Diversity In The Workplace

I work for a global conglomeration of a corporation. We have employees all over the world and also happen to have quite a few South-Asian employees at the office where I work.

Well, today I walked into our break area/kitchen in order to nuke my lunch and found a whole table full of people enjoying their lunch and what appeared to be good conversation. Unfortunately I could not partake of the conversation because it was one of the many that I do not speak. (On a side note, I really like to learn other languages and have picked up a smattering of German, Spanish, Korean, French and Italian in my few years of existence...)

As I waited on my yummy chicken noodle soup to heat up, I wound up standing next to the table, and listening to their conversation (there wasn't much else I could do). Aside from one gentleman moving aside so I could get around them as I walked to the microwave, they really did nothing to acknowledge my presence. This of course made me uncomfortable, so I did what I always do when faced with an awkward situation... I started running mouth. ;)

I started with asking if they all spoke the same dialect of Hindi (*assumption#1 - they were from India; *assumption#2 - they were speaking some form of Hindi ... yeah, I know what they say about assumptions...). They of course looked at me like I'd grown a third head, but one of them was nice enough to reply that no, they were speaking "Tamil" (which, by the way, you say hello with "vannakam" which means namaste or 'respectful greetings').

I followed up by asking where that was from, and was told that it is from "the south". Then I asked if they were all from there, and they said yes. Then I asked if they all knew each other before working here, and they said yes. Which of course my reply was "rock on!" (I was feeling pretty silly and out of ideas at this point)

Thankfully, I was rescued by the 'ding' of the microwave before I could bury my foot any deeper in my mouth. They went back to their conversation and I turned, grabbed my lunch and left the kitchen with a smile in their general direction.

So this whole exchange (or lack thereof) made me wonder, "is it rude to sit around and speak another language, knowing that someone in your presence doesn't speak or understand it?" I believe that there is absolutely nothing wrong with speaking another language around other people who don't know what you are saying. I do it all the time (for that matter, I sometimes wonder if people who speak English understand half of what I say anyway ;) ). So I guess the real 'rudeness' if there was any, was their lack of acknowledgment of another coworker in the room.

No one likes to be excluded. hmmmm I'm sure there's some interesting corollaries here... but I need to get back to work. ;)

ttfn,
Maddy