It started with a letter by a reader to The Straits Times suggesting that some ability to speak and understand simple English should be made part of the criteria for the issuing of work-permit passes to foreigners employed in the service sector.
He was lamenting the "lost in translation" problems many Singaporeans faced when service staff they encountered could not even use simple, basic English. To make matters worse, there were such service crew who, instead of doing their best to understand the customer's requests, acted rudely.
A series of letters then appeared in The Sunday Times, with the following accounts of the non-English speaking and/or rude bus driver from Hell:
The first of the Sunday Times readers said she was on bus service 190 when outside Tangs (on Scotts Road), a Caucasian tourist couple asked the driver whether it was going to Rendezvous Hotel (on Bras Basah Road).
The driver did not reply but used his hand to wave a “no”. The reader happened to be sitting just behind the driver. She was obviously familiar with service 190's route and was in fact going to that same hotel!
So she tried to help as she thought maybe the driver could not make out their strong foreign accent. She said “yes”. The couple were hesitant, wondering who was right. Not wanting to be misunderstood, they then asked aloud: “What about Bras Basah Road?”
Again the driver spoke not a word but gestured a “no”.
The reader firmly said “yes” again.
The couple looked confused, then finally the man said to the reader, “I believe you.”
At that point, she could not help laughing because she felt anyone else would have believed the bus driver rather than a commuter. When she alighted at the hotel bus stop -- together with the couple -- the driver gave her a hard stare.
The couple came over to thank her with a handshake. The reader ended her letter with this point: "I think a little English goes a long way."
The following Sunday, another reader, a Malay man, wrote in with what he said was "a similar story to share".
He said after he got onto a service 89 bus, a young Malay boy walked up the aisle to the bus driver, who was a female Chinese. He then asked her if the bus was going to the beach. She did not answer and the reader guessed that she did not speak much English.
The boy, upon also realising that the bus driver did not respond much because she could not understand him, tried his very best to refer to the beach by showing hand gestures of swimming.
But she never did, and eventually, exasperated, he went back to his seat not knowing if the bus would get to the destination that he wanted.
This reader graciously concluded his letter: "I do not blame the bus driver for she came down here to Singapore from her home country to eke out a living, and everyone deserves a chance to. But I do hope that English skills are made a work-permit criterion to avoid such situations in the future. It is ironic too in this case, that a Singaporean himself feels exasperated and lost in translation in his own country."
Another non-Chinese reader then chipped in with her observation. She felt that many bus drivers from China are unable to speak English and she had have experienced similar problems as the earlier examples on many occasions. "The drivers should be sent for English classes, and bus operators should make English-speaking skills one of the criteria for hiring," she said.
Finally, there is this letter by a presumably Caucasian bus rider, a Mr Morton:
"On July 16, just after 7pm, my wife and sister were on service 222 when it was involved in an accident with a car at the crossroads of New Upper Changi Road, Bedok North Avenue 1 and Bedok South Road.
"When the accident happened, the bus driver, instead of checking to see if any of the passengers had been injured, called his company first. After the call, he simply opened the bus doors to let the passengers out, again without checking if anyone had suffered any injury.
"All the passengers were left stranded at the crossroads to fend for themselves.
"Meanwhile, the driver got out of the bus to exchange particulars with the driver of the car that was involved in the accident. After that, he got back into the bus and drove off.
"Eventually, the passengers made their way to the Bedok bus interchange to continue their journey, incurring additional costs, as they had already paid for the previous bus ride.
"The bus driver spoke only in Mandarin, showed no concern for his passengers and then just left them at the side of the road. Are bus passengers expected to pay more for this kind of service?"
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I'll end with a bus-related Hokkien joke. I had used it in a much earlier posting but it seems so apt, in a perverse way, that I'll rehash it:
Back in the days of Singapore Traction Company (STC), Green Bus Company, Tay Koh Yat Bus Company, etc, one STC service's route included Holland Road. A Caucasian got on board at some point and spoke to the bus conductor (yes, those were the days when there was such a person whose job -- his strange title notwithstanding -- was to punch tickets and shout at people who clogged up the entrance or exit). The Caucasian man asked him to alert him when the bus reached Holland Road, his destination.
But the bus had become crowded way before it got to Holland Road. People were blocking the exit, making it hard for others to get down at one stop. So, the bus conductor did his job, and shouted "Ho lang lok! ho lang lok!" (Hokkien for "Make way, let people through!")
You guessed it... the Caucasian got down.
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