'Cause your being mean and all if you can't speak spanish in america.
'Cause your being mean and all if you can't speak spanish in america.
Assuming you're at a resort worth a E36 M3, all the Mexicans speak English...to your point. If I got a job at La Carneceria or whatever down the street, it seems reasonable that I should have to know Spanish...or "Tawk Messicuhn" as they say here.
No, it's everyone's right to have things the way they want it. (except me of course)
Well, except for the worker, or is it the customer, or is it the foreigner, or is it . . . .
This makes me so confused trying to figure out who is right.
But it is all because we don't have an official United States language. The one time it came up for a vote it was narrowly defeated because it wouldn't be P.C.
Am I the only one who read the article? It quotes their handbook saying "English-speaking workers must speak English to customers and other employees while on the clock, unless the customer speaks another language," and doesn't say anything about them not being able to speak English. I think two bilingual employees got suspended for speaking Spanish to one another at work instead of English, which seems pretty stupid to me.
that does seem stupid Max. I work with a lot of Bilingual people (not just spanish, the casinos in AC are a melting pot of languages.. I have even heard the african languages with all the clicks being spoken) and most of them switch back and forth easily. For most bilinguals, it is sometimes easier to get a point across in the native language
I wish I could speak Farsi and Spanish so I could understand what the hell everyone is saying.
Max_Archer wrote: I think two bilingual employees got suspended for speaking Spanish to one another at work instead of English, which seems pretty stupid to me.
This is how I read it, and I agree.
Suspended for a day, WITH pay?
Yes, please. 
Racer1ab wrote: Suspended for a day, WITH pay? Yes, please.
No doubt! After reading the article it appears the employees were suspended for complaining about the policy not actually violating it. They probably got E36 M3ty with their manager and he sent them home. Sounds legit to me. Why take a job some where if you don't agree with their policy?
Dan
Reminds me of the Somali community in MN. They tried to sue Target at one point, because Target made them handle pork and it's "unclean" to the muslim religion. While this is all well and good and I can respect not wanting to get ones bacon on......
YOU WORK AT berkeleyING TARGET. YOU ARE A CASHIER. TARGET SELLS BACON. Seems to me that if you sign up for a gig knowing the rules going in, you follow them. If you don't sucks to be you. They tried this at the meat plant as well. You know, the one that packs meat. But it wasn't done to Halal standards (which i read to be similar to kosher) so they didn't want to touch it. Erm.... it's not a Halal meat plant fool. Also, you're not just packing chicken and beef, you know Pork is a meat to the rest of us. My personal favorite was when they sued the dessert packing plant- because they made them wear close toed shoes and the women weren't allow to wear their burkas..... because the damn things would get sucked into the dessert machines and mangle one of em. So, they sued for the right to get all berkeleyed up by a machine, which they'd probably then sue for.
I'm gonna stop here.... I don't have many positive things to say about that community as a whole.
In reply to Datsun1500: on re-reading, you're correct in that the old policy did require them to speak English to coworkers. I think that's stupid. They complained, they got punished, but the rule has been revised.
So in the end, management didn't stand behind the rule, either. Would it have been changed if they hadn't pressed? I don't know. And I don't knows what they're actual behavior was. Maybe they'd switched to their native tongue to better discuss some nuance of the employee manual, or maybe they were being complete dicks (EDIT: stupid posting from a phone and sending prematurely...) and obviously talking about someone who was standing right there.
I do think it's going overboard to compare the refusal to sell bacon to speaking something other than English to a coworker. Few people I know have obeyed every company rule, especially when the rule was perceived as badly wrong and didn't bear on their ability to do the job. Refusing to sell bacon at a bacon retailer is very different from speaking Spanish in public.
carguy123 wrote: But it is all because we don't have an official United States language. The one time it came up for a vote it was narrowly defeated because it wouldn't be P.C.
That, and the territories where English isn't the primary language. We're more than just fifty states.
It did come up for a vote several times. If it'd passed in the 1700s, we'd all be speaking German now.
mndsm wrote: Reminds me of the Somali community in MN. They tried to sue Target at one point, because Target made them handle pork and it's "unclean" to the muslim religion. While this is all well and good and I can respect not wanting to get ones bacon on...... YOU WORK AT berkeleyING TARGET. YOU ARE A CASHIER. TARGET SELLS BACON. Seems to me that if you sign up for a gig knowing the rules going in, you follow them. If you don't sucks to be you. They tried this at the meat plant as well. You know, the one that packs meat. But it wasn't done to Halal standards (which i read to be similar to kosher) so they didn't want to touch it. Erm.... it's not a Halal meat plant fool. Also, you're not just packing chicken and beef, you know Pork is a meat to the rest of us. My personal favorite was when they sued the dessert packing plant- because they made them wear close toed shoes and the women weren't allow to wear their burkas..... because the damn things would get sucked into the dessert machines and mangle one of em. So, they sued for the right to get all berkeleyed up by a machine, which they'd probably then sue for. I'm gonna stop here.... I don't have many positive things to say about that community as a whole.
Assimilation seems to be a concept that went away by the 50's. 
That Target situation sounds VERY frustrating.
In reply to Datsun1500:
...and we'd see "SPEAK GERMAN" bumper stickers instead of "SPEAK ENGLISH" ones on pickup trucks 
gamby wrote:mndsm wrote: Reminds me of the Somali community in MN. They tried to sue Target at one point, because Target made them handle pork and it's "unclean" to the muslim religion. While this is all well and good and I can respect not wanting to get ones bacon on...... YOU WORK AT berkeleyING TARGET. YOU ARE A CASHIER. TARGET SELLS BACON. Seems to me that if you sign up for a gig knowing the rules going in, you follow them. If you don't sucks to be you. They tried this at the meat plant as well. You know, the one that packs meat. But it wasn't done to Halal standards (which i read to be similar to kosher) so they didn't want to touch it. Erm.... it's not a Halal meat plant fool. Also, you're not just packing chicken and beef, you know Pork is a meat to the rest of us. My personal favorite was when they sued the dessert packing plant- because they made them wear close toed shoes and the women weren't allow to wear their burkas..... because the damn things would get sucked into the dessert machines and mangle one of em. So, they sued for the right to get all berkeleyed up by a machine, which they'd probably then sue for. I'm gonna stop here.... I don't have many positive things to say about that community as a whole.Assimilation seems to be a concept that went away by the 50's.
It is. And while Datsun is completely right that the "not speaking spanish on the clock unless otherwise noted" isn't nearly as much of a problem as "I'm not gonna touch bacon, even though I work at a place that sells it" it does remind me of it. The biggest problem I have on a whole is- when you sign on for a job, you oughtta know what the gig is when you start. If you don't like it, don't sign on. If you want to change something, go through the proper channels. I have no problems with people communicating to each other in their native language. Hell I'm from MN and I can barely understand people from LA (the state) if I'm not paying attention, and technically we're both speaking english! But this just goes to show a larger litigious society that's more apt to use the law and special interest groups to back them when they do something wrong, as opposed to say... doing the right thing. You're going to boycott Whole Foods because two employees got a paid day off for doing something they shouldn't? I'm gonna go shop there EXTRA for standing their ground for once instead of caving like so many other nancies out there afraid of the PC police.
And my favorite part? Because I'm a blonde white guy who was native born in the US, if I complain, I'm labeled as a racist and a bigot and whatnot. Don't get me wrong, I have absolutely no problem with other cultures, other languages, whatever the case may be. But if I move to Japan, I am reasonably expected to behave as the Japanese do, or risk jail/whatever bad juju happens in Japan. Seems to me it should be the same everywhere..... and I'm pretty sure the words on my money are still in English.
gamby wrote: In reply to Datsun1500: ...and we'd see "SPRECHEN DEUTSCH" bumper stickers instead of "SPEAK ENGLISH" ones on pickup trucks
FTFY 
Old policy: "English-speaking workers must speak English to customers and other employees while on the clock, unless the customer speaks another language."
New policy: "...please speak with them in English, unless requested otherwise by the customer."
Sounds like the idea behind the original policy was that you don't want to employees having a conversation in front of a customer in a language the customer can't understand, because they might take offense. Heck, they might even think it is an opportunity to say bad things about a customer who they don't think can understand them.
Pretty understandable, but it seems like Whole Foods decided it was a bit too strict. "On the clock" means there could be back in the storage area and not allowed to speak they're preferred language. That's a bit silly.
These guys were suspended for a day, with pay. Sounds to me like they got a bit hot under the collar when talking to their manager about a rule they didn't agree with, and that got them sent home to have an opportunity to simmer down. Company looked at the policy and revised it to be a bit more relaxed.
Everything seems to have worked out fine. Nothing to see here. Move along.
And for the record, we would not have been all speaking German if the vote had been made in the late 19th century. We were somewhere around 20% German-only and 30% German as the primary language at the peak in this country. That still remains the highest percentage of people with a primary language other than English that we have had in this country's history. Far exceeding the number of people who primarily speak Spanish today.
Datsun1500 wrote:Knurled wrote: It did come up for a vote several times. If it'd passed in the 1700s, we'd all be speaking German now.And we wouldn't know any better. It's not like we should be glad it didn't pass because we don't know any German. If it would have passed, we would have been raised speaking German, not English, works fine for the people in Germany.
Well, it would have sucked for us for international trade. English is the de facto world standard because of England's colonial/trading company years.
No, it hasn't seemed to hurt Germany very much, but I don't think anyone would say Americans think the same way.
Beer Baron wrote: And for the record, we would not have been all speaking German if the vote had been made in the late 19th century.
I thought there was a vote in the 18th century, on whether to make German our official language, precisely because it was the most common language that wasn't English. It was voted down and the issue tabled.
We merely dropped all of those superfluous "u"s and changed the way we pronounce things a bit and went on with our lives. Taking the slacker easy route: an American tradition
Beer Baron wrote: Sounds like the idea behind the original policy was that you don't want to employees having a conversation in front of a customer in a language the customer can't understand, because they might take offense. Heck, they might even think it is an opportunity to say bad things about a customer who they don't think can understand them.
I have seen that. We did a gig at harrahs and the visiting roadies lost a cordless drill that later turned up under some fabric. They were accusing us of stealing it (we have nicer stuff) and the phone call thier lead had with his manager over the phone was done in Spanish.
One of our guys -is- from mexico, but he is as white as anybody else. Unless you knew him, you would never know. He translated the conversation to us and what their lead said was far less than flattering about us.
needless to say, we made their life hell after that
mndsm wrote: Reminds me of the Somali community in MN. They tried to sue Target at one point, because Target made them handle pork and it's "unclean" to the muslim religion. While this is all well and good and I can respect not wanting to get ones bacon on...... YOU WORK AT berkeleyING TARGET. YOU ARE A CASHIER. TARGET SELLS BACON. Seems to me that if you sign up for a gig knowing the rules going in, you follow them. If you don't sucks to be you. They tried this at the meat plant as well. You know, the one that packs meat. But it wasn't done to Halal standards (which i read to be similar to kosher) so they didn't want to touch it. Erm.... it's not a Halal meat plant fool. Also, you're not just packing chicken and beef, you know Pork is a meat to the rest of us. My personal favorite was when they sued the dessert packing plant- because they made them wear close toed shoes and the women weren't allow to wear their burkas..... because the damn things would get sucked into the dessert machines and mangle one of em. So, they sued for the right to get all berkeleyed up by a machine, which they'd probably then sue for. I'm gonna stop here.... I don't have many positive things to say about that community as a whole.
I'm going to try REALLY hard not to flounder this (because I realize it wasn't the point of this thread), but people should do some research on "halal" slaughtering.
It's utterly disgusting and inhumane.
Sorry, not sure why the double post.
Knurled wrote:Beer Baron wrote: And for the record, we would not have been all speaking German if the vote had been made in the late 19th century.I thought there was a vote in the *18th* century, on whether to make German our official language, precisely because it was the most common language that wasn't English. It was voted down and the issue tabled.
Nope. Vote was whether all government documents should be translated into German as well ss being in English. Never was a vote to make an official language.
CURSE YOU, FOURTH GRADE HISTORY!
And as for having an official putting a stop to all this brouhaha - Germany has an official language, and pretty much everyone you run into will speak English better than half of the guys I work with, and the customer service people everywhere you shop will apologize because their English is "not that good".
Except when you deal with a government office. Then well educated, upper-middle class people will pretend not to understand a word of English. But that is because German bureaucracy is a work of malicious sadism.
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