Were you there with TS? How could you know what was meant, when TS only mentioned the two words? Nobody could tell without hearing the whole sentence. Even with my piss poor Cantonese and non-existent Mandarin, I know that words in Cantonese and Mandarin are very vague, when heard out of the context of a sentence.

It is a problem that does not exist with languages like English and Malay. When your son asks you how to spell a Malay or English word, you just tell him. When your friend asks you how to write a Chinese "word", it always needs to be put in the context of a short sentence or phrase. There'll be a short period of back and forth while he tries to communicate exactly which word is meant. I do not read or write Chinese myself. When I ask a friend to write it for me, or type it into a computer, this always happens.

A little bit of knowledge leads to misunderstanding. If you only learn the cuss words, then you'll think people are cursing you all the time.

Even if you're dark skinned, Chinese speaking people will not slur you by calling you "dark people" or "black people". "Black people" is not a racial slur. It's just a normal word that means "black Africans". The slur is "black skin".

"When Malay or Indian say the same thing"? What, where, when. I don't remember it on this forum. Care to post a link?

There are people (look in the mirror) who are mistaken (making such a simple mistake, like a 4 year old kid), but claim to be so "expert", and refuse to be corrected (unlike a 4 year old kid).

The people here trying to point out the mistake is not being defensive. They're trying to help you not make a fool of yourself next time. They are not language experts, and are not claiming to be. But the mistake being made here is the silly kind made by very young kids (or people who does not really know the language, but is overconfident and thinks too much of their understanding).

Now, just consider what happens if you're really mistaken, and that phrase really isn't a racial slur. As soon as you walk out of earshot, the entire staff in that shop will be laughing at you. 'So "action", thinks he understand Cantonese'. When Andy is at home having dinner, he will tell his family about this unreasonable customer, forcing him to appologize so many times, on his day off, for some imagined wrong. They will all join in cursing you.

Or you confront another shopkeeper, and he really let you have it (because, well, you deserve it) ....

Think of the embarassment when you repeat the same mistake when you visit a shop with a friend/colleague. After you leave the shop, they point it out to you, only for you to say "actually about 20 different people on this web forum tried to explain to me, but I didn't believe them".

Don't get me wrong. There are lots of racist Chinese people in KL and the rest of Malaysia. And they do call members of other races all sorts of epithets. But THIS isn't it. You're barking up the wrong tree. Come back here when you have a real example. Generally, this would be hard to get, because most people speaking the various Chinese dialects knows that people of other races who do not speak the language, nevertheless may have memorized the cuss words. So they wait until you're out of earshot before calling you that.

BTW: I think if your command of the language is good, when someone actually refer to you using a racist word thinkin you don't understand, the way is not to phone up someone else. You shout directly at the offender "hey, what did you just call me?" But you do it in Cantonese (or whatever language he was using). Boy, would he be shocked and surprised!

"black people" is not a cuss word or a racial slur. Somebody else already pointed out the correct way to refer to dark skinned people in a racist way. This isn't it.

Fatty probably was rude. There are so many rude sales people there.

TS's fault is that he imagined the second guy calling him bad names, when actually he didn't. TS only misunderstood. It cannot be the second guy's fault. (At least with regard to "hak yan", the other phrase, we need to hear the entire sentence to be sure).

"black person" is not a derogatory term, in Chinese. Nor in English.

Spoken like a boss.

"If my employee screws up and treat the customer badly, just tell me and nobody else. My employees bad behaviour should not rub off on my business. But whatever good things they do, I take credit for it".

1. in your dreams!

2. if everybody did that, there'll be no incentive for the company to do anything. They'll just sweep everything under the carpet.

They bad publicity you get is what keeps us from getting even worse service (bad enough that they already are).

Disclaimer: though in this case, I think TS might be actually mistaken about the second guy being racist.

Your turn will surely come one day.

I went to Sri. Wanted to buy an Epson R2000 printer. Not in stock, which is not surprising. A printer like that, most places don't have in stock. Hard to sell, it'll just become obsolete on the shelf if nobody buys it.

So I asked the salesman if they can order it for me, and what the price would be. He doesn't know the price because the boss isn't in. But says they can order. Took my name, phone number, printer model. Promised they will called me the next day. The second day after that, still no call, so I phoned them instead. That guy I spoke to isn't working that day. His colleague told me the same thing the first guy did. Leave name and phone number, they will check with boss and call me back the next day. They were polite. Just never called back.

They're probably not set up to do back-to-back orders. They move a lot of volume. Whatever is there, sell it off quickly. Ordering stuff, probably too much trouble and time consuming for them. They should have just said they don't do "ordering".