Grumpy people!

I was very pissed the other day at work, by an unfair costurmer/tourist. I am working on a whale watching ship (part time) as a tour guide, and usually I speak english, but if there are many german speaking people I also speak german (and sometimes a little danish or swedish...) I get a lot of praise for my german, and I know I´m good at it, allthough I am missing some words in the whale vocabulary, but then I try to explain in other words. I got this job because of my german, since there are often many german speaking tourists, and their english is often not so good, especially if there are many elderly people, so since they needed another guide, it had to be somebody who also speaks german. Sometimes when I´m missing a word, people tell me the right word in german, and they are always happy to have a guide who speaks german, even though its not perfect at all.
Anyway, the other day, there was this grumpy tourist that came to me after the trip as I was thanking everyone for the trip, and the captain was standing there too, and told me (angrily, in his bad english!) that I needed to learn more german, I was very difficult to understand I tryed to just smile, while defending myself and told him that I was the only german speaking guide this ship had, and is had to be better than just having english. He then told me that the other whale watching ship (a different company) had a much better guide that spoke much better german than I did, and so he kept on going...
Sometimes it´s difficult to hear the guide because the microphone makes it unclear, especially if its windy, and this day it was so very windy, so maybe he just didn´t hear me well.
I was just pissed that he had to attack me with the captain standing there.
They captain told me afterwards, that there was no wonder that the other guide´s german was very good - it´s a german woman, who hardly speaks english!!!

*Big pat on the back* I am sure you did just fine, and your German was perfectly understandable if the feedback you've been getting has been positive. Kudos to you for being professional and smiling through his sh**.

You're describing someone who wouldn't have been happy even had you spoken perfectly; he would have picked something else to complain about in comparison to the other tour. These kinds of people are such a downer, so don't let this one guy spoil the good job you do.

When I was living in Germany I ran into a few people like that man. They'd ask me for directions and when I'd attempt to answer they'd snort and say "Amerikanerin!" like it was something nasty and then stalk off and not even listen to me.

The thing is, these people are everywhere and they live to ruin people's lives. It's hard when you're doing your best in a foreign language and they do this to you, though. But like my boss said when I was a trainer, ignore the one or two that complain and go with all the good ones. I'm sure you did really well.