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Yesterday, I received a little flier from BJ's Club, advertising membership to their store. The flier has several pages and contains a "free" membership card. It goes on to describe some of their products and the advantages of membership.
The entire leaflet is basically in Spanish. Sometimes, English and Spanish are both on a leaflet, but this is the first one I have received that is almost entirely in Spanish (there are a few English words on it - enough to easily count them). Whenever English is used, it is clearly secondary: Spanish is in large font, bolded red or black ink, etc. English is in much smaller font in gray ink.
I have no problem with advertisers catering to a demographic if they think that doing so will bring them more customers and/or business.
However, I thought I lived in the US and while I know that there is no official language, wouldn't you think that big box stores first and foremost use English to entice new customers, especially if they do not know their background?
If we lived in a heavily latino area, had a last name that seemed like it could be latino/hispanic, etc. I could understand the mental leap that BJ's took. Alas, none of this applies. Thus, BJ's apparently believes it's best to contact potential new customers in Spanish, first.
Mind you, I am an immigrant to this country. I also learned English - because I figured that it's the dominant language here. Fortunately, I have Spanish as part of my repertoire as well - seems like I should start brushing up on it in order to facilitate life here in the good ole' US of A.
Frankly, I was offended by receiving a leaflet that is completely in Spanish. I am thinking about contacting BJ's Club in yet another language since, apparently, we don't need to have a common language around here. Of course, they'd do with my letter exactly what I am going to do with theirs: Ignore it!
Clearly, they were trying to court me as a customer, but they've certainly managed to achieve the opposite.
Maybe their market surveys indicated their sales demographic was primarily Hispanic and it was more economical to send out their blurb in Spanish. The probably gained more customers than they lost. That is why they advertize to specific groups.
That's what I thought, too. Alas, this is an affluent, overwhelmingly Caucasian (and English-speaking) area. Since the store has been around for many years, I am guessing that they are trying to expand their market share by actively recruiting hispanics.
If it was a worthless pursuit, they probably wouldn't do it. We are a changing nation...we are becoming more diverse (something which I really have no problem with). Everybody always wants things to "stay the same" as if barely 200+ years of history is really some mark of permanence in a world that is over 4 billion years old. Let it ride, dude...
It's getting like that here, in the coastal mid-Atlantic, over 1000 miles from any Spanish speaking country. Now my wife is Colombian and when all her legal paperwork came through and she was able to work I decided to help her in the looking process by snooping around to see who was hiring. I learned a lot, because the few year-round jobs in the rural area here cater to the hispanics and I had no way of finding what places were looking for work. The seasonal jobs in the resort city here all cater to Russians and Eastern Europeans so I had no idea of any of those places as well. There was nothing in any of the papers, radio, or local TV. She found work on her own. The spanish language periodicals and towns where a lot of mexicans lived were plastered with help wanted adds and flyers----in Spanish only. Very hard for an American to find out who was hiring here.
So pretty much here it seems if your an American (last I checked this part was in the US but I'm not quite sure any more) you need to own your own business, be in real estate or become a bar tender to have a job.
I often see ads on buses (usually for McDonald's) that are entirely in Spanish or Chinese, but it's never occurred to me to get bent out of shape about them.
Just throw the flier away and move on with your life. If you get angry or offended at this kind of innocuous stuff, you might need some professional help or mood altering medication.
My late husband used to work for BJ's warehouse for the East Coast and he was about the only one who spoke English. No wonder management wanted him to become one of "them" so badly!
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