Sometimes, companies look for the best way to save money, even if they have to cut the salaries and benefits of their employees.

In a meeting between the management and employees, this woman was asked to translate the English message of their bosses to Hebrew so the employees could understand.

When she knew that they were trying to deceive them, she modified her translation a bit so her colleagues could understand what was going on.

Check out the full story below.

Ask me to translate live? Fine, I will.

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.

There was a language gap between the management and employees.

This was in Israel, with the official language being 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.

This woman thought that the management was trying to deceive them.

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.

So she translated the message into Hebrew.

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.

She made sure that her colleagues understood what was really being relayed by the management.

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 coworkers 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.

Let’s see what other people have to say about this.

Well done, says this user.

This one is impressed.

This user thought it was pre-arranged.

Finally, this one says it’s perfect!

It looks like they messed with the wrong team.

Good for this lady.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.