Food Service Peeve

[Jan M. Bednarczuk]

Here at the university we have a system whereby you can present your ID card
to the food service at the student center in lieu of cash. That is, each
student who is currently subscribed to a university meal plan gets X number of
dollars to use at the food service each quarter, accessible via ID card.

Easy enough.

However, I headed over to the student center today and couldn't remember how
much credit I had left on my card. No problem, I thought to myself. I'll
just ask the cash register guy.

Unfortunately, the cash register guy turned out to be a native speaker of
Spanish. Now, I have no problem with people who speak Spanish as their native
language. However, I think that any sort of position that requires one to
deal with customers on a regular basis should have "ability to understand
English" as one of the requirements.

I only wanted to find out how much credit I had left on my card. This is not
a difficult task. However, the guy manning the cash register absolutely could
not understand what I was asking him. He could tell people their totals, and
he could tell them how much change they got. I think that was the extent of
his knowledge of English.

I didn't think it was that incredibly difficult to pick up English, especially
once living and working in this country. Go figure.

Jan