I would hope that isn’t the case for @bingo-junior - but I am puzzled as to why a simple enquiry as to whether a French person speaks English should “spiral downwards” if the answer is negative.
Not having a common language complicates things, obviously - but humans are excellent communicators and can usually work things out. These days if you have a phone and a signal Google translate can often help enormously, of course.
Yes, so I believe, as long as it is the right sort of phone. 
But on one occasion one of Fran’s French aides left an excellently written message for me in English to update me on my return and the next time I saw her I congratulated her on her English because she had never used it in conversation with me. She blushed and owned up that she had done it all on her phone. 
And cause some embarrassment, confusion and unwanted sales offers 
If the question is asked in English then I imagine quite a few would take exception.
The only time I ask someone if they speak English is when I get an unwanted sales call.
When I first came to France I had very little French (French GCE “O” level failed) but it felt rather rude to ask if someone spoke English. I did have a technique which worked very well in getting the communication going.
I would apologise and say that I had three problems. I am very old. I am quite deaf. I am English. I found that this technique always gains their sympathy and breaks the ice.
Recently, checking in at a local hospital I was told I had a delicious accent. I could not work out if it was a compliment or an insult.
At the end of the day, smile a lot and wave your arms about and never raise your voice (unless it is the SFR service desk!)
I remember reading that, I think it was in India, that if even if one attended university and didn’t graduate it was customary to append BA (Failed) as there was prestige in having got there in the first place.
Bit like an Indian driving test, you and your mates jump in the car with the examiner, one of you has to drive in a straight line for 100 metres any you all pass the test . One of you needs to know how the horn works too.
Not unlike the motorbike test I did in the States twenty years ago. The examiner stood at the test centre door and told me to drive around the car park, bingo I’d passed. I did get 98% correct on the theory test though, the only question I got wrong was the alcohol limit
And vice versa…! We were in the garden with our French neighbours when a car pulled up to ask the way. Everyone was highly amused to hear a huge Québécois accent, and they had a great time being rude about the accent, making fun of them once they had left, and ‘doing’ the accent to show us how appalling it was.
You mean your reply was “There’s a limit?” 
You ask about other non -english speakers and it can be dreadful. Quite a few times now I have had to help the young (generally black and male) refugees who have been dumped here. And people can treat them like idiots when in actual fact they may well be far better educated and intelligent than the supermarket cashier (for example).
Attitudes vary across the country, but it really doesn’t take much to master a few introductory sentences. And that tends to make things work.
I regularly interpret in tricky situations here, mainly Arabic and Spanish at lycée, German and English at lawyers’.
I had a Quebecois friend at the Canadian Embassy in Paris in the late 80s who had to ‘learn’ French before arriving in Paris since his native tongue wasn’t deemed acceptable.
Or intelligible 
(Unlike ‘intelligence’ 
)
You are a star.
Canada has changed so much recently, they cater to all languages now if you are to speak to a call centre employee or visit any public institutions, I"m from the west so can’t comment on Quebec… No surprise, given Canada’s open border policy and massive immigration last year alone requires public services in multiple languages…
If you’re car was towed because it was badly parked, the service person at the end of the phone line isn’t likely to want to speak anything other than French, as opposed to say, a breakdown service where there are often multilingual telephone operators (my son worked for one for a in a multilingual team). The towed vehicle service gets a lot of grief from virtually every irate person out there, so they tend not to take it too well when someone doesn’t speak French to them. I imagine that there are exceptions that prove the rule, though.
Point noted… But I don’t see how asking if someone speaks English is arrogant? I’m of Asian descent, and Chinese folks always ask me if I speak Chinese all the time, or they just blurt it out in Mandarin. I just tell them I don’t and move on, never do I feel they are arrogant for asking. What am I missing here? Is there an innate arrogance for English speakers to ask others if they speak English first? Seems overly sensitive. I mean, I’m asking in French 
For some reason I just have a feeling the French just don’t like English…
From what I hear, the Québécois government reciprocates with French “continentaux” - if you want a job in public service in Québec and you come from mainland France, or dare I say it, French-speaking Africa, your French might not be considered up to the job depending on how well you are educated…ironic given, as @bingo-junior has pointed out, the massive influx of immigrants to Canada over the past 20 years or so, but then Québec is a law unto itself.
I offer you this….
But then I hate a lot of the British (but mainly English) I encounter in France now! A sweeping stereotype of course but I find they drink too much, talk too loudly, are unnecessarily rude to people who don’t speak much english and seem to forget that actually quite a few French people can understand what they are saying when they make rude comments.
And while I can be super helpful to stray tourists I can also totally blank them and pretend I don’t speak english if they are rude (I look German rather that English so can get away with it).