I think it makes sense to have a common language among all of the staff that is spoken whenever business is being discussed, in meetings and things like that.

I think that policing private conversations is kind of weird. I don’t know why they would do that.

I could see this becoming necessary. In Amsterdam and other European tech hubs it’s common to have English-speaking offices, so it’d be bad for team cohesion to have the native speakers form a clique in the lunch room.

I don’t understand how white people in settler colonies can force the people there to speak their language and follow their culture when they stole land from the actual indigenous people who do not support such policies.

At the break table talking another language, no problem. Needing it to be able to understand their job, problem. Unless your clients are mostly Spanish it is their needs that are being overlooked. They need someone fully competent in an official language. If nurses revert to Spanish when they don’t understand things, then their manager doesn’t know what it is that they are having a problem with, unless someone is translating for her. She could end up in trouble for putting someone on a task that they are not able to do. I don’t immediately see it a a racist problem (although it could be) but a work safety problem.

Personally, assuming its the local language, I’m fine with the idea.

People who are multilingual don’t always seem to get how it looks/feels for monolingual people – but it’s a way of excluding them from participating in whatever the conversation is. I think back to a camping trip described by an X with her friends, where in most of the group spoke english and chinese – except my X, who only spoke english. Because one or two in the group were more fluent in Chinese, for most of the weekend the vast majority of conversation was in Chinese, which really drove home how isolating / alienating it can be to be the person left out. You’re basically being pre-excluded from a conversation, just to make it easier for communication with someone else – your basic participation is less important than the other person’s ease of communication. My X had no concern about them “talkin bout her behind her back” or anything, they were all friends, but she finally understood how it comes across.

While the majority of the work force may speak another language, the “main” language in a country is to me, meant to serve as a default for business. If I were multilingual, working in a foreign non-english country, I’d expect any business I worked for to require me to use their local language. Even more, when it comes to supervisors/team leads, hearing the conversations can also help you target potential issues – like if you overhear a team member teaching something incorrectly. So there’s a potential business liability type reason to make sure that all team members, especially oversight, can understand what’s getting said if it pertains to the business.

Employers can go suck a big fat cock.

If the enployee can communicate with their managers and co-worker in English when needed and talk in an other language when they talk between them, there’s nothing wrong.

Fucking stupid. The Haitians didn’t speak English and we needed our bilingual guy to speak Spanish sometimes or else we wouldn’t get shit done. Oh also the boss’s English was shit too and sometimes him and the others from the country our company was from needed to communicate clearly

I think it’s mostly stupid and ethically questionable, except when your speech needs to be evaluated as a routine part of the job. I don’t think worker to worker conversations should be impacted though.

I’m trying to figure out why a manager would assume that people speaking in Spanish are doing it to have a nefarious, malicious secret code, when Spanish is the fourth-most widely spoken language on the planet, and is not a difficult second language for English speakers to start picking up comprehension with.

If I wanted an evil secret code, wouldn’t I pick something far more obscure?

I’ve actually had the opposite experience. When I happen to work with people that speak my second language it’s usually them who don’t want to speak their other language bc they don’t want to exclude teammates.

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Honestly, time to talk to HR who I’m sure would have a quiet word with this manager.

This sounds like bullying, triggered by racism/xenophia/paranoia or just plain bigotry. And yelling at people? That’s terrible too.

For the most part I think you should be allowed to speak whatever language you want so long as you aren’t speaking it with a customer, co-worker, boss, etcetera, that doesn’t understand it.

I personally don’t see any reason why the language you speak should be policed so long as you aren’t using it with people who don’t understand it, unless they’re saying illegal things, but even then that can be shaky depending on what country you’re in IMO.

I mean, foreign languages can and sometimes are used to talk shit about people without them knowing. Speaking English in a non-English place is rude for that reason as well, to make it less bait-y.

If even brief, well-explained excursions into Spanish are punished, that’s ideology or personal paranoia, though.

this is a clear sign to start a union. if you’re in a union, speak to a rep about discrimination