I have just delivered to a major distribution Centre in London where all of the security staff are Asian or African.
The Indian security guard had to get another guard to act as a translator because he could not read the list on the wall which says which company goes on which bay!! This was after spending ten min staring at it.
How the hell can you get a job as a security guard if you cannot read or understand English. Is anyone else getting fed up with the language barrier. It seems the later at night you deliver the worse it becomes.
A lot of security personnel are provided by outside companys - Mitie, G4S & suchlike - so the company you’re delivering to probably has little say over who they get in the gatehouse & if that changes on a daily basis, where you often get one person ‘training up’ another you get the sort of chaos you’ve found.
I’ve had the same at ASDA dartford. When you get there they just look at you as if you are in a foreign country, I’ve had to tell one how to fill in the arrival form. When leaving they come out to check the back but have no idea why or what they’re looking for.
Then again I worked at a place that took on a driver that couldn’t read or write English! They had to send him out with another young lad to map read for him, cost effective or what. And I’ve been to plenty places where the euro driver comes up to you, points his phone at you to read a text asking where he has to go.
As for London, they’ve never been able to speak proper England down there anyway.
It just seems these days as long as you haven’t got six fingers and dickie eyes you can walk into this country with no ref or checkable work history and get a job. No need to speak English just being your pot of crayons!
I find this all over the country… I use my android phone with google translate… it helps but only if the site has co operating staff.
All depends on how close to break time it
Radar19:
I had one at Erith that couldn’t grasp the fact that I didn’t have a trailer number because it was a rigid…
Similar thing, I pull up to the security window and after 5 minutes trying to work out what the foreign guy is asking me (what are you delivering) I just look back out of my window and point
To be fair this happens a lot with all nationalities
OP I made the same point to management at a depot I work at …
I said what if someone had an accident of the fire service was called, how could the person in security actually inform the incoming emergency service where to go etc … they now make it policy that all security staff can converse by all means in English .
our sister company set on a foreign woman on an artic…a few days later she broke down at one of our stores,but when she rang in they couldn’t understand a word! luckily for her the storeman translated for her.
Radar19:
I had one at Erith that couldn’t grasp the fact that I didn’t have a trailer number because it was a rigid…
Similar thing, I pull up to the security window and after 5 minutes trying to work out what the foreign guy is asking me (what are you delivering) I just look back out of my window and point
To be fair this happens a lot with all nationalities
Hiya…this sounds bad. lorry driving was done mostly by people who couldn’t read and write…modern(cowboys)
thats why the job has been thought of as second class. i’ve know stacks of drivers who only had a slight
knowledge of reading and writing…but they had a talent for finding their way around and map reading
although i could read and write there was plenty of words i had trouble understanding years ago.
i left school in 1965 and 10 of the 30 kids in our class couldn’t read.
after 50 years i know where most of them are and many of them have become successful self employed
workers, two i know can’t retire because they’re so busy…i also know of teachers who’ve given up teaching
to have a life of roaming around. it takes all kinds…i do agree people should know plenty of english before
coming to the UK…just for H&S reasons.problem is now we have Indian people who employ their own race.
the most annoying thing for me is when you give them your name and they say SORRY,so you tell them again and again they say sorry because they don’t understand your name,my name is one of the easiest to understand,so when they repeat my name differently I now just say yeah that’s it fella and they are happy to let me in,also bear in mind that if you say anything about the language barrier you are seen as racist,you cant win
truckman020:
the most annoying thing for me is when you give them your name and they say SORRY,so you tell them again and again they say sorry because they don’t understand your name,my name is one of the easiest to understand,so when they repeat my name differently I now just say yeah that’s it fella and they are happy to let me in,also bear in mind that if you say anything about the language barrier you are seen as racist,you cant win
Ive had a fella in a gatehouse who struggled to understand my lingo,in the end he looked at the lorry and booked me in as globetrotter,the trl number was the seal number and vice versa
You ever been to an RDC where staff could read 
