That anyone dealing with the public should be required to be able to be understood by the majority of that public is just plain commonsense. To be honest, I haven't had many problems understanding accented English from a wide variety of places (very occasionally I will have to ask them to repeat something but that's it), but I can understand that many would. That companies choose to skimp on this is very customer unfriendly and ultimately unproductive.

I would also not object to mandatory English classes for migrants provided the requirements weren't too onerous (eg: costs them more than they can afford, requires them to meet a standard far beyond native spearks in their adopted country, etc).

However, I don't really see the problem with pressing 1 for English. All that means is that there's options and English is the first one. I would certainly rather that incredibly tiny inconvenience than no options at all.

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