THE SERVICE SPECTATOR: Language Barriers
Palmer, Mark
THE SERVICE SPECTATOR MARK PALMER Language Barriers HERE WAS AN UNFORTUNATE INCIDENT the other morning during breakfast at a smart hotel in central London. A middle-aged man asked a...
...He said he'd never been to the M4, as if it were an attraction for which you scrimp and save to visit...
...He should never have hired her—not at least until she had gained a reasonable command of English...
...Yes, please...
...The trust banked with NatWest and I needed to ask if I could now sign the checks or was there a form which needed to be filled in, and did they require a letter from the trustees...
...When I telephone, a woman answers in two rings, I ask to be put through to my manager, Mr...
...They are a small price to pay for the luxury of old-fashioned efficiency...
...Burt...
...I ask him if I have any money in my account and he gives me the bad news within 15 seconds of taking the call...
...L ) Pk,xt...
...Another reason you don't get any service is that people don't serve each other at home...
...We've lost our class and now we've lost our touch...
...Good service is efficient service...
...With which the man erupted, throwing down his knife and fork, spilling his coffee, and shouting loudly: "Look, for f***'s sake I want some English mustard...
...We suffer from collective gormlessness...
...When I told her that it was a motorway she pointed in the wrong direction and said, "I think it's over there...
...When, clearly, we are not...
...He was telling me how more and more restaurants in the West End ask customers to "please wait to be seated" just as they do in America, but the big difference is that you can wait 20 minutes before anyone notices that you've walked through the door...
...What you meaning...
...Now, I don't know if this touches in any way on the immigration issue that politicians tried to get so exercised about during the election, but I do know that it is becoming increasingly difficult to make oneself understood in Britain in general and in hotels and restaurants in particular...
...And we have become one of the least efficient countries in the Western world...
...But we certainly didn't feel sorry for Rowley Leigh, who is in charge at Kensington Place...
...and I used to complain about the extraordinarily high bank charges...
...He's normally good on these things...
...We also stacked the plates and cleared up afterwards...
...Forgive me, but I believe I would be a brilliant waiter and would need little training because my parents insisted that either my brother or I laid the table every single lunch and dinner of our lives...
...81• Article and cartoon reproduced by permission of The Spectator magazine...
...call BT to query a telephone bill and you should allow 20 minutes just to navigate the "menu of services...
...What you meaning...
...I was unable to speak to a human being for an entire morning and then, when I did, the person I reached had no idea what I was talking about...
...she said...
...Gat4ost Rets.9 No-tort grOura...
...When my brother was admitted to hospital shortly after that breakfast without any English mustard, I rang to speak to him and was greeted by a number of press-button options...
...When I eventually found an operator I asked if in future there was some way I could circumnavigate the automated system...
...The service is likely to be just as slapdash, just as incoherent, just as infuriating...
...And off she went...
...Still or sparkling...
...Just press one followed by hash a second time and you should get through...
...Can't you understand a word I am saying...
...Let's ask Dean in the kitchen," she said...
...Could we have a jug of tap water with ice and lemon please," I said, and might just as well have asked for her hand in marriage...
...Presumably, some come because they still imagine we know how to do things, that we are a sophisticated country, that we are reasonably competent...
...64 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2005 MARK PALMER But even when hotel and restaurant staff can speak the language, things don't necessarily work any better...
...THE SERVICE SPECTATOR MARK PALMER Language Barriers r 111 HERE WAS AN UNFORTUNATE INCIDENT the other morning during breakfast at a smart hotel in central London...
...asked the South African receptionist...
...E-n-g-l-i-s-h m-u-s-t-a-r-d...
...A middle-aged man asked a waitress for some English mustard to accompany his bacon and sausages...
...What is that...
...Mustor-cheese...
...she said in a barely audible voice...
...May I have some English mustard, please," said the man...
...After all, people don't come to Britain because it's cheap or clean or sunny...
...ob5Cv‘ OR -V \I ! JULY/AUGUST 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 65...
...Perhaps someone else might know," I said...
...Some English mustard...
...Good luck...
...He moves all over the world on the lecture circuit and now regards Britain as "clueless...
...ring one of the new directory inquiries numbers and you have to spell out the simplest of addresses...
...We know how to pour wine and knew which wines went into which glasses...
...Sorry, no understandy...
...It just doesn't come naturally to fetch and carry...
...My own bank is C. Hoare & Co...
...Certainly there is no need for tourists to pack a phrase book, since most of the people they will meet—waiters, barmen, hotel receptionists, prostitutes, TV reporters—will speak worse English than they do...
...Oh, yes," she said...
...Don't worry...
...In a trendy bar in Henley-on-Thames, I ordered a cosmopolitan for a friend and found the barman leafing through a cocktails manual with growing desperation...
...More to the point, "service," in the strict meaning of the word, is something this country has almost forgotten how to deliver...
...Dean, an Australian, was not at all good...
...He said something about making contact with hissupervisor and ended the conversation by saying: "Is there anything else I can help you with today...
...Burt recognizes my voice...
...Staying a night at a hotel in Tetbury last April, I asked for directions to the M4...
...A voice will tell you that you have performed an incorrect function...
...After my mother died last summer, I had the task of sorting out a charitable trust that she and my father had set up many years ago...
...I was meeting my brother to discuss a number of family matters before he went into the hospital, but we ended up talking mainly about the dramatic decline in service in almost everyaspect of modern life...
...As it happens, the middle-aged man at breakfast that morning was me...
...A leading scientist friend of mine from Canada has been staying for a few days...
...The language barrier is a factor...
...We concluded that it doesn't much matter whether you are in a Pizza Hut or a flash five-star restaurant...
...Press one followed by hash...
...You have, but in a way you haven't...
...It has become a luxury...
...It's all very well for "Visit Britain" to claim that this is the ultimate destination for discerning travelers, but it won't be long before they go elsewhere...
...The puzzlement on her face was such that we felt sorry to have ruined her afternoon...
...Not anymore...
...During lunch with a friend at fashionable Kensington Place, west London, recently, we were asked by a pleasing-looking waitress from a hot country if we wanted water...
...It can't be too much to ask...
Vol. 38 • July 2005 • No. 6
