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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/DawnShakhar on 2024-08-15 19:20:48+00:00.

This was more than 15 years ago, but it still makes me smile.

I worked for a non-profit which was owned by a mother company. The manager of the non-profit managed to run the company into the ground financially, and the mother company considered two options - firing us all and rehiring us with no accumulated benefits and no tenure, or firing us and selling the company. This was in Israel, official language hebrew, but the mother company were all Americans. They decided to have a meeting with all the workers to discuss the terms of our continuing to work - but insisted the discussion be held in english. The employees all spoke hebrew, of course, and many weren’t fluent in spoken english, but the mother-company representatives doubled down on the language - despite the fact that many of them knew hebrew. It was clearly a tactic to confuse the workers.

In the end, the compromise was that the meeting would be held in english, with on the spot translation supplied by our company. As the only total bilingual, I was asked to translate. I knew they were trying to sell us a rotten deal. I also knew some of their people knew hebrew, so I could not indicate my opinion about what was said, or even use a sarcastic tone when I knew what was said was false or manipulative. So - I translated. Faithfully. But whenever I had to translate something the mother-company representatives said which I knew was manipulative, I made a slightly longer pause before the main part of the sentence. All my co-workers caught on very quickly. The mother-company’s offers were rejected, we hired a good lawyer and got nearly twice the severance pay they initially offered us. Too bad they didn’t have a fine ear for speech rhythm.