Can’t Anyone Here Speak English?
Barbara and I had gone to the Sawgrass Mall to look for some birthday presents.
We found what we were looking for and decided to have lunch at the mall. We walked to the food court and decided to have Nathan’s HotDogs for lunch.
Now I know that according to some research, each hotdog eaten lessens your life span by 35 minutes but we thought we would give it a shot. A good Nathan’s HotDog seemed worth it.
Barbara sat at a table and I approached the counter to order.
I was the only customer and there were two people there to take my order, a young man in his 20’s and a young girl who seemed younger than the man.
I noticed that the menu had changed since I had been there last. They had added several chicken and hamburger choices and less hot dog choices.
“That new menu is sacrilegious,” I stated.
The two people looked at me blankly.
“You’re Nathan’s, not Burger King or Wendy’s,” I said.
Again, no reaction from the two people.
“I mean, that you only should be selling Hotdogs at Nathans, its traditional,” I said, trying to explain.
“Oh,” the young man said, with a smile. Still no reaction from the young woman.
I decided to forgo any banter and just place my order.
“I would like two combos with two hotdogs in each combo please,” I said.
The girl continued to look at me blankly.
The young man replied to my order with “so you want 4 combo’s?”
“No, I want two combos with two hot dogs in each,” I reiterated.
“So, you want four combos?” he asked.
This went on for a few minutes. We established, or I thought we established, that I wanted two combos with 2 hotdogs in each. The girl still had not said anything and the young man seemed unsure of his understanding of what I wanted. He stated his English was not too good. He went to the grill to make the order.
The girl then keyed in the order and pointed to the credit card machine where the amount was displayed. The amount looked about right and I took out my credit card to use. I got my receipt and looked it over. It said two combos with one hotdog each.
“Wait a minute, this is wrong. I want two combos with two hotdogs each,” I said.
“No habla ingles” the girl said.
“What????” I asked.
She motioned for the young man to come back.
Again we went over the order I wanted. This resulted in the girl setting up a new charge of 2 additional combos.
“I’m not paying this,” I said, “this is wrong”.
The two counter people conferred with each other and the young man went in the back. He came out with an older women.
“What seems to be problem,” she asked?
“I want two combos with two hot dogs each. They seem to want me to buy 4 combo’s. I have bought combos like that in the past. They can’t seem to get it right,” I stated.
She thought this over and said, “we don’t make the combos that way any more, you will have to pay for two additional hotdogs”.
I was amazed they had discontinued the two hotdog combos but agreed to pay and they charged me an additional 8 dollars, after the older woman explained what was required in Spanish to the young girl, bringing my total to $28. I stepped to the side to await my order and fill up some ketchup cups for the french fries.
The girl then said “Drink?”
“Yes, its included with the combos,” I said.
She pointed to the soda fountain and made a “which one gesture”
“I’ll take two regular cokes,” I said.
“Coca Cola, Regular?”, she asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
The girl grabbed two enormous cups, the kind Mayor Bloomberg tried to ban in New York City, and filled them for me. I asked for a tray, but got no response.
Meanwhile the young man at the grill asked if I wanted sauerkraut and would I like the french fries in a box.
“Sure,” I said.
Meanwhile, Barbara is staring at me and getting mad. She’s sure I’m wasting time kibbitzing with the counter people and delaying getting my order. I see I have no chance of getting a tray so I motion Barbara to come over to help me with the drinks.
Barbara comes over and asks me what I am doing. I tell her I will explain to her when we get back to the table with the order. She takes the drinks and goes back to the table.
I wait for the rest of the order. Finally I am given the order. I have to ask for mustard and napkins. As I leave for the table, I see a man about my age trying to order two combo’s with two hotdogs each. I resist the urge to tell him its hopeless and go to the table without speaking.
I get to the table and proceed to tell Barbara that the people at the counter do not speak English and don’t understand what I was trying to order.
The lady at the next table looks our way and says “Oh my God. My husband is over there trying to order and I can see he’s arguing with them. Did you say they don’t speak English?”
“Yeah, they don’t understand,” I reply.
The lady looks amazed and watches her husband gesturing and arguing with the counter people. We start talking about Nathan’s we have been to and find we’ve been to the same ones in New York. While we are talking she keeps looking apprehensively at her husband, arguing and gesturing at the counter.
After a while he finally comes over with his order. He sits down and he looks at his bill and swears. He then gets up and returns to the counter. After some arguing he returns.
“What happened?”, the wife asks.
“They charged me too much. First they wanted to charge me $40. Then they lowered the charge after I pointed out I didn’t want four combos. Now, they overcharged me by $5.25. I showed them how much it should have been and they said they would give me the difference in cash. They then gave me $5.22 instead of the agreed upon $5.25 That girl is clueless,” he said shaking his head.
Meanwhile we had spread out our food and the other couple unpacked theirs.
It was clear we had differences in the orders we had been given. Our drinks were 24 oz’s, theirs was 12oz’s. Our fries were in a boxes and had twice the amount of their fries which were in little bags.
We start to commiserate with each other.
We all were amazed that Nathan’s would hire people with so little knowledge of English. Hiring bilingual employees is smart business, but to hire people who only speak Spanish and put them out front seems ridiculous, and bad business. It’s true that a lot of Spanish speaking people come to the mall, but not the majority. What was that manager or owner thinking?
To make matters worse, the hotdogs and whole fuss with ordering, didn’t seem to be worth the 35 minutes lost.
