Shop Talk

I'm pretty sure this ends up happening to everyone in the retail sales end of things to some degree or another.

Someone comes over and wants to buy a phone and they don't speak english very well, so a friend or relative turns into a translator. You work through the translator and answer a question which sparks a seemingly endless conversation in a language that's incomprehensible to you before another question, or an "Okay, thanks," followed by a wave and a walk. Similar things can happen with people, mostly couples, who do speak english well enough, but discuss things at length in a language you can't understand.

Some of the ones I've run across at my current location: Spanish, portuguese, hindi, chinese (not sure what dialect), and at least one african language, perhaps more.

The problem with not understanding what's being said is obviously that you can't answer any objections or correct any misunderstandings.

I've thought about maybe taking a conversational language class or two at some point when I have some money, just to cover the most common ones even if I don't get to be entirely proficient. I suppose I could always ask another rep who's bilingual to help out too and teach me some stuff when there's downtime if there's anyone that fits that bill in the location I'm moving to next month. Has anyone ever done this, or done anything else to help with overcoming language barriers?