I used to be a warehouse supervisor at a major retail store in Langley for a number of years. Occasionally I'd accidentally go out to the sales floor and help customers. There were a few times when I'd come across someone who's English wasn't very fluent, as many of our customers were EI's or Koreans. Despite the verbal communication barrier, we would still try to make each other understand what we were saying, whether it was through drawings or hand gestures. It'd get frustrating, as I'm sure they would occasionally feel the same way, but none of us would ever get outright angry and one another. A couple of customers were actually very pleased that I would take that extra time to figure out wtf they were trying to say, and they also said they felt embarrassed that they still didn't have a good enough grasp of the English language to properly get by without another family member with them. None of these customers felt that it was their right to demand someone in the store that spoke their language, as I know they all knew that they were in an English speaking country and were trying their best to get by.
As an aside, back when I was new, I was helping a couple with something. Being new, my knowledge wasn't the greatest and I had to ask for help from one of my coworkers. They started making insulting comments about me while speaking in French, obviously assuming I didn't speak it. Unfortunately for them, this was a time when I could still call myself fluently bilingual and understood every single word they were saying. So, I turned back around, spoke a few words in response (in French, of course) and smiled as they rushed out the door. Thankfully they never went to my manager as I may or may not have said a few things that would have gotten me fired (
) but the look on their faces were priceless and I had never seen someone leave a store so quickly in my life. lol. I'm not sure how that fits into this topic, but for some reason it reminded me of that incident.