Gucci Little Piggy

Kicking. Squealing.

An Observation

Here’s something I’ve noticed more and more over the past year or so at the restaurant where I work.  Mexican patrons asking for a waiter or waitress that speaks Spanish. That has happened several times in the past year that I’ve worked, and I can’t recall it ever having happened before that.  Granted, one waiter’s perception from one restaurant in one city.

About these ads

21 Responses to An Observation

  1. Lara 05/21/2012 at 9:11 am

    I like this attitude. I am so tired of everyone being able to speak English. It takes all the fun out of communicating with foreigners.

  2. Gorbachev 05/21/2012 at 9:18 am

    Don’t worry. There’s a net migration of Mexicans back to Mexico. It’s accelerating. The economic collapse of the US has a very few side benefits.

    Cold comfort, I know.

  3. Lara 05/21/2012 at 9:20 am

    It sucks having the whole world speak your language. If I go to another country, I want to be forced to learn the language. This is one reason I like the French.

  4. Professor Hale 05/21/2012 at 9:48 am

    This seems very normal. When I am traveling to various other places I enjoy finding waiters who can speak english. Like in DC for example.

  5. BlogRaju 05/21/2012 at 9:54 am

    When I go to restaurants other countries, I never ask for someone who speaks English. I think Mexicans have an unusually strong linguistic identity, which is why they are reluctant to learn English.

    I agree with Lara: communicating in other languages is fun. I speak French, and found the French to be remarkably hospitable.

    I have found myself in situations where I could not speak the local language, and needed to find help quickly. Such situations make travel fun.

  6. Professor Hale 05/21/2012 at 10:04 am

    Such situations make travel fun.

    Unless you are bleeding out. Fun is relative.

  7. Scott McLeod 05/21/2012 at 10:14 am

    Wait for a while, soon it will be legislated, just like french in Canada. Then you’ll find that only about 10% of the population is eligible for government jobs.

  8. albert magnus 05/21/2012 at 10:18 am

    What’s interesting is that a Latin ethnic wants to eat at a Anglo restaurant. Assuming you don’t work at a terrible restaurant, that implies they aren’t particularly poor and the obviously Spanish-speaking places didn’t appeal to them that evening.

    I think most Latinos would like to speak English, though they do get crap from their co-ethnics for losing their accent or speaking Spanglish.

  9. Professor Hale 05/21/2012 at 10:23 am

    Then you’ll find that only about 10% of the population is eligible for government jobs.

    That would be an improvement.

  10. Sgt. Joe Friday 05/21/2012 at 10:23 am

    How I would feel about this depends on whether these are Mexican tourists, or people living on this side of the border who simply cannot be bothered to learn English. If they are the latter, screw them.

    But unfortunately that’s where we’re headed. There is not a single politician of consequence in either party who is willing to put a stop to this, and in fact many if not most like the idea of the USA becoming a bilingual nation. Oh sure, they try to polish that turd by saying stuff like “everybody in Europe speaks more than one language, we should too” but the simple fact is they know most people don’t / won’t / can’t speak more than one language. This allows them to make different promises to different groups of voters, and the chances of being caught doing that are slim to none.

  11. C.R. 05/21/2012 at 10:23 am

    albert,

    to riff on what you wrote there…i remember about 5 years ago when one of the line cooks was giving a mexican waiter co-worker of mine a bunch of shit for hollering back on the line in English. the guy said “what, you too good to speak Spanish?” they also give shit to any Mexican chicks who date outside their race. much worse than whites ever would.

    i also sense among some of the more recent aliens that they are worried about being seen as sellouts by their family or peers.

  12. Lara 05/21/2012 at 10:39 am

    Not all Europeans are bilingual. One of the coolest men I met in France, spoke only Flemish.

  13. Sgt. Joe Friday 05/21/2012 at 10:58 am

    “i also sense among some of the more recent aliens that they are worried about being seen as sellouts by their family or peers.”

    Reminds me of the story about Mexican crabs. It goes something like this:

    A boy and his grandfather had a bucket of crabs they’d caught. The boy noticed one of the crabs trying to pull himself up and out of the bucket. “Grandpa, that crab is trying to get out,” said the boy. “Don’t worry” said the old man, “you see, they’re Mexican crabs. The others will drag him back down.”

  14. Camlost 05/21/2012 at 11:56 am

    And I bet that ALL of the bilingual waitresses are eagerly lining up to serve those Mexican diners for the HUGE tips that they will give !!

  15. red 05/21/2012 at 12:48 pm

    The same thing is happening in higher education. Previously we never had applications with names that included the special Spanish characters like é. This last year we’ve had a flood of them and they’re screwing up our IT system for handling registration. Only Spanish sounding names are being added this way, everyone else uses the English equivalent. Best we could figure it’s some new Mexican pride thing.

  16. Crank 05/21/2012 at 1:01 pm

    @blograju

    “I think Mexicans have an unusually strong linguistic identity”

    The irony, of course, is that most of these Mexicans are predominantly Amerindian, and their ancesors were forced to learn Spanish at the point of a sword by conquering Spaniards. Yet somehow learning English when coming to the US is perceived as bowing to Europeans and abandoning their “native” tongue.

  17. Trouble 05/21/2012 at 1:41 pm

    What gave it away that they were Mexican?

  18. DD 05/21/2012 at 4:15 pm

    “Mexican patrons asking for a waiter or waitress that speaks Spanish.”

    Hey, they have those kinda waiters in Mexico. It’s just across the border so they;ll have no trouble finding it.

  19. Anil Phister 05/21/2012 at 5:40 pm

    Red,

    Unicode has been around for quite awhile now. Upgrade that antique of an IT system?

  20. nick digger 05/21/2012 at 9:57 pm

    more and more over the past year…Mexican patrons asking for a waiter or waitress that speaks Spanish.
    It must be a semi-organized campaign, started by some activistas, to make companies think it’s good for business to hire mexicans.
    @Trouble: What gave it away that they were Mexican?
    They ordered refried lasagna.

  21. Pingback: Boiled Frog « Gucci Little Piggy

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: