[Sidney Lanier]

Me again. Earlier today I went online to the Verizon site to make a change in our account. Included on their site was a link to the list of phone numbers to reach Verizon if necessary. In New York State they gave different numbers for Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Russian. It's not my place to sit in judgment of Verizon; I can only assume that the company recognizes that these are services that they have to provide in order to deal with their customers. After all, the telephone company is a service business! Are these customers newcomers to the U.S. who can't possibly be expected to know English well enough to converse on the phone? Are they old-timers who just never learned English--or learned it well enough to converse on the phone? Verizon has no way of knowing--and naturally we don't either.

I can get by with my high school Spanish when we travel. However, we were once caught up in an emergency situation in South America where I absolutely had to make myself understood--and even more difficult I had to understand--and I simply did not have the language skills to do this on the phone. If anyone has never tried it, be assured that it's much more difficult on the phone than in person. I was just so grateful that the people I had to deal with, when they realized that I simply could not do it, instead of being judgmental or berating me would instead drag someone to the phone who had even a little English language skill, so that what was really essential communication could take place. This may be somewhat off topic (and if it's viewed that way, I apologize...), but for me it serves as a reminder of how difficult it can be for anyone to have to communicate in a language that they feel ignorant or insecure about....