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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

Was I unintentionally racist??

48 replies

Changedmehandle · 06/05/2017 23:20

NC for this as it's delicate!
I have thought about this since it happened and I'm really upset about it.
Earlier I had a call from a company I use asking customer satisfaction questions about my experience using them.
I couldn't understand the accent of the person speaking to me, I think I really upset the person speaking to me as I had to keep asking for them to slow down and repeat what they said - I did this politely though 'sorry I didn't catch that' or 'please repeat that bit' because I genuinely couldn't understand a lot of what was being said!
He would slow down the first few words of the sentence but then unconsciously speed up with a long sentence so I lost half of what he said.
He seemed to be getting increasingly annoyed with me and at one point I was asked if I had hearing problems, which I don't and replied that I don't but was really struggling to understand the accent, and apologised - again. He then snapped he was speaking English to me and I was just being racist! At this point I put the phone down because I panicked!
Have I been unintentionally racist here? I want to apologise if I have because I genuinely couldn't understand what was being said to me but I never ever intended anything like that!

OP posts:

SailAwayWithMeHoney · 07/05/2017 08:57

No not racist, but I do feel sorry for him. As PP said accents sound stronger over the phone.

HardcoreLadyType · 07/05/2017 08:59

It's not racist to not understand an accent.

When I first came to London from Australia, I worked in a pub where there was a regular who was a geordie. I couldn't understand him at all, particularly when he'd had a few, and there was significant background noise.

We were both native speakers, but I was the foreigner, not him.

Hygellig · 07/05/2017 09:03

You weren't being racist. Any accent, even other British ones, can be hard to understand on the phone.

I remember one of my teachers saying when she first came to our school that she couldn't understand the kids at first. This was in the West Midlands.

LurkingHusband · 07/05/2017 09:22

It's not racist to not understand an accent.

But it is racist to pretend not to understand an accent. And there's plenty of that goes on, I'm afraid .

highinthesky · 07/05/2017 09:27

YANBU

My ex-father-in-law had a strong Scottish accent and a lot of the time I couldn't make out what he was saying. I had the same experience with Scottish Power. One of their representatives called me to ask why I had left and I thought it was a piss-take: the accent was just like David Walliams in Little Britain. And I told them so

SailAwayWithMeHoney · 07/05/2017 09:28

Yes LurkingHusband , that is sadly true. And I wonder if that's why the caller was so rude and reacted the way he did. Not excusing his rudeness, just wondering if perhaps he deals with people daily that do pretend not to understand him.

highinthesky · 07/05/2017 09:51

But it is racist to pretend not to understand an accent. And there's plenty of that goes on, I'm afraid Matt Lucas / Fatfighters

RedheadLover · 07/05/2017 09:57

You weren't racist. It is often difficult to understand people with accents, especially over the phone. I can't see what you could have done differently in this situation.

Mexxi · 07/05/2017 10:02

I needed to buy a train ticket last week and wasn't sure if i needed an off peak or not. I asked the bloke at the station and just could not understand him. I felt very uncomfortable for having to ask him to repeat himself and imagined that the people in the queue behind me thought I was deliberately being obtuse like Marjorie Dawes.

Mexxi · 07/05/2017 10:03

Marjorie Dawes= Matt Lucas' Fat Fighters character

70ontheinside · 07/05/2017 10:12

I have a lovely Irish colleague, but when she forgets that I'm a foreigner and talks to me normally I cannot understand her at all. All accents are so hard to understand for me!

CharlieSierra · 07/05/2017 10:13

Yes LurkingHusband , that is sadly true. And I wonder if that's why the caller was so rude and reacted the way he did. Not excusing his rudeness, just wondering if perhaps he deals with people daily that do pretend not to understand him

But if he is heavily accented and speaks too quickly then it's likely that many people actually don't understand him on a daily basis, not that they are pretending they don't.

OhWhatFuckeryIsThisNow · 07/05/2017 10:25

My dm once got hung up on by a call centre worker who accused her of being racist, and she put a flag on mum's number to say so. The worker was Scottish. I was there because I was designated signatory, but they just wanted mum to confirm I could deal with them. Mum was 88 and found it hard to talk to people on the phone by then. She just said " I'm sorry I can't understand you" I was less than impressed.

blankmind · 07/05/2017 10:53

I'm on TPS and ex directory and somehow still get unwanted calls which I cut short. One baffled me for quite some time as it was a new to me opening line.

'Can ar spik to the hommonner please?'

Hommoner was pronounced with 3 same 'length short syllables, very much like 'commoner' After 5 attempts, which I still didn't understand, he said 'Are you the hommonner?'

Then I twigged, he was saying home-owner. He was then offended when I politely suggested he pronounced the words as two separate ones, home, pause owner.

He was from the north east, accents from a very wide area are often erroneously labelled 'Gerordie' and can be a bit difficult to understand, but surely his trainer should have picked that up.

blankmind · 07/05/2017 10:54

Geordie aarrgghh.

Branleuse · 07/05/2017 10:58

Its not racist to not be able to understand an accent. It just usually means you havent been brought up around lots of accents. I once had to put the phone down on a geordie marketing caller as I couldnt understand a bloody word and it was starting to stress me out, and with certain other strong accents I have to ask them to repeat sometimes. Even dp has a really strong accent and I have to ask him to repeat himself every now and again and ive been talking to him for more than 11 years

VivienneWestwoodsKnickers · 07/05/2017 11:04

I've had this with a credit card company OP. I had called up for something, and the person on the other end was not a native English speaker. No idea of their nationality.

They were heavily scripted, and they spoke so quickly I asked then to repeat things a lot. At that time at worked taking 999 calls for the police, so was more accustomed than many to listening to hard to understand phonecalls! Anyway, after the third attempt on on phrase and me apologising for non-existent hearing problems, the man hung up on me.

I changed credit card rather than go through that again. I too was mortified that they must have thought me racist.

fakenamefornow · 07/05/2017 11:11

I've noticed on TV they sometimes put subtitles on if people are speaking with a heavy accent, even if they are British.

I think I remember the NHS has done a study into this issue. People not being able to understand the doctor's accent, being to polite to say anything or afraid of being called racist and then unable to follow the medical advice given correctly. I think it has had some very serious consequences.

Sprogletsmuvva · 07/05/2017 11:19

However, unfortunately being completely fluent in Indian English is not the same as being readily understandable by people who aren't used to decoding that dialect of English.

I think this is the problem with some of the rail staff in london.
They are presumably recruited on the basis of a written application - but this tells you nothing about how they sound, let alone over the tannoy with trains running by etc. Have regularly been in the situation where everyone on the platform looks at each other with a "What?" expression during an announcement.
The particular kicker is that as london has people from all over the world, it's not even a case of adjusting to #an# accent - just as you get 'tuned' to one, you hear a completely different one.

FrancisCrawford · 07/05/2017 11:20

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

fakenamefornow · 07/05/2017 11:22

However, unfortunately being completely fluent in Indian English is not the same as being readily understandable by people who aren't used to decoding that dialect of English.

I think it's also the case that English is dividing and evolving into different languages eg Singlish, Spanglish etc.

derxa · 07/05/2017 11:34

some lovely attitudes on here

youarenotkiddingme · 07/05/2017 12:00

Of course you weren't racist.

I often get calls for Oliver Jones who has an incredibly strong accent and dear old Oli launches into a script so well rehearsed he doesn't pause for breath to accent it properly.

I now longer explain to Mr Jones that I don't understand him - I just hang up

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