Tower of Babel, the bad side!

Okay, I know that most of you are going to think that I am a being a bit prejudice and need to learn to have tolerance, however, here I go.

I was at work the other day, and I was going to meet one of my employees to go over a job that I needed him to do. It was a simple job that was going to take a day. Nothing major or anything that should cause problems... I should know better!

We had done a job in the summer of removing and insulating and then re-pouring a 2600 square foot concrete pad. Now before you all ask, no we aren't in the concrete business and we used subs. So here we were prepping the pad with insulation, as it was going to have a walk in freezer on it, re bar and gravel, standard for around these parts. Well the job went well and we were done in 3 days. The freezer went up no problem and we were ready to get paid. or so we thought.

It is number months later and we are still waiting for final payment, and not just a little amount, enough to make a grown man cry! So I go over there to find out what is going on and it turns out that there is a crack where the old concrete and the new concrete meet. NO WAY, CRACKED CONCRETE AT A JOINT.... as you can tell I reek with sarcasm! concrete is going to crack and when you take it from one temp to another in a Short time it is just going to crack sooner!

Anyway to make a long story short, the company that we are doing the work for is Chinese, not a problem. However, these particular Chinese are a problem. You see I took my man down there to fix the "crack" so that we could get paid, and all I got was the run around. Here is what happened in a condensed form.

(Chinese owners) We are not ready for you, come back on Monday.
(Matthew ) We will come back, but you need to pay us the money that you owe us after we are done.
(a bunch of angry Chinese and gestures towards me and my guy)
Can we do part of the work now?
(a bunch of angry Chinese and gestures towards me and my guy)
We need to complete the work so that we can get paid
(a bunch of angry Chinese and gestures towards me and my guy)
Can we come back Monday, do the work and then get paid?
(a bunch of angry Chinese and gestures towards me and my guy)
For the love of everything holy and pure answer my questions...

and so on and so forth. Now you can see what my problem was. I do not know Chinese nor do I pretend to know it. I was talking with these clients in the only language that was common to both of us and out of the blue and for most of the time I was left wondering what the heck was being talked about. Here is where I have the problem, you are dealing with me in a business setting, I am not at your door asking for money or a donations. We did work for you and you owe us money, and we are in bed together in the business sense, so SPEAK THE COMMON GROUND LANGUAGE!!! not speak English because we are in Canada, but speak the language that is common to both parties.

After dealing with this for 2 hours, I had enough and told them to speak to me so that I could understand them. 3-4 of them were talking in front of me in Chinese like I wasn't there. Enough is enough. I finally told them that we were coming Monday and that they needed to talk to me so that I could understand what was being said. I know that they were talking badly about me, and that is okay, but have the balls to say it to my face!! Different languages are good, but when you use your language to your advantage on purpose, well then you are in the wrong in my opinion especially when you know that the opposing party cant understand a word that is being said and the conversation involves them. I wish that I was able to speak another language at that point just to make them feel as angry and frustrated as I was!

One final word that I have, is to bite me if you think that I am being harsh, prejudice or anything of the sort. You deal with what I had to and then come and talk to me!