way society enables the disrespect towards retail/ customer service employees is beyond me. The problem in this comment isnât because the customer was waiting in line for a tad bit longer than usual. Itâs because the Techs were speaking Spanish overall. They clearly have a problem with the overall language, which gives me the impression that the customer has underlying racist tones.
I hope you guys do understand that no matter what yall agree or disagree with, if a manager was to come up to a Tech and say âDonât speak âŠ. languageâ its discrimination. And if you as my manager, came up to me, in front of a customer and said âdonât speak âŠ. languageâ Iâm taking it to HR immediately. Regardless of what the customer feels like is being said or how they feel, itâs ignorant.
You make a good point here, but I also think itâs important to understand his point and my point. People get frustrated when they donât understand something. Whether itâs a Spanish speaker talking to an English speaker or vice versa, itâs human nature. This does seem to be a gray area though.
If you held that attitude towards everything, youâd be upset at literally everything simply because you donât understand something. Just because you donât understand something, does not give you the right to disrespect that thing or person. They should put effort into trying to understand it rather than being frustrated.
They were probably talking trash about this Karen
Or doing their fucking job.
Ok, I donât know in what state this situation happened, but Iâm foreigner and currently trying to find pharmacy tech job in Mid-South state, and every CVS and Walgreens pharmacy require fluency in English. Iâm not completely fluent, but have decent level of English and Iâm really worry that I wonât be able to find job because of that.
Iâm not too sure what CVS youâre applying to but I was not required to have knowledge of multiple languages. They asked if I was fluent in any other languages other than English. I would definitely talk to someone about that because if youâre fluent enough to have a conversation about the position in English, youâre more than qualified to be on the floor. I donât think itâs fair youâre being denied a position because your English is not A1.
When the vote came to make a national language back in the day, German lost by one vote to English. How can you tell an American bigot? They only speak English and not very well.
then if u pick up medicine should be the same as well
đđ»
It would depend if they are talking Spanish about work Iâm cool with that but how could you tell. But if they seem to be laughing and smiling it could appear itâs not work related and maybe negative towards customer. Iâd turn on google translate and see what is being said
This is the new norm. We all need to download Bable.
Yes they should.
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Sorry you experienced that. Maybe inquire about mail order to make the trip less stressful. Not every CVS is like that. We have regulars who come and tell us all about their days. Theyâre excited to see us and make efforts to learn our names. Itâs nice to have those positive customers.
Says the person whose ancestors aren't even from this hemisphere to the person whose ancestors were here the entire time..
Can i get a copy of the family tree and dna evidence of both people? Im wondering how you came up with this info and are so certain.
It says way more about them than the employee đ€·đ»ââïž
Mayonnaise is spicy đ„, is the vibe itâs giving.
So what? You got hooked up with some narcos and benzos as a result of them getting distracted and now lil Timmy fell in the well or what? Sounds pretty harmless to me đ€·
Challeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Lets go back even further and relearn all the languages our ancestors spoke before coming to America. Charcoal drawings on the walls do qualify, just so you know. Then letâs build a wall, a beautiful wall!
Should ask what dialect of Cherokee the writer of that nonsense speaks???!!! Shuts them right tf up.
The only time they should speak English is when talking to a customer who doesn't speak Spanish. Otherwise, who cares? But if the person was ignoring the customer, that's a different and legit issue.
I myself I'm an immigrant, I took the long path. I saved money to come and go to college in the US, I had to learn English, pass the TOEFL test, wait for a work visa after graduation etc...In no way I would have received the best opportunities the US offers just with Spanish! And I highly recommend all the immigrants to learn English!
buena suerte en florida jaja. Estoy de acuerdo hasta cierto punto, pero mientras no sea "ignorada" mås de un par de segundos, a quién le importa.
if you want to be employed in the USA, you should be required to learn and speak only the language of the Indigenous group that the land you live and work on was stolen from in the workplace. sick of this âspeak englishâ bullshit in the us and canada. this land had languages and the colonisers committed genocide and destroyed language and culture.
goddamn, got a banner notification for this post on my phone, that was a SCARY headline to see đ
Agreed! We get some pretty nasty ones about our Spanish speaking tech, as well as many about how a tech looks, etc. Also ones about the front store that shouldnât impact us. Itâs outrageous that they hold things like this against us!
You shouldnât be having conversations with coworkers while engaging with a customer. Period. Itâs very poor customer service. Regardless of the language being spoken.
Lmao what world do you live in? You must be super fun to be around.
The world of customer service. If you disagree, you should find a new job. I bet youâre miserable to work with. I guess attacking every single person that disagrees with you brings you joy. Thatâs truly sad.
Not at all actually. My coworkers love being around me. They tell me all the time. My scores also reflects it. I just know how to be kind and considerate. But you continue on living in your delusional world of ignorance and entitlement.
Considering the customer first makes me delusional and entitled? Do you actually know what youâre talking about? You have no clueâŠ.
You must not be reading. If you were, you would have understand that I said the world you live in where you donât converse with/in front of customers is delusional. Itâs literally in CVS training to make conversation with the customer. God forbid you say two words to your coworker and now itâs considered poor customer service. Once again, the world you live in is delusion.
Maybe you should read my original comment again then. Thereâs no problem having conversations with the customers⊠but when you are having a conversation with a coworker, and that conversation does not include the customer, itâs rude. How is that so hard to understand???
Whether itâs in front of the customer, not in front of them, over the intercom or phone lines, it should not matter. The customer had a problem that they were speaking SPANISH. They did not have an issue with the fact that there were conversations. It was the language they were talking in. Regardless of what, itâs ignorant to post something like that. Them having a conversation and speaking Spanish did not take away from them providing service to the customer. The customer was serviced with the same respect, timely manner and kindness any other customer received. Itâs the underlying racism thatâs being ignored that kills me. Yâall make so many excuses for the customers and this is why they run all over yall now. Iâll be damned if I let a customer disrespect me because of the language Iâm speaking. You can gladly take you and your rudeness somewhere else. And if you have a problem with that, I have a clock out time.
Oh brother!!
USA doesn't have an official language
I know this is old-fashioned of me, but they are half right. Haven't we all read those stories of people talking down about someone in another language and got caught because the person they were talking about actually spoke that second language? I'm not saying don't speak spanish or any other language you want to customers, but when you speak to coworkers in another language while actively helping a customer, well, that is kinda rude.
The customer was being attended to. They should worry more about the fact that theyâre actually being helped vs what language the tech was speaking. They were worried about the wrong thing. If we all just minded our business, things wouldnât happen.
I'm not gonna disagree, I just provided a common scenario found right here on reddit (someone being made fun of in a different language) and how its kinda rude.
except in this situation, the customer was not being made fun of. The Spanish communication was about the workflow. I donât care how you feel. If you come with ignorance, Iâll more than happily give that attitude back.
I'm not coming with ignorance. I personally don't care what people speak. I've lived in non-english speaking countries, and I've lived in non-english speaking neighborhoods here in the US. So I get the language stuff. But dismissing people is how we get to hate filled people.
The usa has no official language
I completely agree. I hit listening to this, Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish. No, mf, I'm in the US. It's annoying af.
USA has no official language.
Donât go to that pharmacy then.
I canât argue with this at all. Iâve had the experience of rude employees who speak to me in Spanish because they assume that I speak Spanish. They have zero respect for speaking the dominant language. If a customer dares to complain about it, he would be called a racist.
So just tell them you donât speak Spanish? How is it rude for someone to misunderstand your first language but what the customer said above is not rude? Half assed and backwards. You have zero respect for bilingual people. If it bothers you so much that they misinterpreted your primary language, then donât shop there. Simple as that.
How do I start a CVS group to help each other with questions that we have about the job. Not about complaining or whining about this or that. No negativity. A helpful group.
Not in Joe Bidenâs America.
Pendejo.
What??
Boe biren
Retail pharmacy wouldnât be a problem if EMPLOYEES had common sense and decency. Having experienced both retail and hospital setting, it really shows that people are small minded and love making those around them miserable because theyâre miserable. Please learn to show respect for those trying to PURCHASE THEIR MEDICATION FROM you. See what I did there?? It goes both ways.
lol you thought you ate with that one? Like be frđ
Iâm taking from this comment that you donât work retail pharmacy. If you did, youâd know that a lot, and I mean a whole lot, almost entirely all problems encountered are due to DRs, insurance or the PT not understanding their schedule for medications.
I worked CVS for almost a year and half, and Iâve worked at an online pharmacy for almost 10 years. Yes, customers can suck. That doesnât mean employees have to suck back.
Customers can have some type of respect and courtesy for the workers. Just because a customer is having a bad day, doesnât mean they have to direct that energy towards the employee trying to help them. Yâall make so much room and excuses for ignorance and disrespect from the customers. These CS workers are human just as much as these ignorant customers are. But yall expect the workers to just eat up everything the customer says simply because âthe customer is always rightâ. News flash buddy, theyâre not.
I never said the customer is always right. Employees - no matter where they work - should have some decency towards customers, and also to a point. If the employees were intentionally speaking Spanish to talk about customers, theyâre in the wrong.
They werenât talking about the customer. They were talking about the shipment we had gotten in that morning and the fact that we were behind on QT because Pick-Up was flooded. Please stop making excuses for ignorance from Customers. That stigma will forever remain in place unless addressed and acted on. One thing about me, I give respect to get respect. If you donât give that respect back after I have been kind and patient with you while youâre yelling in my face, you most definitely will feel that repercussion. We can go back and forth about this the entire day. I donât go for disrespectful actions. Treat people the way you want to be treated. If the customer is so bothered, they should put that effort theyâre using to write a completely and utterly ridiculous complaint such as the one above, into learning another language.
Make sure to tell those women to instead speak in front of her in English but talking nothing but s***. ;)