I have always thought that inter-personal communication only takes diverse vocabulary and basic body language for a conversation to go smoothly. However, I have learned from my inter-cultural communications class that it takes more than that. It takes knowledge of different cultures, patience, and emotional understanding towards others. When I apply my new knowledge to previous uncomfortable conversations, I now realize that it was sometimes inter-cultural communication ignorance that caused some conversations to escalate to such embarrassing levels.
An inter-cultural communication challenge that I have seen was at a McDonalds. It was a busy hour for McDonalds and I noticed a mother, holding her toddler, was ordering; she ordered ice cream with a cone. As the mother waited, her child told her that she wanted the ice cream in a different flavor. Naturally, the mother asked any of the employees who were close by to change the flavor. However, the employee she asked for help was the one working in the back that just happened to walk in the front counter. The employee then grabbed a plastic cup and put the same flavor inside. The mother then explained again and this time the employee gave a different flavor with a cup. Frustrated, the mother slowly kept repeating that she just wanted the ice cream in a different flavor on a cone. Still, the employee did not know what she wanted and started to point at anything near the ice cream maker to see if he could find out what she wanted. Soon the mother blurted out, “WHY IS THIS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND?” Another employee, who understood English, rushed by to help and the employee who was screamed at went back to his work area in tears and seemed to be muttering something in Spanish. The problem here is that the mother did not take into account the language barrier problems that the employees have that worked in the background. All of the employees in the back seemed to be comfortable in speaking Spanish because that is what you could hear from the back. Still, the mother assumed that they could speak English and still tried to accommodate their speech together by speaking slowly and repeating to him what she wanted. A solution to this problem is to try and learn another language that is common around the neighborhood because it will help lower the