Service Staff Who Can Only Speak Chinese
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Originally posted by rainee:
The problem here is not bilingual people. It is about people who stubbornly want to hold on to just speaking Chinese, and nothing else.
try talking dialect to them. they will most definitely back off.
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Originally posted by skythewood:
if the prc is working as a helper in a hawker centre, than Malay, Indian, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, American, British, Australian, Filippino customers (and so on) will not be their target customer range.
if he is suppose to work as a customer service in let's say orchard, than the employer is not very smart to employ them.
How do you know these are not the target customers? Most visitors do visit hawker centres nowadays, and hawker centres are marketed as one of the tourist attraction in Singapore as well.
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Originally posted by rainee:
How do you know these are not the target customers? Most visitors do visit hawker centres nowadays, and hawker centres are marketed as one of the tourist attraction in Singapore as well.
if you tell me lau pat sat in raffles place got alot of customers that speak english, i agree with you. if you tell me the hawker stall near my HDB is visited by alot of tourist, i don't think so. -
Originally posted by rainee:
Does it hurt them to learn it on their own? It all boils down to their determination. It never hurt to learn more languages and English is a very important language to learn if you want to continue working here and remain in the front line business.
Many of them have this attitude of thinking that the customer has to adapt to them. It is not helped by ignorant employers who could not care less.
We can let the market decide, or we can shift the game by not pandering to their laziness. This is Singapore. This is not China.
To be fair, some of our foreign workers are willing to pick up English because they are smart enough to understand that this place is multiracial. The way I see it, if you're an employee in a foreign land, it's better learn the language of your workplace, and not expect the people you serve to learn yours.
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Originally posted by skythewood:
if you tell me lau pat sat in raffles place got alot of customers that speak english, i agree with you. if you tell me the hawker stall near my HDB is visited by alot of tourist, i don't think so.It still doesn't hurt to learn basic phrases as they still have to attend to customers from all races.
I think it is because we are all too lenient on them. It should be a requirement that they know a certain level of English before being allowed into the service industry. But we keep making excuses for them, because they are cheap, they are uneducated, etc so they can be forgiven for not learning the universal language: English.
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Originally posted by LazerLordz:
Many of them have this attitude of thinking that the customer has to adapt to them. It is not helped by ignorant employers who could not care less.
We can let the market decide, or we can shift the game by not pandering to their laziness. This is Singapore. This is not China.
To be fair, some of our foreign workers are willing to pick up English because they are smart enough to understand that this place is multiracial. The way I see it, if you're an employee in a foreign land, it's better learn the language of your workplace, and not expect the people you serve to learn yours.
if they are like construction site workers, let them be. but if they work in the service sector and can't speak english, the employer either has a very unique business plan or is just plain stupid.
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Originally posted by skythewood:
if they are like construction site workers, let them be. but if they work in the service sector and can't speak english, the employer either has a very unique business plan or is just plain stupid.
Precisely. I am talking about employees in the service industry.
Hell, I see lots of stupid shopowners these days. Not sure if they'll even last a WY with their people management skills.
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Originally posted by rainee:
It still doesn't hurt to learn basic phrases as they still have to attend to customers from all races.
I think it is because we are all too lenient on them. It should be a requirement that they know a certain level of English before being allowed into the service industry. But we keep making excuses for them, because they are cheap, they are uneducated, etc so they can be forgiven for not learning the universal language: English.
the UN employs lots and lots of translators because they don't agree that english is the universal language. i think they are just stubborn, english is definitely the most used language out there. the guy running the business is the one to decide on who to hire. we call it freedom to run any business as long as it is not illegal. who knows, maybe some MP will hear your plight and enforce 3 day language course for all new PRC workers. -
I wonder if such employers realise that they're wasting money, hiring deadweights who have to get their colleagues to do their work.
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Originally posted by Kuali Baba:
I wonder if such employers realise that they're wasting money, hiring deadweights who have to get their colleagues to do their work.
We'll let them find out the hard way. ;)
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Don't play play.
These are the people the incumbent party wants as new citizens so that there can be "more good years" .
No, not for Singaporeans.
For the party.
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Originally posted by Kuali Baba:
I wonder if such employers realise that they're wasting money, hiring deadweights who have to get their colleagues to do their work.
maybe instead of being stupid, they have unique business plan.
for example, the bak chor mee uncle realised that no malay eat his food because it is not halal, and no indian frequents his stall. all his customers talk to him in chinese, so he thought, hey, a PRC can do this, and so PRC happens.
of course, once in a blue moon some indian or chinese people who can't speak mandarin comes along, and they lose that business. but the boss calculate and finds that the cheap labour offsets the lost in profits.
and than, some guy from orchard road hears of this success story and try it out in his orchard road shop, and shit happens.
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Originally posted by charlize:
Don't play play.
These are the people the incumbent party wants as new citizens so that there can be "more good years" .
No, not for Singaporeans.
For the party.
Parties can get crashed.
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Wow, still yakking away about it ha. Many of us do feel we are in china now. Expect more in the years to come given this PAP policy of boosting the economy by importing chinamen.
Maybe next time we cant order Bak Chor Mee by saying Bak Chor Mee anymore. We have to say Rou Cuo Mian. Nabei.
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Originally posted by skythewood:
maybe instead of being stupid, they have unique business plan.
for example, the bak chor mee uncle realised that no malay eat his food because it is not halal, and no indian frequents his stall. all his customers talk to him in chinese, so he thought, hey, a PRC can do this, and so PRC happens.
of course, once in a blue moon some indian or chinese people who can't speak mandarin comes along, and they lose that business. but the boss calculate and finds that the cheap labour offsets the lost in profits.
and than, some guy from orchard road hears of this success story and try it out in his orchard road shop, and shit happens.
Well, I certainly want to know what SBS and SMRT's "big plan" is, because they're foisting monolingual Chinese bus drivers on the general population and tourists!
A couple of Indonesians boarded the same bus as me the other day, and they wanted to know if it stopped at Coronation Plaza. It didn't register with the driver, even though it was along the route!
So much for calling drivers "service leaders".
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i went to kopitiam and order teh peng, kopi peng, kopi siu dai, kopi o kosong and surprisingly the china chinese lady understand
at first i was a bit surprised
but then i felt it was �所当然 bcos she is working in a kopitiam
the kopi uncle and aunties taught her well
this is wat we can clap for
those RESTORANS and other service providers are not on par -
Originally posted by Kuali Baba:
Well, I certainly want to know what SBS and SMRT's "big plan" is, because they're foisting monolingual Chinese bus drivers on the general population and tourists!
A couple of Indonesians boarded the same bus as me the other day, and they wanted to know if it stopped at Coronation Plaza. It didn't register with the driver, even though it was along the route!
So much for calling drivers "service leaders".
SBS is only concern about 2 things with regards to driver.
they can go along the route and stop as needed. they can ensure everyone pays.
maybe they should just sticker the bus route outside the bus or something.
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Originally posted by FireIce:
i went to kopitiam and order teh peng, kopi peng, kopi siu dai, kopi o kosong and surprisingly the china chinese lady understand
at first i was a bit surprised
but then i felt it was �所当然 bcos she is working in a kopitiam
the kopi uncle and aunties taught her well
this is wat we can clap for
those RESTORANS and other service providers are not on par
Thats the way it shd be, instead of saying nai cha, cha bu yao fang nai etc. Irritates the shit of out sgporeans. -
入乡就得�俗
but how many employers bother about teaching and getting the staff into 状况 to serve singaporeans and visitors?
and how many of these foreign workers are willing and able to learn our culture in such a short time?
to them, they oni think abt the $$
the $ to hire 1 SGrean = x number of imports
and can push the imports to work for lower $, longer hours
so wu hua
cannot work, not happy, change another one
now is so easy to get these ppl -
why not put them in a basic english course? it will benefit them.
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english course shd be attended and passed BEFORE they come here
as a pre-requisite when they apply for jobs here
not come here then scramble to pick up english
and it's not just english
it's the whole SG culture they need to understand -
Originally posted by sbs8104h:
why not put them in a basic english course? it will benefit them.
who pay? the gah'men? -
Originally posted by FireIce:
入乡就得�俗
but how many employers bother about teaching and getting the staff into 状况 to serve singaporeans and visitors?
and how many of these foreign workers are willing and able to learn our culture in such a short time?
to them, they oni think abt the $$
the $ to hire 1 SGrean = x number of imports
and can push the imports to work for lower $, longer hours
so wu hua
cannot work, not happy, change another one
now is so easy to get these pplIf the employers won't teach, the market will do so. Fair game for all.
Some fast learners have picked up things like Singlish phrases for drinks and food because they realise it is to their advantage to learn, and be able to work better and perhaps be more productive, hence earn more.
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Originally posted by skythewood:
who pay? the gah'men?Hell, yes. What's SDF for? Pai swee?
It should be made applicable for basic language courses like ESL and whatnot.
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Originally posted by skythewood:
SBS is only concern about 2 things with regards to driver.
they can go along the route and stop as needed. they can ensure everyone pays.
maybe they should just sticker the bus route outside the bus or something.
That's the basics, but they are also ambassadors and not just drivers. tIt adds no value who they can't do what local bus drivers can do, such as telling tourists where to alight (and go after that), which services to switch to and so on.
Some of them can't even do the basics - what the blazes are they doing in the first lane when they're not going to make a right turn?