Bartender Geek

I have the same experience with Spanish. One of the stores that I worked at with my company was 40% tourist traffic (close to Disney) an much of that tourism was from South America, Europe or Brazil. Over a couple of years, my customers taught me how to talk about our products and tell our promotions in Spanish (and Portuguese, because it is close enough to Spanish for what I need). I now am completely fluent in my "work Spanish" to the point that I've had customers start talking about other things and get baffled when I stare at them blankly. I am definetely NOT fluent in Spanish (unless you can get around Spain only talking about body care...). I also have a deaf customer who I can sell body care to. She is a regular who I sign to, not enough to really communicate, but enough to know that I respect her enough to try. Then we do a lot of pointing and laughing bc my ASL is so bad!!