When you sit down at a table in the restaurant where I work, the first thing that will happen is a busser will come over, give you a basket of bread, and ask you whether you would prefer tap or bottled water with your meal. The vast majority of bussers (and this would be completely obvious to anyone at all, regardless of their perceptiveness level in general) do not have a strong grasp of the English language. Restaurant owners prefer it this way, because bussers who are fluent in English are fond of bandying about troublesome English words like ‘overtime,’ ‘vacation,’ ‘raise,’ ‘benefits,’ and ‘verbal abuse.’ So, like most people in the beginning phases of learning a new language (a thing, incidentally, that the vast majority of our customers have likely never seriously attempted), the ESL bussers rely on recognizing a few key words, namely: ‘tap,’ ‘bottled,’ ‘sparkling,’ ‘flat,’ ‘Pellegrino,’ and/or ‘Panna.’ Anything beyond this is probably beyond them, but that doesn’t matter, because their task is a simple one. Except when some customers, who are either utterly oblivious or downright mean, decide to give their entire drink order to the busser, usually by screaming at him like he’s the biggest idiot ever to work his ass off to send money back home. Recently, I overheard a particularly abrasive bully doing just this:
“No, no, no, no, listen to me. Are you listening? My wife will have a white wine spritzer. Do you understand? You don’t understand, do you? A WHITE WINE SPRITZER! Do you got that? And I will have-”
The busser stood there, nodding confusedly, but politely, and looking around in a manner approaching panic. I ran over and shooed him off.
“The bussers don’t really take drink orders, sir,” I said. “They’re just supposed to bring water.”
“Well, good,” he said, sighing in relief, as though he’d just been through something really trying. “I guess I should tell you we want a large Pellegrino – maybe he don’t understand that, either.”
“Actually,” I really wish I could have said. “I think you mean to say, ‘Maybe he doesn’t understand that, either.’ Why don’t you learn to speak English, fool?”
