have you ever felt like a foreigner in your own home? in your own office?
i’m trying hard not to feel excluded, paranoid and irritated by the fact that two of my co-workers who share space with me spend most of their days talking to each other in their native tongue. i think my irritation stems from the fact that they both speak perfect english and i find it somewhat rude of them to hold their personal conversations not in english. it’s almost like they’re using it as a code. a way to talk about everyone without their knowledge.
yes, i’m paranoid.
the weird truth is, they could be talking about anything in english i wouldn’t even pay them any attention other than to sub-consciously acknowledge the fact their conversation is making a noise i can hear. but, because it’s being spoken in something i don’t understand, i’m nervous and offended.
no, i’m not prejudiced.
when the irritation i feel starts to offend even myself, i take a step back and try to imagine what i would do. okay… i’m in, say, montreal. i grew up speaking english, but through necessity, i’ve learned french fluently to fit into francophone society (won’t happen, can’t stand french). i meet another anglophone in the office and we become friends. are we really going to have all our conversations in french? both of us native english speakers? can we honestly be expected to do so?
no. the answer is no.
so, what i’ve got to do is get used to the sound of tagalog being spoken three feet behind me and treat it as no more than routine background conversations i have no part of (won’t happen, i’m too nosy).
I would feel the same way, I’m sure. Of course, whenever I walk into a room and someone is laughing, they’re laughing at me. Or if they look at me, of course they’re thinking I’m a loser. So, I’d probably be right – if they’re speaking in a foreign language, it’s because their language is better at describing what a waste of oxygen I am.
:)
an ex-coworker of mine because so paranoid and upset that the cleaning women spoke spanish around the office and particularly in the ladies room that she complained to the cleaning company and now they’re prohibited from speaking anything but english while at work.
now. there are a few rules to remember in life. always be nice to the cleaning people and always say hi and smile at the mail room workers.
hmm. became. not because. it’s past my bedtime!!
Reminds me of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s quote about the French: “The French are like gunpowder: Individually each is smutty and contemptible, but put them all together and they are very terrible indeed!”
A bit of rivalry there, eh what?
I think the reason you felt uncomfortable with your co-workers gabbling in their native tongue was that by doing so, they were excluding you.
What do you mean by “share space”? Are you in one large area, or do you have smaller individual cubicles? If one stops off in another’s cubicle and chatters away in Tagalog, that’s one thing. If you’re all together and they are chattering across you, that’s just rude, IMHO. Well, IMO. “Humble” is not my style!
it’s one large area. we are a cube-free workplace (dammit).