Asshole Chinese Customer Doesn’t Realize The Cashier Can Understand Chinese

My American father started teaching me German when I was a toddler. My whole life, he has stressed to me that we should never say anything in front of someone in a foreign language that we wouldn't say in their native tongue. As a college student heavily involved with international student organizations, I preached this to my international peers.

I had a college friend that spent a year in Japan. She was on the train, previously having a really bad day, and was talking in english how she was done with Japan and she wanted to go home. The gentleman who had been sitting behind her, gets up to depart, leans over, and says in English "It's really not that bad here." Fast forward a year later and she's in New York. She hears two women behind her talking in Japanese. She understands every word as they say how horrible and stupid Americans are and that New York was a filthy city. As she left the bus, she turned to them and said in Japanese "It's really not as bad as you say it is." The jaws on those women dang near hit the floor in horror of realizing she understood every word.

May this be a lesson to you, dont be an a*****e even if you think you cant be heard

My mother is Caucasian, and is fluent in Spanish. Kind of an opposite situation, but my mother heard two women complimenting her in Spainish.

"skilled enough to be bilingual and still stuck as a cashier"... Maybe they've grown up with two languages, maybe it's a hobby, maybe they studied is. Doesn't miraculously give you other skills you might need for another type of job.

I'm multilingual. I have had so much fun at other people's expense because it never occurs to them that I can understand what they're saying.

i worked in a job that had me dealing with some not-so-nice people from all ethnicities & walks of life. while we had a few different languages spoken, it was mostly english & spanish, so i learned some conversational spanish, mostly for emergency situations. i kept it under wraps unless absolutely needed, in the beginning. here i am, a middle-aged, southern white woman (complete with the southern accent) who only spoke english as far as everyone knew...until one day i walked into a room with a group of spanish speaking males. at first they got quiet, even though they were speaking their native tongue, but then decided to tell each other a few things they'd like to do to me. that was the day i decided to let them know that i understood what they were saying. you should've seen the looks on their faces when i told them "Yo escuche y comprende..." along with 'you should be ashamed of yourselves!' (havent used spanish in many years, so i forgot how to say that). word got out quickly!

How about the commenters that are judging her for being a cashier? They apparently know a lot about her just from this story.

Before my former bosses realised my actual level of English, I got plenty of useful information as they would go around carelessly speaking about me and some of my coworkers. I accidentally uncovered my skills when they heard me speaking with a client. From then on, it was all whispering, lol.

My kids took French in school and when they wanted to talk freely between themselves when their mom or I were in the room, they would pretend to be practicing their French. Then parents get divorced, Dad (me) marries again and they try this trick again. My new wife starts talking to them in French and the look of horror on their faces was priceless! In reality my wife only knows a tiny bit of French, just enough to play this trick and it worked!

I feel like this has been posted before a few months ago...

"A*****e Chinese Customer"..................................tsk tsk BP

:D the only language I am remotely fluent in other than English is Spanish (used to be fluent but didn't use it so kind of rusty, not to mention learn first latin america Spanish then Spain Spanish... the two dialects can get you confused) but my husband is fluent in Russian (his first language thought he was born in Egypt) Arabic (his second language) and English. Now some people say he looks Arabic and Other say he looks Russian so it's always funny when people are surprised when they speak Arabic or Russian and my husband understands them. the few times this has come into play the people were saying insulting things about me and my husband put them in their place.

I met a cute American guy living in Singapore, who was fluent in Malay. He told me once how some local girls were flirting with him and scheming about how to steal his expensive looking watch. After a while, he pipes up in Malay, that "they should not bother. The watch is just a cheap copy." The girls just about s**t a brick!

This happens in all countries and all languages...

Funny I bet it happens more then not. Although. Im not buying the part about the husband.

I can totally relate. I was born and grew up in Poland, unlucky enough to have olive complexion and almost black hair. You could honestly mistake me with an Indian woman. I also have a "significant" birthmark on my forehead, so I guess many people assume I am one. Not to brag, I'm quite good at languages, and as I speak English without a trace of the Polish accent, I get random foreigners, e.g. asking me for directions, as they are sure they just met someone from the West. It is always funny (still a little annoying) to hear the legendary - Your English is very nice... as for a Polish girl - when they happen to find out that I'm actually 100% Polish.

Language learning can take 500-2200 hours. Useful insights about hard languages to learn - https://www.justlearn.com/blog/hardest-languages-to-learn It can be so difficult to learn a new language like Chinese.

The odds were not in that customer's favor that day. Nagging curtailed effectively for about 10 minutes.

As a white person denigrated by people who didn't know I understood Spanish, I feel your pain.

"they're standing" :D

It was the opposite for me though. I understand Korean, but pretend not to understand while taking a cab for a short distance. Just so I can ignore the cab driver rejecting me. Then he will s**t talk all the way, not ever knowing I understand every word.

i was on a flight in the US and there was an asian guy sitting next to my boyfriend and I. All of a sudden I found out I forgot something that I left on another flight and started cursing my a*s off in Dutch (as I am Dutch) I wasnt shouting but just belting out every nasty word I could imagine for five minutes straight. At the end of the flight our Asian neighbour asked my boyfriend "are you two Dutch? I lived in Amsterdam for a few years" Aaaaahhh!!! at least I didnt say anything nasty about HIM.

"As a Finn who is fluent in grunts and sighs" uh.. is that a language?

I used to work at a bar as a waitress, and this gorgeous girl from Russia that spoke perfect English worked there too as a second job. She amused me one night when I asked her a question about something. She shook her head a bit, like she was rattling her brain, and said, "sorry, I'm trying to translate that in my head. I've been working all day as a translator." At some such Russian government thing. She was so cute shaking her head like one of those bobble head dolls.

I’m a big fan of recycling myself, but you just ran this bit 4-6 months ago, no?

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While I'm sick of these "someone said something to someone else but had been shut down", I shall aprecate the nice title. :)