Sometimes, I Wish I Wasn't English

Of the (many) things I hate about my job, the following exchange is probably the worst.

INTERIOR: A busy coffee shop. The baristas flit about. The Grad is collecting dirty plates. She reaches the table of an Old English Bloke.

OLD ENGLISH BLOKE: I must say, it's nice to finally find someone here who speaks English!

THE GRAD: (coldly) All of my colleagues speak English. (She sweeps away, her dramatic point probably undermined by tripping over something.)

I get terribly, terribly cross about this sort of attitude. My colleagues over the last year and a bit have come form every imaginable corner of the globe; from Italy, Spain, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, Israel, Brazil - even Scotland (hohoho). All of them have been wonderful. All of them speak English (even the Scot, hohoho). All of them have encountered someone like the bloke above - usually an older, white, middle-class Daily Mail reader (let's not mince words here) who assumes that they're lazy or stupid because they weren't born on this sceptred isle.

I get cross because this kind of assumption isn't made about me. I've got an English accent, so instead I get the conspiratorial eye-roll, the "these Johnny foreigners, eh?" look, as if I, too, as a right-minded English person, must be sick of working with these simpletons.

Well, I'm not. I don't share your views, and I will set you straight if you dare to vocalise them in front of me. My colleagues are bloody marvellous. They're smart. They're interesting. They're brave. How many times have you, oh Daily Mail reader, moved to a completely alien place and taken a job that requires you to speak a foreign language all day? Because they do, you know. Behind the counter, in the staff room, everyone speaks English, even when they are with colleagues from the same country. It's an unspoken rule at our shop. We can all speak English, so we all do. We include everyone.

Sometimes, when I'm working on the shop floor by myself, I fantasise about adopting a foreign language for the duration of the shift. Not because I want the Daily Mail readers to think that I'm lazy or stupid, but because I don't want them to think that I am anything like them.

I don't, though. I am not brave enough to be a stranger in London.