For the love of money, not of language.

This is what I've been trying to say all along! You bitch cause you have to press 1, but you bitch when they come here to work for pennies & then send their pennies back home. If you want their pennies to stay here, in your good ole US of A, then quit bitching about pressing 1 and just press the damn button!

¡Ask a Mexican! Press 1 for English
by Gustavo Arellano

Phone Tree Love: Press 1 for a good explanation for why you should press 1

Q. Dear Mexican: I work at a Seattle-based company, and our customer-service department uses a PhoneTree system that asks all callers to press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish, and a few other numbers for commonly spoken languages in our area. I handle customer complaints as part of my job, and I get a surprising number of complaints from people who feel they shouldn't have to press a number to be spoken to in the "normal" language of English. They are offended by our PhoneTree for some reason that is mysterious to me. You seem to have a fairly high readership of people who are generally offended by Spanish-speaking people-could you please deliver a message to them for me? The message is this: The PhoneTree is for your own good. If we didn't ask non-English-speakers to identify themselves at the beginning of the call, English-speaking people would have to wait in line behind those who don't speak English, and would have to wait for those non-English-speakers to get on the line with a non-Spanish-(or other language)-speaking representative. They'd then have to wait for the non-English-speaking customer to be transferred to a representative who speaks their language. There is no law against not speaking English in this country-companies have English-speaking customers and non-English-speaking customers, and a company isn't going to give up revenue by refusing to serve people who don't speak English just to please you jingoists. People should just be grateful that they're asked to press 1 for English, and not 8. -Press 2 For Tough Tamales

A. Dear Gabacha: I get this question asked mucho, and yours is as good a respuesta as I could ever scrawl. Can I pick you up at Home Depot if I ever need a cheap replacement?