A lady walked into the office and she didn't speak English. I asked her who she was looking for and she said Lucy. The only person in the office who I didn't know was the cleaning lady who comes on Tuesdays so I went to find her and said are you Lucy? She said yes so I let her know someone was looking for her. She started following me then stopped and said, "I'm not Lucy".
I went to the front to ask the lady who is Lucy, she pointed to herself saying "I'm Lucy".
Turned out she walked in randomly looking for a cleaning job, but alas we were not hiring. We already employ a Lucy (?) or whatever her name is.
2 Lessons to be learned from this:
1) LEARN HOW TO SPEAK ENGLISH!!
2) Don't follow me if your name is not Lucy.
If you think she needs to learn English perhaps you should offer to teach her. Or you could learn to.speak her language if you have freetime which she may or may not have available considering how hard it usually is to support a family when you don't know the language well enough to qualify for a good job which could afford you the money to hire a tutor to teach you the language...
ReplyDeleteWhile this post was written in jest, you have a valid point. I do not desire to learn Spanish nor do I have the qualifications to teach foreigners to speak English, but I get your implied message to have patience and not make fun of such people. Thank you for your comment.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you understand my meaning. :)
ReplyDeleteA few thoughts: Jews immigrated here and MANY never learned to speak English at all. I also want to point out that EVERYONE who isn't Native America immigrated not all that long ago here also. They didn't all learn to speak the various tongues they spoke but brought their own language. Spanish is the second most common language in America and though I can't speak fluently I understand it FAR better than I do Hebrew because I have heard it all my life.
I think you seem INCREDIBLY nice so I don't mean this antagonistically at all, but hurtful statements like this seem to flow so quickly and easily from Jewish bloggers and it baffles me. I don't even think it's realized how hurtful certain things are to say. I don't think it's intentional at all, but that's what baffles me. I would think such a persecuted people would be the first to be sensitive to other nationalities. When someone is being made fun of for their nationality, of lack of know-how (or both) it hurts. I'm especially sensitive to this as a a convert. I never feel like I belong and I can imagine how it mist feel for immigrants.
I really don't mean to make a soapbox for myself on YOUR blog, I just wanted to explain my feelings a little better. Like I said, I don't think it's intentional of even seen of hurtful, but I promise you it is.