Imagine living with a roommate who speaks French but claims to also speak perfect English. If you knew that his English was good but definitely not perfect, would you call him out on it or use his grammatical errors to have a laugh?

In this story, one roommate chooses the second option, and it is pretty funny!

Keep reading for all the details.

Dear flatmate, I will follow your instructions to the letter

I live in France but I come from another European country.

One of my flatmates, let’s call him Pierre, can be hard to deal with.

He spent around one year abroad working and thus he considers his English skills nearly impeccable. To be fair, his English is ok. But FAR from flawless (this will be important later!).

But that’s not the only thing about him that’s annoying.

In addition to this, one of his worst traits is that sometimes he seems to have an urge to correct any teeny tiny imperfection in your statements, I guess just to show you that you’re wrong and he knows better.

An example? Me: “New Zealand is on the opposite side of the world”

Pierre: “Well, technically on the other side of the world there is water, New Zealand is on the opposite side from Spain not France” – discussion not quoted verbatim, but should give the idea…

He invited Pierre to go hiking.

One specific episode (leading to the MC) left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I was going to do a very simple hike with some friends and he stopped me while I was putting my running shoes on, almost ready to exit.

Pierre: “Oh, hello! Where are you going?”

Me: “I’m doing an easy hike nearby, with some friends. Wanna join?”

Pierre: “Nah, I do not have running shoes. I will buy some and join you next week.”

Me: “Ah ok, but be careful, because next week we are planning to go hiking in the Alps You might want to consider buying trekking shoes, not running ones.”

All Pierre managed to do was infuriate his roommate.

Pierre: “Well, the Alps where? You know, they extend from southern France to Austria.”

He had a grin on his face, as if to say “I gotcha!”.

His response got me in the wrong way, and I rudely yelled back something in the likes of “Oh, come on, you know what I mean!”.

It must be noted that we live approximately 1h away from the Alps, and while yes, Alps are huge and range from France to Slovenia, his remark was undoubtedly unnecessary.

He felt bad about what he said.

I quit the flat huffing and went looking for my car.

On the way there, I thought that maybe I was too harsh with him. I texted him – in English, since in the conversation above he addressed to me using it rather than French. My message was “Hey, sorry for my reaction before. I did not like your comment but I should’ve responded more calmly”.

He answered back with “Haha it’s ok bro, just remember that I am an accountant and you must be precise with me”.

Unfortunately, I am a little touchy and him not apologizing at all made me go in “bitter mode”.

He used Pierre’s imperfect English against him.

Few days later, I was still salty and I received a message from Pierre, in English. The message said “Hi, can you put a beer on the fridge for tonight?”.

I read it once again, and a voice in my head whispered part of the message he sent me few days before: “you must be precise with me”.

So I grabbed a bottle of his beers and placed it on top of our fridge.

He must have had forgotten his request, because he did not ask me about the beer and few months later the bottle was still up there, visible only by climbing on a chair. At least I had a good laugh showing it to every friend coming to visit me!

Pierre does sound pretty annoying. The beer stunt at the end is funny. I kind of wish Pierre had remembered the beer and asked about it, but regardless, it’s nice that it gives OP a laugh.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person would’ve made sure the roommate remembered the beer.

Another person would’ve done even less to make a point.

This is funny.

The English language has its quirks.

Nobody likes a know it all, especially when they’re wrong.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.