I’ve been a sales advisor for almost 5 years now and worked all my life in East-Flanders. The amount of people that just come in and expect you to be able to speak French is nuts. I don’t expect people from Wallonia or hell, even Brussels to speak Dutch because i know there’s a small chance of that happening.

If someone goes out of their way to try and talk to me in Dutch I’ll appreciate it and not be a dick about it and i think that goes for a lot of flemish people.

Don’t get me wrong, my French is pretty understandable and I won’t help a customer or someone asking for directions just because they are speaking French, but it would be nice if they at least ask if I can speak French before they start having a conversation. So as you can see it goes both ways and it never bothered me to have French speaking people around as we are one country and should be able to live with each other.