French family mocks woman in elevator. They didn’t realize she was bilingual until her epic mic drop exit

There are many advantages if you know how to speak more than one language. Not only does it help you communicate with a wide variety of people, but being bilingual or polyglot just might come in handy in unusual instances. u/Pixel__Detox, a 28-year-old woman living in a high-rise building in downtown Vancouver, took to the online community to recall an instance when she put her bilingual skills to good use by teaching a rude family an appropriate lesson. The woman returned home from an evening run when a French family entered the building with her. As one of them held the door for her, she thanked them in English.

They all ended up walking into the same elevator. The family consisted of a couple and their three boys, around the ages of 8 and 10. "They were chatting in French, and since it's my mother tongue, I could understand everything they were saying," the woman wrote in her post. They had to go up more than 30 floors in the elevator, and it took a little time. That was when the French dad asked his sons a strange question in their language, which the woman clearly understood. The dad asked his sons in French if the woman in the elevator was pretty or not. The woman was stunned and wondered if they were actually referring to her.

One of the young boys said that the woman was not pretty. "I stopped breathing for a second, realizing fully that it was truly me they were blatantly judging. I froze; sadly, that's mostly how I react in situations that are just unbelievable. With just a few floors left before I could escape the awkwardness, I had a choice to make," she wrote. Either she could let it go or seize the opportunity to exact her "perfect linguistic revenge." While exiting the elevator, the woman turned around and used her sassy accent to wish them a nice evening in French. The look on the family's face was priceless.

"I left quickly, but in hindsight, I wish I'd made direct eye contact until the doors closed. I've dealt with rude comments before, but this moment was a chef's kiss moment. I've always dreamed of a situation like this where I could use another language to surprise someone who thought I couldn't understand them. I'm just saying, keep your language skills to yourself. You never know when it can come in handy!" she suggested. Concluding the post, the woman recalled how the mom in that French family stood silently the whole time without reacting to anything that went down in the elevator. She wondered if the woman was getting similar rude remarks from her husband in daily life.

The Reddit community came ahead with similar stories of exacting petty revenge with their linguistic skills and cheered for the woman. u/InevitableTrash9596 wrote, "I have the same experience in France. They don’t expect foreigners to speak French but I do. Yes, I made them feel awkward a few times." u/pip-whip commented, "The fact that you called them out while being polite was the best part of this. They went low. You went high." u/bright_shiny_day added, "I'm a New Zealander and have never been formally taught French. I just lived in London for 16 years and worked with all nationalities. I would have understood that mean-spirited question instantly. I couldn't have responded in anything but the most pidgin French, though!"