I had to phone our would be new Internet service provider today just to confirm the time they're coming tomorrow as they sent me a text saying they'd be there in the morning whereas I arranged for them to come in the afternoon.
When switchboard answered the phone I was presented with a menu: press 1 for Luxemburgish, press 2 for German, press 3 for French or press 4 for English. Feeling a bit lazy, I opted for #4, English, so when the human operator actually answered the phone I started speaking English. The operator immediately asked me if I spoke French as she didn't feel able to handle the call in English! Is it just me or is it really a bit odd to offer people the option of speaking English and then when they ask for that option, you say to them “no, no, I can't do that!
@Paulos_the_fog I have worked in a multi language call centre. I have basic french but not enough to handle the content of the calls. On rare occasions I was put on the french lines if call volume was unexpectedly high. Instead of a customer not getting through at all I could offer a best effort with supporting english if a customer was ok with that. If not I passed the call back to the french team. This helped filter those edge cases out of the french teams que allowing customers who could only speak french a higher chance of getting support.
There was likely a decent reason (could have also been someone assigned to the wrong incoming que) it should not be a regular occurrence but could be a "best effort" measure.
@Bunkopirate
One of my ex-bosses from my days in Belgium worked in the UK for a while where he manned the multi-lingual helpdesk. The Brits working there were pretty badly paid but his rate was OK and the Brits used to whinge about how much he was paid compared to them. His answer was simple
"I can provide support for IT systems in English, French, Dutch and German; how many languages can you speak to the level necessary to do phone support?"
