Friday, May 13, 2005

Man Feels Using English Accent Gets Him Better Service

A man who was apparently on a first or second date with a young woman greeted his waiter and ordered drinks with a noticable, but not overly think, English accent. When the waiter departed the young woman asked him what he was doing. The man said that after living with an English roomate for years and watching the way his roomate was treated when they went out, he'd begun using an English himself because the result was almost always better service. He said that in addition to being novel and grabbing attention, the accent seemed to earn him an instant level of respect.
The girl said that she'd struggled with exactly the opposite probelm when she'd left the South and gone to college. She said that in order to have her views taken seriously she'd felt it necessary to downplay her Southern accent. Eventually, she said, she'd learned to drop it all together and she admitted that now when she ventured home should couldn't help feeling that some of her friends sounded kind of dumb.
The man said he wondered why that was? Why did European accents garner respect while Southern ones seemed to do just the opposite?
A Hispanic busyboy working at the table next to them looked over and said, "I don't know but, the further south you come from, the worse it gets."

3 comments:

Wyrfu said...

Very funny - that one really did make me laugh out loud. As an Englishman in America, I don't know about better service (how would I judge?) but I can confirm the amount of interest an English accent gets. And there may be something in the "further south" theory - England is on the same latitude as Labrador...

Harry said...

Well, ain't that just a fine how-do-you-do? And I reckon there's some tad truth in it, too, sho nuff.

Anonymous said...

Very amusing and very true. Perhaps the blogosphere is the great equalizer after all...