Have It Your Way...

...or should I say?: Имеет оно ваш путь

Help Wanted:

Young, energetic people-person.

Must be fluent in a minimum of two languages (fluency in 3 - 4 languages is a plus!).

Must be trusted to handle money and the ability to work with small electronic machinery is also necessary.

If you meet all the above requirements, then you too may qualify for a job working the counter at the Basel BURGER KING!!

Mrs. TBF and I stopped for lunch this past Saturday afternoon, as we sometimes do, at Basel's sole Burger King. It's quite the operation. And yes, it does taste pretty much the same (AWESOME!), and look the same, as it does in America. There is, however, one major difference: the people who work at the Basel Burger King all wear name tags which have flags of countries representing the different languages they speak.

The girl who served me must be a real flunky because she only spoke German and French (sheesh...no English?). But the girl at the next register spoke German, French, English, and Russian. I glanced over at another employee's name tag, and she spoke German, French, English, Japanese, and Hebrew (...gonna need a wider name tag).

Ummm...why are these people working at Burger King and not, let's say, the U.N. or W.H.O.?

As I've said before, I've even been served by a young lady at this particular Burger King who speaks German, French, English, and...FINNISH! It's all quite different from the fast-food restaurants in Chicago. There, the employees mostly speak Spanish as their first language and broken-English as their second language. I guess their name tags would have a Mexican flag and half of an American flag.

Of course, the name tags here have a Union Jack to represent English which means that I feel compelled to speak with a BRITISH accent (which my British friends say sounds like a Cockney accent) when ordering my food from an English-speaking employee.

Actually, it's pretty easy for me to pass myself off as British. All I have to do is...

...complain how uncivilized people outside of the U.K. are because they don't know how to form a proper queue, mispronounce Whopper as Wah-pah, order chips instead of fries, say sorry a lot, complain about the cheese not being proper Stilton, and make my face look like I just sucked on a lemon when I find out that they don't offer malted vinegar to go along with the chips.

Cheerio!