I'm getting to be old & cranky - I got frustrated with somebody's accent

I'm usually very understanding when somebody has an accent - my wife has one, and English is her second language. I've known enough people from Pakistan & India that I am usually okay with accents from that region of the world as well.

However, I got a call about a job from a headhunter with such a heavy accent that I could barely understand anything the guy said. I had to listen to his message five times before I could even understand the phone number. Then, he's asking me about my experience, and with every sentence, I'm saying, "Excuse me?"

Finally, after he asked if he could call me back in 15-30 minutes, I said "no" because I had to get back to work.

The job description he sent to me actually sounded pretty interesting, even though it is in a different industry (I do financial reporting & accounting, but mainly in one industry, while this is for a big manufacturing company...) I might email the guy and ask him to send me his questions in an email.

But, unless the hiring manager for this job can understand him, I don't see him being very successful in promoting my candidacy to a corporation?

But, I think I'm officially turning into an old, cranky guy. Pretty soon, I'll be yelling for those damn kids to get off my lawn.

Just try to get help from a Dell computer technician over the phone!

so, that makes it worse

Can't understand a thing they say; I have to lie and tell them to speak slowly due to a bad phone connection.

:hide:

and, far worse than anybody I've known from India over the years.

I can't be the only one who recalls college students going to department heads in tears because the graduate assistant teaching a beginning course in such-and-such a subject has such a heavy accent that the students can't understand the material being taught.

And I can't be the only one who knows immigrants who missed out on good jobs because their language skills held them back. This is an issue for teachers, sales people, medical personnel, and many others.

Differences in accent help make the world go round and societies interesting, but if the listener cannot understand the speaker, oftentimes the speaker has the problem.

It was incredibly frustrating.

At a previous job we had a lab aide who just made all our reagents and did titrations with new lots of things who was difficult to understand and also had trouble understanding others. It was a shame because he wanted to work but due to the language difficulties he often wasn't doing what he was being asked to do because he didn't understand. He nodded and said 'ok' and then did something different that still wasn't correct. The company offered to send him to an English and a second language class at no cost to him but he said he didn't need it. Eventually they fired him because we were having to redo everything he did. I thought it was sad since I think he wanted to do everything right which is more than I can say for a lot of people I've worked with.