Thank you for self-identifying as a racist...

[Havering]

Asshole.

Me ( who else?)
JC (not that one, Jerky Caller)

A not-unusual call:

Me: *state agency*, me speaking.
JC: I really resent having to press 1 for English...blargle....national language...Rush Limbaugh....blargle...foreigners....blah!
Me: And what is it I can help you with today?

What I want to say: How unfortunate that you live in a diverse country/world, where everyone isn't exactly like you. Poor you! One where our agency realizes that new citizens may not be completely comfortable using English. Where you, sir or ma'am, had to go through the excruciating pain of pressing an additional button on your phone. The oppression you just experienced is as nothing compared to the struggles of people who came here, have to learn our language, become a citizen, get a job, and deal with utter shitheads like you! On the upside, if that's the most oppressive thing you have to deal with today, I can think of a lot of people who'd like to change places with you.

Many thanks to Gravekeeper for their previous post--I now refer to these callers as the Butt Monkey Fiesta. It's catching on at my work.

[Luna Baby]

This drives me nuts! My employer just sold our part of the business to another much larger company. I have dealt with change in employment for many years; jobs change, people change, assignments change.....heck the only thing that never changes is that things change!

Well, my country bumpkin coworkers have had 10 kinds of shit fits because in order to set up your direct deposit, you have to call into the HR hotline and give them the information. Well, guess where the calls are routed to...India. Big deal. Our new employer is so large that they have businesses there as well as all over the world. They are also so freaking scared for us to even use a USB drive to download product tests that we run in-house yet my coworkers are absolutely convinced that the new employer will have us call scammers! I've taken it upon myself to offer privacy in my office and assistance with translating (it really isn't that hard...you just have to listen and occasionally ask the CSR to repeat themselves). Those that took me up on the offer got their direct deposit set up right away and their next checks were electronic like they wanted. Those that didn't......well, deal with it!

In this whole transition from one company to the next, I've yet to deal with someone within the company that didn't just emit a sense of family, dignity, and work ethic. I'm proud to work for them. I just hope some of the long timers there can see the benefit and not be so racist towards our coworkers on the other side of the world.

[gerund]

and not be so racist towards our coworkers on the other side of the world.

It turns out - we're all the same species. My proof?

Well a man from somewhere in Europe can travel to the other side of the world and make pretty babies with any woman he finds there.

Similarly a man from India can go to anywhere else in the world and do the same thing. The Indians (the sub-continent ones) may have different languages, culture and religion, but that does not make them less or more than us.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is a bigot.

[Javarod]

I'll admit to have a minor issue with the whole press one for English thing, but this guy has issues. Mine is simply that in a primarily English speaking country English should be the default language unless the company is targeting a specific ethnic group. It's not that I'm racist, it's that I'm lazy, why should I make extra effort for what should be the default (I really hate having to turn the keypad on on my phone during a call).

[Havering]

I'll admit to have a minor issue with the whole press one for English thing, but this guy has issues. Mine is simply that in a primarily English speaking country English should be the default language unless the company is targeting a specific ethnic group. It's not that I'm racist, it's that I'm lazy, why should I make extra effort for what should be the default (I really hate having to turn the keypad on on my phone during a call).

I work for a (minor) state agency. I deal with a lot of newly-minted citizens (welcome to all of you!). My agency also deals with paperwork where, if newly-minted citizen lies on it, it can result in a felony. That being the case, I'd rather that they can understand the legalese. To keep people from getting an oopsie-felony, the others can deal with pressing one, I'm sure.

[csquared]

Anyone want to lay a bet on whether this guy would bitch a blue streak if he went outside the US and could not find anyone that spoke English?

[morgana]

Anyone want to lay a bet on whether this guy would bitch a blue streak if he went outside the US and could not find anyone that spoke English?

That's a sucker bet if I ever saw one . . .

[Naaman]

Personally I don't have a problem with offshored call centres, mostly I have a problem with companies that that don't train their call centre staff because it makes it even cheaper.

[Sparklyturtle]

Anyone want to lay a bet on whether this guy would bitch a blue streak if he went outside the US and could not find anyone that spoke English?

I remember my mother bellowing, "DOES ANYBODY HERE SPEAK ENGLISH??" in the train station in Tokyo. She wasn't offended that the signs were in Japanese and people were speaking Japanese; she was just trying to figure out where on the train line we were and which train we should be on. She always found someone who spoke English and who was willing to help, and she always thanked them profusely. As is probably obvious, my mother didn't have a bashful bone in her body. My dad was stationed at an Air Force base outside of Tokyo, which is how we ended up there, and, to be honest, coming back to the Georgia of the mid 1960s was really harder to adapt to.

[Shyla]

Do they then complain you didn't solve their problem fast enough because their rant took 10 minutes?

[Minflick]

We had a woman who left us a sour Yelp review because her visit took SO long.... Her visit took so long because she would NOT shut up. She yapped for an hour, we counted it. We're a tiny vet clinic, and her endless stupid repeated questions backed us up for the next hour or so.

[Mikkel]

It's not that I'm racist, it's that I'm lazy, why should I make extra effort for what should be the default (I really hate having to turn the keypad on on my phone during a call).

Wouldn't the default come last? It would be something like "press one for Spanish, press two for Chinese, for English, wait, and you will be transferred."

[Kit-Ginevra]

I don't object to my call being transferred overseas(although I do like it when they keep their call centres in this country),but wherever you, if your English is that bad or your accent so strong that you cannot have a conversation where we can both understand each other,then there's going to be a problem along the way.
And that's not just overseas.I mean you too-Glaswegians,Geordies and most of all Black Country folk-compared to you guys,a Martian would be a model of clear and accurate diction....!!

[Seanette]

I don't object to my call being transferred overseas(although I do like it when they keep their call centres in this country),but wherever you, if your English is that bad or your accent so strong that you cannot have a conversation where we can both understand each other,then there's going to be a problem along the way.

QFT. I really don't think it's racist to expect that a company serving speakers of a given language will hire customer service workers who speak that language well enough to communicate clearly with the customer, or offer some means to facilitate that communication. Where I work, we have a contract with an interpreter service to handle a rather diverse caller base.

And that's not just overseas.I mean you too-Glaswegians,Geordies and most of all Black Country folk-compared to you guys,a Martian would be a model of clear and accurate diction....!!

Not familiar with those dialects, being a Colonial.

My biggest gripe about US accents would be those who are just too lazy to make an effort to speak clearly. If I'm aware you have trouble speaking for medical reasons, such as one call I took today, that's one thing and you have every bit of patience from me you need. If you're just mumbling into your phone because you're feeling lazy or think it's somehow uncool to speak clearly, please go step on some Legos.

[Argus]

Wouldn't the default come last? It would be something like "press one for Spanish, press two for Chinese, for English, wait, and you will be transferred."

Except that the foreign-language prompts need to be in the respective language. If you expect that people needing non-English language might call, that would have to start with something like "presione uno para español" and proceed from there. By the time you get through all of those, a native English speaker will have assumed they called the wrong number and hung up.