by Englishero / Englishera. I don’t know why but every time I hear someone speaking in English in the most unlikely places, and in the most unexpected times, I cringe. And I cringe and twitch when I get an affirmation that THAT someone works in a call center. I mean, I have nothing against call center people. God, I got tons of friends who work in call centers. The only difference, maybe, is that these friends know when and when not to speak in English. Well, at least most of them do.
I was in Ayala once and I saw this dude with an ID tag of one call center. From his conversation with a Metro Ayala guard, I found out that he wanted to leave his bag so that he could pee or something. The guard suggested that there was a package counter near the grocery section. The guy suddenly commenced an all-English world-lashing. The poor guard just blinked a couple of times.
Guy: “The customer is always right. How dare you say no to the very person who pays for the clothes that you are wearing now? You might as well know right now that we, as customers, have unwritten privileges. Think about that. ” Then he walked away.
I knew what he wanted the guard to remember – Never mess with a good English speaker!
Pfftt! He was just trying too hard to appear ‘deep’ and intellectually capable. I wager that he isn’t.
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I was ‘trapped’ one fateful day when I had to spend four hours on that van with a bunch of noisy and rowdy call-center people. The group was so noisy that, I almost, ALMOST, wasn’t able to restrain myself from looking for a transparent tape to shut the holes on their faces.
It seemed to me that that group was celebrating the fact that one of them lived in Colorado for like thirteen years. Yehey! Like we care! They should have rented out a van or something so that they could speak all the English that they want. Every time the dude next to me delivered his punchlines in broken English, I would turn to my right just in time to see the old lady sitting beside me, roll her eyes. Ahak sa Englishero!
Honestly, I don’t know if they do this to ‘practice’ or just because they use English at home or in any social intercourse. I really have no idea.
Yeah, yeah, I don’t speak and write good English. That’s fine. You can probably find hundreds of grammatical errors in this post. But to tell you, speaking in English even if it’s uncalled for DOESN’T MAKE YOU COOL!!!! I’m not saying DONT DO IT. Just wanted to say nga kung dili kinahanglan, pagbisaya na lang oi! Grabe ka Englishero / Englishera!
Girl one: Are we there yet?
Me: (The van’s still moving! Duh!)
Guy one: No. But we’re still in Alcantara. Dudes, look here. Count the lamp posts on the roadside. That should be 137 or 152 by the time we reach another municipality. That’s how small this place is.
Me: (Duh! Like we don’t already know!)
And besides, there were only 105 lamp posts! I was counting. What a twat!
