Language is the greatest barrier of humankind!
For lunch today I visited nearby McD since they have promotion SGD 4.50 meal package for lunch time between 12 and 2 at noon. My transaction went smoothly since I noted that my cashier is either Malayan or Indonesian so I used English. But the auntie behind me was not having the same experience. She just fired barrage of sentences in Mandarin: 两个冰淇淋，一杯牛奶. Actually I understood that the auntie just want two ice cream and one glass of milk. But it was sooo fun to see the face of the cashier. He wanted to change the language by saying "Sorry?", but again the auntie just repeated the same sentence. Realised that the conversation was going nowhere, the cashier just called his manager and everything went well since his manager was also an auntie.
The morale of the story is, if you can't speak mandarin, don't work at Chinatown (or just slowly learn). But I also understand that you will have limited workplaces choices to be choosed from. Especially when you are working in service sector.
I also take part time job as a service crew for a..well..quite popular Japanese restaurant (it even have branches in Indonesia). I put the location into consideration very carefully, and luckily I am being placed at heart of the city. The nearest MRT station bears the name "City****". So basically most of the patrons are office people and highly educated one.
In my workplace the situation is reversed. The manager and assistant manager can't speak mandarin (since both are Filipinos), but the crews can speak mandarin. Actually mandarin is spoken as official language between crews. Luckily I can survive the situation, even remembering simple remarks such as 几号(what number, usually referring to table number)，牛肉(beef meat)，鸡肉(chicken meat) can be very useful.
Most of the customers are English speaking people (or bilingual one). Surprisingly Indonesian speaking customers are on the second place and Mandarin only speaking people are on the third. I usually don't break the ice and speak Indonesian, but it was required one time with a mother and two childs. The mother was having difficulties, so yeah.... let's just speak in Indonesian. Switching modes is not easy especially when you can't use "natural" terms such as "lu" and "gua" and have to use "saya". Even hearing customers conversation in formal Indonesian is making my head want to crack open.
My first crew meeting was conducted in English. When the manager explained the plate must bla bla bla... the saucer must bla bla bla... Suddenly I heard "怎么写？(how to write)", and the other answer was "我不知道。(I don't know)". And after a moment I peeked at the note she made, and OMG! She didn't know how to write "SAUCER". She just drew the saucer on the note! So all these times, most of the crews just understand verbal English and not the written one.
Once i dispatched to other branch in heartland of Singapore, and the situation was even worse. Sooo many mandarin speaking people. The usage of hybrid language was more often such as : "Come, 来(both words have the same meaning, it is a redudancy)", "我的 order 还没有来(My order haven't come)".
Moreover with the language crash incident, I find out how Singaporeans speak Hokkian is so different than Medan people. Hokkian to mandarin is more likely the same for example: Javanese language to Indonesian language (one is tribal language and one is national language). In Indonesia, Hokkian is widely use by Chinese people from Medan (and later on spread islandwide on Sumatera island, except for Palembang which is still use mandarin), and the same for Tio Chew which is widely use by Chinese people from Pontianak (and later on spread islandwide on Kalimantan island).
But how Indonesian speaks them is so different. Since we speak Indonesian language too, I can see that our pronounciation for each word is clearer. For Singaporean, since most of the Hokkian, Tio Chew, bla bla bla speaking people's background is mandarin, they speak like a train. All the way.. all the way to the end! Blah! Sometimes what I can hear is just wailing and screaming.
And *sigh* since I work in Japanese restaurant, I have also to map some basic Japanese word. Such as gyu=beef, tori=chicken, ika=squid, hamachi=yellow tail, and so on. Fyuuh... my fourth language?
Have to learn much much more.... and yes, better if we can speak even in simplest form, than if we can't do it at all.
