Perhaps someone who has actually lived in England knows more about the restaurant business and language there than you do?

HN has global community; please check your linguistic provincialism at the comment box.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wine%20waiter

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wine_waiter

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jul/25/whatar...

Related: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rudimentary

Not as a sommelier but a wine waiter and no, my English was not rudimentary but I did not have much practice at speaking so I had very hard time on the phone(I guess I was used to do lips reading?).

There are also roles that require almost no interaction with the guest and these roles were filled with immigrants that barely speak any English. Roles like bringing the plates or collect the empty glasses and dishes.

Also, it's not like they had much choice, In these 4 months I haven't met a single British person as a colleague but Spanish, Italians, French, Bulgarians, Romanians, Iranians, Brazilians, South Africans, Kiwis and of course a lot of Australians.

The pay was just above the minimum wedge. Later I actually built an app to help these agencies organize their workforce but it turned out that they were happy with Excel, e-mails and Whatsapp.

Um. This is quite possible.

Talking on the phone is a unique thing, and takes more skill than talking in person. Not only does sound get somewhat distorted on the phone, but you don't have as many cues to take from when speaking. You can't see their facial expressions, for example. These help you understand words you aren't as familiar with. Not only that, but most folks are less patient on the phone than in person. You can be at an intermediate level of language and still have problems on the phone.

Not only that, but he's talking job-interview skill level phone-talking. Speaking in a second language is much more difficult under stress. This is exactly why I tend to use English instead of Norwegian with doctors and dentists.

In person, folks are more relaxed. If you forget a word, people fill it in. And with his job, he could easily learn the lingo he needed to do the job. He would have a limited context of things he actually knew, small talk isn't so bad, and for everything else you can ask.

Sounds like they were working in catering for events, which has traditionally been a job you can show up and get with no skill (unlike sommelier which is highly skilled).

Correct, it starts with events but as you gain some experience agencies start giving you shifts in restaurants. I worked at some seriously fancy restaurants. It was very interesting to observe and interact with extremely rich people or people in position.

A French accent , for example, would probably gather more respect, London can be quite a pretentious place at times. (Hell even I would say that the average French person probably knows a lot more about wine than the average Brit).