Believe it or Not

I had been trying to get on line for the past 2 hours tonight. The connection was temperamental and I had half the mind to change the provider once the contract was up. I called the customer service. The first choice I had to make was select a language. I chose Chinese. Then I had to do the usual drill of punching in a whole set of numbers and listen to millions of choices before I could reach a real human.

After waiting for an eternity, a human voice came on line.
She said, "Thanks for calling, but our lines are all busy right now, could you leave your number? A representative would call you shortly."
I was pissed but I politely asked her how "shortly" that would be. It was 10:30pm and she replied, "By 11:30pm..."
I told her that I am working and I needed to get online and an hour was too long.
To which she replied, "I'll mark urgent along with your phone number. Thank you and goodbye."

Jeez, I do pay for the broadband service, what kind of attitude is this? So, I called and punched in the numbers again. This time, I chose English as the selected language. After another eternity, guess what? A human answered and he was ready to help with his broken English.

Since I am blogging now, the connection is fixed, but what I wanted to point out is that you do get better service when you speak English. Yes, it's post colonial, but English is still more respected. When you choose English as the selected language, the representatives are more polite to you and they try to fix your problems. This is no joke.

So when I walk into stores or talk on the phone, I speak English. I tell them I don't understand a word of Chinese. Guess what, they bend over backwards to get me what I want. Post 97 or not, English is still the dominant language!! Believe it or not!!