I can already feel people getting ready to swipe their cards on this one, BUT probably best if I clarify:

about a year and a half ago, a friend came over from New York, and spent the day with me in Kent. They went off to do a bit of shopping while I had a pint with a couple other friends, and when they came back, said this (or something like this):

"You know what's weird about this place? In NY, we have a large Mexican population, and therefore a large Mexican workforce in the city. But when it comes to customer facing roles - be it cornershops, waiters, barmen etc - you'll only ever find Mexicans in those positions if they're pretty fluent English speakers. It's not a legal requirement, it's just how it is.

"Here, I've just had to explain three times to someone working in your supermarket that I wanted to put 10 pounds on a card and pay the rest by cash, and even then he needed to call his manager to further explain what I was saying because he only spoke very sparse English."

And he ranted about that for a fair while, and pointed out you'd never see, say, an English student who couldn't speak a word of - or only very minimal amounts of - French working in a French pub.

And I thought 'hmm, interesting'. I'd not ever come across that situation before here - accents can be hard to understand, sure, but I've never had that level of language barrier while I've been shopping/drinking/whatever. So maybe he was just unlucky.

But have you experienced it? And do you think that it's better for a shop/business to employ people who speak the country's native language, or the language that's most common within a region/area/community of a city, assuming that multi-lingual people aren't available for hire?

Idk. tl;dr.

BUT I want to know your thoughts. ARE YOU RACIST? You seem it.