Ugly Americans

[stdesjardins]

The U.S. has customs agents at the Montreal airport, so you pass through customs there instead of at your destination. The agent who examined my passport clearly had no idea how to say my name, and when I said I was surprised at that, he asked "Why?" I responded with something like, "Because this is a French-speaking community," and his response was along the lines of, "I work for the United States government. We don't have to speak French."

Which is such a weird response I have trouble wrapping my brain around it. Yes, I understand that the U.S. government will not necessarily require employees who work in Montreal to speak French (although I think they should give strong hiring preference to people who do speak at least a bit of French), but I can't understand how anyone could live in a French-speaking community and not at least learn how to pronounce people's names. And I'm just astonished that anyone could be surprised that someone might expect that of them.

The gate agents, of course, had no trouble with my name, and when I asked them about the customs agent, how I was surprised that he was surprised that I was surprised he couldn't pronounce my name, was that typical, they just rolled their eyes and said it was. Evidently the impression U.S. employees in Montreal give is that for the most part they have their own little English-speaking ghetto, they send their kids to English-only schools, and just never venture outside their tiny little bubble.

Which sucks. Because their job is to serve Canadians traveling to the U.S., not just Americans coming home, and to make so little effort to be courteous is inexcusable—when combined with the fact that they're explicitly unapologetic, it amounts to willful rudeness. And I'm patriotic enough to be ashamed that anyone representing my country feels entitled to be rude to people just because they're not American.

Comments

[janetmk.livejournal.com]

Whenever I'm in Montreal I see your name writ big all over the place. It's a bank with many branches.

Having custom agents in Montreal with some facility in French just makes sense.

Names, etc.

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

This is a good solid reasonable post. I do note, though, that for a long time there has been a solid English language community in Montreal, many of them Jewish; Leonard Cohen was/is one of them. But then -- how do they get by without being able to interact with the French-speaking neighbors? I am adding little of import to this discourse, so will close.

Nate

Re: Names, etc.

[stevendj.livejournal.com]

I got the impression from the gate agents that the federal employees were living not just in an English-speaking part of Montreal (which would be reasonable), but in a deliberately separate, Francophobic community. I'm sure most native-English Montreal residents pick up at least a smattering of French, and don't have contempt for even the idea of learning it, like this guy did.

Re: Names, etc.

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

I think Cohen does speak French - or at least, he sings it well enough to give the impression that he understands it.

I don't speak any Slav language, but if I was stationed in Poland it wouldn't take me forever to learn to pronounce the names. And although French isn't the most phonetic language on the planet, its rules of pronounciation are pretty consistent, unlike other languages we could speak of, cough cough, hint hint. ;-)

[dr-brat.livejournal.com]

In my experience, this attitude is also typical of the Americans working in Vienna, Brussels, and Warsaw. I assume it's typical of Americans everywhere, but perhaps I extrapolate too broadly.

[andyhat.livejournal.com]

I think you must have been just in front of me in line. When I got up to the agent, he asked me if I knew who he was, and when I responded "US customs?", he complained about how the person in front of me had thought he was Canadian or something rather than an American on assignment there. I thought it was rather strange, but I kept my mouth shut, since I wanted to get home.

[stevendj.livejournal.com]

It just goes to show that science fiction fans can't necessarily communicate well with alien life forms.