Besides the chicks with accents
Unemployed ‘must learn English’
Unemployed people who cannot speak English will have to show they are learning the language or face losing benefits, the government has announced.
Up to 40,000 jobless people say their poor English is a barrier to finding employment, ministers say – and £4.5m is spent on translators in job centres.
This money would be better spent on teaching them English, they say.
My plan is even better than that!
1. No teaching them English
2. No giving any benefits to those who cannot ask for it in English.
3. Making them get the fuck out of their ghettos to interact with the rest of the country every now and then so that they learn english.
Approximately one-third of the guys I work with are naturalized. My employer is liable for any mistakes they make while driving a 40,000lb vehicle, so they do one very thorough background check in order to protect themselves, including making the person prove who they are with some very restricitve reqirements on form of ID.
We employ no illegal immigrants, period, point blank.
All of our drivers can speak conversational english, however accented, and they can be understood over the radio comm channels.
One of my newest drivers is from the Ukraine, and when he came to America, he watched network TV until he had most of the common phrases down. He then took a mainline job outside the community of his fellow immigrants, taking a pay cut, until he could be understood by just about anyone with average hearing.
Why is this little bit of respect so hard to understand for some?
My department has come to rely on foreigners with H2B visas for our seasonal employees. The problem we are having is that when we do the phone interview they put the best English speaker in the village on the phone to get the job. When the employee gets here, he or she understands soem English but can speak very little. When I say “very little” I mean that the joke around here is that the answer to every question is “yes” pronounced with a very heavy accent. Of course we can’t send them back because the visa can’t be replaced and we have to open. Customer service has taken a dive and the managements reliance on these visas to keep the wage low is going to bite them in the ass.
Oh, I forgot. Speaking of biting asses, we do get a lot of hot chicks with accents. So, ya’ know, that’s a bonus.
> Why is this little bit of respect so hard to understand for some?
It’s a problem all over. Languages are hard, and people just get lazy about it. I lived in Japan 14 years, and if I had a dollar for every time I heard some newcomer, American, Canadian, Aussie, etc. say “I’m going to learn Japanese, how to write it, too!” and then burned out, I’d be a richer man. Most of the Westerners learned enough Japanese to “get along”, and then found other things to spend their time on. It seemed disrespectful to me, exactly as you say, but people make excuses, and their compatriots are too sympathetic. (Full disclosure, I had a reputation as kind of a prick on this subject).
I hope your employer wises up.
Brass,
Stop doing phone interviews. Make them turn up in person.