Julie Taylor: Riled by needless rude comments

Getting angry is not something I do easily. I get grumpy, annoyed, irked and peeved with monotonous regularity, but angry happens once in a blue moon.
However, a Rotorua woman made me angry last week with a stark illustration that all the talk of being friendly to tourists and welcoming immigrants and the contribution they make to the economic and cultural growth of our city hasn't filtered down to street level.
Many of our immigrant population work in the hospitality and retail sectors and I rate a number of them among the top customer service providers I have personally encountered in Rotorua.
But, while waiting to be served in one such establishment, I listened as the incredibly friendly woman who runs the store profusely thanked a customer and farewelled them.
The customer turned around and said: "You need to learn some more English, lady."
Sheer disbelief was the only thing that stopped me butting in with an indignant: "And you need to learn some manners, lady!"
Everybody in the store was gobsmacked by the rudeness and unfriendliness of this ignorant woman. The only person who did not react was the woman behind the counter.
I can only hope her English was not good enough to understand, but I suspect she was either so used to such comments she was practised at ignoring them or she was too professional to let the effects of this unnecessary outburst show.
Having lived, worked and travelled in countries where I did not, initially, speak any of the language, I know how challenging it is to learn a new culture, vocabulary, grammar and, in some cases, a whole new alphabet. It takes courage, patience and determination.
When people come to a new country, it is up to them to fit in with the locals and learn the language, but they should be encouraged and supported in this, not abused and belittled.
Fortunately, this negative experience of Rotorua's manaakitanga will be overshadowed by the incredibly positive atmosphere at the Trenz tourism industry conference next week.
I will be reporting from the conference and, as in previous years, I expect this will be an uplifting, if exhausting, experience. The whole three-day event is about being positive about New Zealand and what it has to offer and demonstrating to international media and buyers just how lovely and friendly us Kiwis are.
Now how do we get that same message out to people like the rude woman I encountered?
Julie Taylor is the business editor at The Daily Post