How working in a language that was not my own taught me about discrimination in Canada
The restaurant manager slips into the kitchen and gives me a quick update on the interview she is having with a potential cook. I’m running the kitchen with a broken crew traumatized by their last chef’s sudden disappearance. The restaurant manager and I (who up until that point had been the event chef only) were trying to hold it together. “He doesn’t really speak English or German,” she tells me, “his wife is here to translate.” I shrug, “I don’t care,” I tell her, “I just need a body, we are dying in here.” She tells his wife to tell him to come back for a trial shift. 2 weeks later I have recipes printed out in a google translated document to Persian. He’s hired. 1 month in he is the best cook we have.
At this point I have been in Germany for one year, Berlin more specifically. This is the second kitchen I have worked in and have only encountered a few Germans in either kitchen. The working language is always English but usually very broken English. Some kitchens have everything labeled in German, sometimes a mix with English, or the messiest case was when the last chef had written half the recipes in Spanish. My first chef in Berlin used to schedule people based on the language they spoke so they could work together, unless they had too much fun and production took a hit, then it was back to broken English. It all felt like a massive privilege for me, to be able to move to a foreign place and have communication be the priority over specific language skills.
It wasn’t until I was running a kitchen myself, printing recipes in 3 different languages that I was suddenly hit with memories of Canada, specifically London Ontario. Like everywhere in the world, the food industry and most low level labor jobs have a worker shortage. Also like in many countries you have a lot of international students and new immigrants applying for these jobs. I lived in London for 3 years and it was a constant hum of the restaurant industry. “Only people from India apply,” they complained. “They say they speak English but then they don’t understand what I am saying. How can I work with that?” To be honest at the moment I didn’t really think much of this. I know in the back of my mind I felt the racist undertones but I excused it, thinking well yes communication is important in the workplace I suppose.
Yet here I was, leading a team of individuals who all spoke some random mixture of languages to each other and to me, and somehow it was working. In fact some people who were most fluent in English or German often had worse communication skills than those who had very little language skills. My theory was that words become precious when you only have so few. You say as little as possible and exactly what you mean. You can’t wrap it up in small talk, passive aggressive coding, or cultural differences. Just say what you want, when you will do it and when you will be here. Want to make a joke? The kitchen might be the easiest place to do that. You don’t need words for a practical joke, laughing at your coworker who embarrassed themselves in front of a customer, or the most basic form of humor of all- giggling at a potato with a penis. We all get it.
So I suppose this essay is my pitch to you. The possibly racist, definitely burnt out business owner desperate for staff. It’s not that hard, in fact it’s kind of fun to develop your own language with a team of people. There were a few key things that I feel worked really well for me when developing a “language” with new staff, that also made me train people better than I would have without a language barrier. The main component was that I never just verbally communicated things. There was always a clearly printed list, and then every task I showed physically once, getting the person to repeat it in front of me to make sure they understood. I had a lot of vegetable prep to do at that time, so I would start with this. I had one cutting board with 8 vegetables cut how I wanted them on it. This was my to do list. A visual representation of what I wanted done. After one or two times I didn’t need to do this. I just said, “carrots, like last time” and it was done. I noticed that people I did not train so intimately were often left feeling more frustrated and unable to do tasks because I usually just mumbled something to them, handed the recipe to them, and followed up with a complaint that it was not done the way I had imagined it in my head.
To train staff like this means that you have to have time, and you have to be organized. It is a big pay off in the end when you have well trained employees who model that level of organization. The tone is set from day one and you also set a standard for yourself that is not in reactive mode. When I trained people like this I felt myself feeling a lot less frustrated and them being a lot more productive and helpful.
It took living in a city where my language was not the default and the native local language was also not the default to realize these now seemingly simple things, but sadly I know I’m not alone in this dense way of thinking. The good thing is that the world we live in today is not the world of my white parents. It’s more exciting, with more opportunity to do things beyond their wildest dreams. Like becoming a better manager and ending racism in the hiring process. I’m being sarcastic of course, we need to set the bar a lot higher than that, but from one Canadian to another, stop lying to yourself. It is 100 % possible to hire people for kitchen work even if they don’t speak perfect English.
