Sunday, October 4, 2015

Press 'One' for English

I saw one of my FB friends post a meme questioning 'why they have to press one for English' in America. I have the following reply for them:

Two things, first we have tourism from Latin America, and businesses want to accommodate tourists who may not have a full command of English. I've used ATMs in foreign countries, including France and Israel, where I could do so in spite of not speaking the language, because they had English language options on the machines.

The second thing is that we have legal immigrants who may be learning English, but still do not have the command of it that native Americans do. Corporations want the business of those immigrants and want to provide the best customer service to ALL their customers. That means providing an option for instructions in other languages, and if the person has to be connected to a customer service operator, letting them speak with someone fluent in their language. It's called good business for those companies.

Beyond which, if the worst thing in your life is having to press "one" for English, then you have a damned easy life. Just saying.

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