[Ammi]

An 18-year-old applying for a Saturday job in a Cambridge shop was surprised to be told she needed to speak Chinese to secure the position.

Zoe Churchman took her CV into a branch of the Body Shop, and the manager asked if she spoke the language.

"When she said no, he told her they were 'looking for someone who speaks Chinese'," her father said.

A spokesman for the company apologised, saying language skills were useful but the manager had not followed procedure.

Chinese comprises several regional languages, the most common being Mandarin.

Mr Churchman said: "When Zoe told me what had happened, I thought she must have misunderstood, but it kept grating on me and I felt I had to go and check it out.

'Absolutely ridiculous'

"The manager said he thought the language requirement was odd, but he said he had checked it out with the head office.

"He said to me, 'That seems to be the norm'."

Mr Churchman said it seemed "absolutely ridiculous" for his sixth-form student daughter to be required to speak Chinese for a part-time job in retail in Cambridge.

In a statement to the BBC, the Body Shop said: "The Body Shop believes in equality and seeks to find the right person for the job based on skills, regardless of age, sex, race and nationality.

"Language skills are an advantage for candidates applying for retail sales positions as we have multi-cultural customer appeal and it's great when required to speak to customers in their own language.

"However, we would not exclude applications on the basis of language skills alone.

"In this instance the franchise manager has not followed the company recruitment procedure and we will be following up with him directly."

The company apologised to Miss Churchman and said it would be happy to discuss recruitment with her

[arista]

Teenager turned down for job at The Body Shop in Cambridge because she 'did not speak Chinese'

Zoe Churchman, 18, claimed manager said 'all our customers are Chinese'
The Body Shop apologised, saying manager didn't follow procedure


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz2VnA36tKp


They should put it in the advert
Chinese speaking needed
due to Rich Student Customers

[joeysteele]

Ridiculous, especially since that likely wasn't stipulated in the advert for the vacancy.

[Nedusa]

Maybe she could get a Job in the Body Shop's Shanghai branch.....??

[MTVN]

Probably just didn't have any vacancies and told her that to get rid of her, bit dumb but so is her running to the papers and making a massive story of it

[Vicky.]

Yeah too many low skilled jobs seem to require you to be able to (fluently) speak another language. I have been browsing the jobcentre site recently as I am looking for a more..steady job..and so many ads are for 'polish speaking shop assistant' and such. I dont think its too much to ask that these polish people learn english instead of our workers being required to learn their language.

[Z]

I don't disagree with your point Vicky but having been a foreigner living in another country and not being too confident in my language skills to just approach someone working in a shop for help, I was always grateful if someone could speak to me in English if I got stuck. I would go into a shop having looked up all the vocabulary I thought I'd need, but then, as is always the case in conversations, unexpected questions come up and suddenly you're flustered and have no idea what to say. Of course this story seems ludicrous, but if there's a significant Chinese population coming to shop in that branch of Body Shop, then I'd say it's actually a good thing that they were looking to recruit someone who could speak a Chinese language in order to provide a better service for those customers. I'm assuming all the rest of their staff are English or English speaking, and presumably the hypothetical Mandarin speaking employee would speak English too, so they would really just be undertaking an exercise in equality... it's a shame for the girl, but turning this into a news story is silly and I think it actually makes her family look a bit prejudiced, whether or not they are I don't know, but it comes across as another 'foreigners are taking our jobs' story.