I had to work a four hour shift today.  Definitely one of the items at the top of my “things I don’t like to do on Saturday” list.  I deal with a lot of people who have come to Los Angeles from all over the world.  I mean, if you want to visit a place where you could hear every language and the many different dialects, LA is your town.  In fact, I think I only had three customers today who spoke English as their primary language.  I didn’t get upset, or impatient, or aggravated, quite the opposite.  I think it is really amazing that some people are able to learn more than one language.  My amazement stems from my own difficulty in trying to learn a second language, Spanish.  I have heard it said that Spanish is one of the easier languages to learn, unfortunately not for me.  I met a customer from Ukraine, one from Thailand, a few from Mexico, a couple from Brazil and a guy from El Salvador.  How crazy to meet all these people in one four hour shift.  I read a statement somewhere that said “Never make fun of someone speaking broken English because that means they know another language.”  I don’t know who said it but it really makes sense to me.  Especially here in LA where, as I’ve described already, there is a lot of people here that know several languages.  I think I am going to push myself a little harder this year to learn Spanish.  Hell, it can’t hurt.  

Working on Saturday is tough!