Caused a scene in a cafe today. Now wondering if we were unreasonable

[pennytoffees]

I'll start off by saying I'm welsh, born and bred and speak the language as does my entire family.

We visited (my mother and I) a local cafe today and had such an awful experience. We haven't been there in years but don't remember it being that bad. We don't sound welsh and spoke to them in English so they obviously assumed that we were tourists. They were very cold towards us.

Anyway, we placed our order and another staff member brought the food over to us. We asked for some sauces to which she replied "go and ask her" and then pointed to the woman at the till. There was a queue and we didn't want the food to go cold so asked her if she could get us some. She gave me a filthy look but reluctantly handed them over. I just want to add that at no point did she say that the sauces cost extra so we just presumed that they were free like most cafes/restaurants. It turns out that they weren't (to be honest I think it's pretty greedy charging customers for sachets of sauce when they've spent £14 on a meal and I don't know any other local businesses that do it but thats another argument). We would have paid with no issues had she explained that to us.

The main issue is that she came over to a couple sat behind us and started talking about us in Welsh thinking that we didn't understand. Funnily enough they asked for some sauces and she gave them for free but when we asked it was an issue. The only difference is they were clearly locals. At this point we'd had enough so I asked to speak with the manager and she asked me "why, is there a problem?". I said "yes but I'm not discussing it with you". Anyway, he came over and I explained what had happened. She was on the other side of the counter and came over and said "I'm sorry, I wasn't talking about you". She wasn't close enough to hear us talking so obviously knew what she had done wrong and was just trying to cover her tracks.

He apologised and we left it at that, didn't even finish our food as we felt so uncomfortable. To be honest I don't think he knew what to do but after reading the reviews online, it's clearly a regular occurrence and he doesn't care how his staff behaves or treats customers. It was embarrassing as everyone was looking at us. We don't like confrontation or causing trouble but felt we had to confront her. I believe we would have been treated differently had they known we were welsh. I was actually embarrassed to be welsh to be honest. They forget it's the tourists keeping them in business.

AIBU? Would you have confronted her or just walked away?

I love North Wales, we have been on holiday there several times. The only slightly negative person we came across was a woman who worked in a small clothes shop complaining that all the tickets for a local festival had been bought by tourists and she thought locals should get preference and be offered them first. I said how lovely Wales as a holiday destination and asked where she went on holiday when she already lived somewhere so nice and she said in a very smug tone that they all went overseas. But we spent most of our time at the beach of touristy places where most people were nice and friendly.

Linguistic victim blaming!

Yes please name it ( or at least the location so I can take an educated guess) so I don't accidentally visit it!

Mind you I would have switched into Welsh myself and said plenty....

Really now, gosh thanks for pointing out my potential scenario is not actually what the Welsh couple in question were actually discussing at the party. It’s almost like what they were discussing between each other was no one’s business. Especially some nosy preteen who gets weirdly offended if they can’t eavesdrop fully on adult conversations.

You can't tell by accent whether a Welsh person speaks Welsh or not. People in North Wales who speak Welsh as a first language have the same accent in English as people from north Wales who don't. There are also a large number of people in North Wales who aren't first language Welsh, but can speak it.

Racism, really. How exactly are Welsh people ‘racist’ towards the English?

Are you trying to say that "the English" don't treat people with contempt based on their nationality? Utter nonsense. Many English people do precisely that. Just look at this thread and some of the contemptuous statements directed at other nationalities. I presume that at least some of those posts (probably the majority) were written by English MNers.

Charming.

The mental gymnastics here is astounding. If the op has a north Wales accent then anyone with any sense wouldn’t have risked being rude to them in Welsh. Unless you think (as many others here seem to), that speaking English in wales seems to magically negate a Welsh accent? In fact, any hint of a Welsh accent will usually have people in north west wales asking if you’d prefer to be spoken to in Welsh or English.

Agreed

Me too! I was reluctant to make the assumption, and very relieved when you others did it first 🤣 Y maent yn gauedig i'r Saeson ...

Canadians like the English. We have a town with a couple of English shops that sell imported articles.

Yep, I’ve had English people show contempt for my Scottish accent (although I get more compliments tbf) various Scottish friends have been told aggressively to go back to Scotland while living in London
and I’ve overheard people in new workplaces being scathing or mocking about Scottish not having a clue that I am.

Also heard awful things being said about Irish and Welsh.

And no it’s not the “r-word” it’s more xenophobia.

I’ve had racism too but that’s another issue.

No, it's not fine. But it's kind of understandable. And some of the xenophobic attitudes towards the Welsh, as evidenced by this thread, are far worse.

I'm Welsh too.
I was about to agree with you that she was rude slagging you off behind your back, but she didn't, did she? Just pointed out that you hadn't paid for the sauces. I really don't get what's wrong with that.
It's happened to me before that people haven't realised I speak Welsh and have talked about me. I always butt in with "Mae'n braf tydi?" or some other pleasantry, and we all have a giggle.

BTW, roedd yr edefyn yma wastad yn mynd i ddiweddu efo agweddau gwrth-Gymraeg.

it's astonishing that businesses let staff be so rude about customers - really bad for the cafe owner

Not the same on the internet when we all have google translate!

It's not understandable to be xenophobic no. Stop trying to justify xenophobia.

for me I just think it’s about being polite rather than anti welsh

definitely not all of wales I’ve had this experience but in north wales yes

I'm Welsh first language and live in North Wales and honestly this thread is bloody depressing. Not the OP- that was bad service and you weren't wrong to complain. But there are some horrible comments about Wales and the Welsh on here and it's really sad to see. We don't switch to speaking Welsh when English people walk in- if you hear it, it's because we were already speaking it. My mum and DP are English so I have no issue with English people but maybe look up the history and understand why there might be some slight resentment at times. Our language is literally nearly dead because we were forced not to speak it in favour of English for generations. Can't get over the ignorance on this thread and the amount of people who seem to think we only speak Welsh out of spite.

You can tell when someone's a xenophobe as they start banging on about "Well it's understandable to be xenophobic towards THAT nationality. They don't count!" They don't realise that all xenophobes think their prejudice is justified.

@WhatTheKey don't you think that was unfair though given that we didn't know they weren't free? Surely it would have been better to give us a chance to pay for them rather than running off to another customer to gossip about us, and in-front of us too. Also, I still believe she wouldn't have spoken about us in-front of us had she known we were welsh!

This makes me really sad.

My maternal family is Welsh (Grandparents Welsh speakers). South Wales if that makes a difference.

I spent a lot of time of time there as a child/young adult and have such fond memories.

Found the vast people there really friendly and welcoming (for reference English father and my mother though born in wales doesn't speak (very much at all) Welsh or have a Welsh accent).

It's a beautiful place.

However, there were very, very occasional incidents I can't deny that. One with my grandparents present (my GM was a bloody marvel) where suffice to say I couldn't follow what was said when she heard people talking about us in Welsh but she gave back both barrels and I could read the body language of a profuse apology/grovelling 😂.

Upshot is there are twats everywhere.

We don't as a rule visit places and on the basis of a bad experience tar everyone with ingrained xenophobia.

I think it's becoming a bit of a trope about the Welsh behaving badly to tourists and with recent visits to north wales I have not encountered this.

Yet there are underlying issues. Like most picturesque places to visit the local populations are being priced out their own heritage by second home owners and the likes of AirB&B.

It's a difficult balance between needing tourists to support the economy and destroying the culture of the location people visiting are drawn to. Plus not all visitors are respectful of the local environment.

I think it's understandable why some people are angry about this, even if I think their anger is misdirected.

We need government to do more to protect local communities particularly in reference to housing and making tourism sustainable.

Oh and just to add for balance on my last visit, when entering a room where people were speaking Welsh they switched to English to include me/my family.

I guess "incidents" like that just are not as notable.....

There was a brilliant story about this on Facebook once, which I like to think was true. A half-Greek woman had grown up in Wales and spoke both Welsh and English, as well as Greek learned from her mother. She spent a year back in Greece working in the family restaurant in a not-too-touristy area.

One day, a Welsh-speaking family came in and proceeded to slag off absolutely everyone Greek and everything about Greece, etc., but also the people working in the restaurant, including the quite elderly grandfather of the waitress (the woman telling the story). Of course, they must have thought they were pretty safe doing all this in Welsh. The waitress smiled politely and at the end of the meal handed them the bill with a cheery "Anything else I can get you?" in Welsh. She wrote that their looks were absolutely priceless!