American Bigots

[marasbaras]

http://notalwaysright.com/even-paran...e-bad-days/774

What is wrong with these people? What, if you have some kind of accent you are some foreign dog?

I've read stories here, too, about call center CSRs who are being harrassed by these ultra-bigot-SCs who seem to think that it's their Constitutional Right to speak with someone from the US.

Welcome to a global economy folks ... take your bigotry and stuff it up your exit lane.

[Evil Queen]

I like the supervisor. "We call him 'Moe' for short."

[Damien]

I have recently had an experience like that... all because I am an Australian with a rather distinctive accent...and I was the customer...

[thehippie777]

I liked the response to the supervisor. That made me smile. But, I agree, just cuz you get someone with an accent? Yeah cuz we all speak perfect redneck.

I often speak too fast for such people. They look at me like I just spoke another language (or like my head in on fire, whichever one gets the image across). I rarely have problems with people from larger cities understanding my "fast-speak", though.

[crazylegs]

Me: “Sir, I would be more than happy to allow you to speak with my supervisor. His name is Muhammed Alam… we call him ‘Moe’ for short."

Beautifully exectuted, at least the SC had the grace not to argue about it...

[Becks]

Customer: “Well, the person I just spoke with had a very heavy middle eastern accent and told me his name was Sam.

It's possible. I knew an Albanian named Sami. We called him Sam.

What's the problem?

[marasbaras]

Whenever I hear some ultratard gripe about this sort of thing, I just say something to the effect of "the world is getting smaller, be a grown-up and deal with it".

[BlaqueKatt]

and just because a call center is in the US does NOT mean immigrants won't be working there. I took an escalated call once where the caller was loudly complaining about the fact that the girl that took her call was from India-I took great joy in informing her that the "girl from India"-spoke 5 languages fluently, trained me how to do my job, was the wife of my supervisor(when she tried to escalate on me), and had been a US citizen for 13 years-and had a college degree in engineering. We also had a few from Mexico, Russia, South Africa, and Belarus-call centers are well paying and generally lower-skilled, and recent immigrants in my area flock to them to support their families.

[Samaliel]

I have a friend who worked in a call center for quite some time and she seemed to do quite well. Not particularly wealthy, but enough to have some good times without worrying about bills.

[Record Store Tough Guy]

In the early days of outsourcing it could be a tad inconvenient because the connections sometimes weren't all that good, and some of us (me) can sometimes have a hard time understanding another native English speaker over the phone. Add that and a language barrier together and it could get frustrating quickly.

I speak German. Enough to get by for a short trip, at least. If I have a dictionary, I can translate written German all day long, since I understand the grammar and verb forms fairly well. I cannot for the life of me parse out spoken German from a native speaker, unless it's kept very simple, or very slow. Of course, most Germans I have spoken with are so surprised that an American even speaks German that they have no problem accommodating my lingual shortcomings (and, comprehension aside, I've had people comment that my accent is good enough that they didn't even realize I was not a native speaker.)

So, not all of us are bigots. But I suppose bigotry is best determined by how one handles the situation, not how one understands it.

[Meegz]

I'm American, and would rather wait on a person of ANY other foreign nature sometimes. Since I live on the east coast, I seem to encounter a lot of overseas travelers, especially those from England, Ireland, Netherlands, and even Australians. My god they are some of the most patient and polite people I have ever met.

"Sorry about the ridiculous 300 million hour wait "

"oh no worries! no hurry!"

Its funny, I wish everyone could be like that.

I won't say EVERY one of us is impatient or bigoted, but a majority of us are sadly. We're the home of the brave...entitlement whores!

[protege]

Not long ago, while on vacation, I found myself talking with a group of English tourists. Somehow, the subject of MGs came up...and they were sad that it just "wasn't the same." By then, Rover (MG's parent company) was putting the octagon on tarted-up family cars. Still, very nice people.

One year, there was a Swedish family staying in our building. Again, very nice people. Turns out they were both originally from Sweden, but their daughter (who would eventually become one of my brother's close friends) was born here. Saw them many years after that, usually during the same week. Haven't seen them for a few years, so I hope all is well.

[marasbaras]

I didn't say "Americans Are Bigots", I said "American Bigots". Just a slight difference in meaning there.