English Only

I know that we talked about this in class but I just want to retouch of the subject of the speaking only English in the work place policy, with a little of a story about one particular day at work. Like I said in class I work for Disney in the entertainment department, on this one particular day I was going to be in a costume where I wasn’t allowed to talk while I was on set having meet and greets with guests, which is a pretty difficult thing to do, and also on this day I discovered on my van ride to my set location that I was the only person who spoke English as a first language, however everyone did speak English. The entire van ride to my set everyone spoke Spanish, while my attendant was helping me into my costume she spoke Spanish with other cast members, when I got on set I wasn’t allowed to talk, when my attendant was helping me out of my costume she spoke in Spanish, during my break everyone spoke in Spanish. This made for the most boring day at work, I wasn’t able to talk to anyone all day because I never knew what was going on in a conversation to participate in one, and no one was ever speaking in English, even though they all spoke very well English. At my lunch break I was able to talk to Erik for moment, who had been speaking Spanish all morning, and I asked him why if everyone spoke fluent English why were they speaking in Spanish all day, he said that it was so that they could talk about other people and if their manager walked in they could continue to talk about them because our manager didn’t know Spanish, and neither did the people were talk about. This made complete sense to me but also made me really uncomfortable being in the break room for the rest of the day.
So I guess in the idea of the speaking English only policy is common courtesy, if you speak English fluently you should speak that at work. I understand speaking in Spanish if that is you primary language and if you don’t speak English that well, but in this case everyone spoke fluent English very well and just chose to speak Spanish in order to get away with trash talking people in the work place, which is not nice at all, it makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable. Also you never know when someone can understand the language you are speaking in and you just never know it, people can get into some serious trouble that way. I just think it is really impolite to openly trash talk someone in a foreign language just because they think that person can’t understand them, I wouldn’t go into a room of Spanish speaking only people with my friend and openly trash talk them just because they didn’t speak English, its not polite. Its just common courtesy to speak English at an English speaking job.


Emily Suchyta