Why are there so many people in customer service jobs..

...who can't speak English? Or should I say speak it well.

Sometimes I have to politely ask if I can speak to someone else who I can understand it's so bad. Usually they are accommodating and transfer my call to another employee, or in a face to face transaction, call another employee over.
Then there are other times where I've had the person get pissed off at me like it's my fault that they can't speak English clearly.

Am I being unreasonable, in wanting the people who I'm conducting business with to speak the same language as me(and the majority of the other customers), so I(we) can understand it?

 

Companys would rather not pay the money for competent workers and instead pay for cheap tele fodder.

 

No idea why..

A good friend of mine native to japan was going to college in the US and was trying to gain state residency so he could pay instate tuition. I was at his apartment one time and we put the phone on speaker. It was a spanish native who could hardly speak. My friend has trouble at times but he gets by just fine. Well the lady said he has not lived in the country long enough and he could speak the language better than her, but she tells him he has not been here long enough. Bullshit and more bullshit.

Guess its one of those jobs most people wouldn't do because of pay rate and hours. Though i think its bullshit they can't communicate.

Same thing with driving. If you can't understand the language how can you read the road?

 

i'm sure they can read the signs in india just fine

 

they need jobs

 

Because I sure as hell won't work that.

 

maybe you just can't understand it well, I very very rarely have trouble understanding someone who's not great at english.

 

I can usually get by just having patience and asking people to repeat or rephrase

I have worked for people that were from china and russia, i have worked with people that have been from all over the world

Like Kurt Russell said in big trouble in little china
"I only speak 2 languages, english and bad english"

If someone is speaking another language, I'm cut off from communication, but as long as they are trying to speak english, I can communicate just fine

 

a couple months back i picked up a few days of temporary work with a turkish carpet installation crew. they spoke turkish to each other (which i understood none of), and broken english to me. i've know the guys for years so i don't have a problem understanding them at all, but all of the customers basically get me to 'translate' their broken english.

by the end of a particularly long (16+ hour) work day, i was so used to hearing their broken english that i started responding in broken english myself, and even forming a few thoughts in my head in broken english. language is a strange thing!

 

I like getting serviced..