Аннотация
Multilingual workplaces in Central Asian cities routinely involve three or more languages, yet workplace language policy is typically formulated as a binary choice. Based on 52 recorded service encounters and follow-up interviews, this study documents how employees use code-switching to manage status asymmetries with customers. Switching to Russian marked institutional authority; switching to Uzbek marked solidarity. Formal monolingual policies were widely ignored, suggesting that policy design should account for the pragmatic work that switching performs.