Had an analogous situation in the UK with a patient who didn’t want “the Paki doctor” treating him. This culminated in the whole medical team going into the patient’s room during a ward round and the Consultant pointing out how many of the doctors on staff were from South Asia and that the patient was more than welcome to discharge himself home if he didn’t like it …
We had more sympathy for the WWII ex-POW who’d been imprisoned by the Japanese. He had PTSD flashbacks whenever he saw an East Asian face after dark. Bit hard on the Filipino night nurses who got shuffled around, though …
Es verdad que mucha de la gente que no estan latino y vivir en California habla o entienda un poquito de espanol. Or at least enough that our slanty eyes or white skins or whatever can ask for something in a store or get native speakers to cringe at our horrible grammar and vocabulary.
One of my additional duties when I was in the army in the late 90s was to be on the funeral detail. We covered a pretty large territory of North Alabama, and like most military details, there were people of all races/colors/ethnicities on our team. Our NCO happened to be an older white man. One day, after a service that was pretty far out in the woods, he told us a storythat had happened with him a few years earlier:
They were doing a graveside service at a cemetery in the middle of Westbubbafuck and when they removed the coffin from the hearse and approached the tent, one of the family members pulled him aside to complain.
Turns out that they didn’t want any black/brown people carrying the casket. Not her of course, she didn’t mind too much, but she had some family members who might not like it, so could just the white soldiers carry the casket?
He told her that he understood completely and definitely respected her wishes. He turned around, had the detail set the casket down on the ground right where they were standing, about-faced them, loaded everyone back in the van and left.
That’s how you handle that brand of bullshit. You don’t want one of us there, you don’t want any of us there .
My first reaction would be to tell the customer that it isn’t possible to change the delivery person for them.
THEN, I’d call the delivery guy and say, “Hey, we have a racist asshole at your next stop. If you think you can handle it, make the delivery. However, if you want to bring it back, I’ll take it back out at the end of the day.”
No one should have to deal with assholes like that.
I used to work in a hospital and this was a feature, not a bug, of having multi-lingual doctors. They could discuss patient information in front of me, the IT guy, without worrying about HIPAA violations.
She’s got a right to allow/exclude whoever she wants on her own property. The store’s response should have been to say “I’m sorry we can’t accommodate that request. We can have our driver leave it at the curb or we can issue a refund.” Then put her on the “no deliveries” list.
I just consider it basic manners. It is rude to ignore someone that you are having a tangental interaction with.
When having a conversation in the presence of someone else, the polite thing to do is to acknowledge them- either by inviting them into the conversation, or simply by politely articulating that it is in fact a private conversation. Speaking in another language excludes them by default- Which isn’t a problem in itself, as long as again, the excluded person isn’t being ignored.
It’s like the difference between quickly saying “thank you” to a waiter, versus just ignoring them and continuing to talk to your dinner companions as they bring you another round of drinks.
Yes, I am literally drawing the line at whether someone says “excuse us for a moment” before having a conversation the other person can’t understand.
=====
Wow. That was a really long response to a really short comment. I’m overthinking things tonight.
Makes sense in a lot of cases. The ones that bug me occur in public, like on a bus. Do you also think speakers of another language have that polite obligation to others (strangers) around them?
ETA: What bugs me is those who get pissy when others are speaking to each other in English.
It could also be rude to expect a couple of guys dragging a piano up the stairs to limit their verbal communication so they don’t make the client feel excluded.
You’re not ignoring them if you’re talking about them.
There’s a big difference between two guys standing around in front of you in your kitchen having an animated conversation over lemonade without acknowledging you (rude) and those same guys communicating with each other while carrying furniture through your house (little to your left, okay, no, stop, I think we gotta tilt it towards me…)
