I got called out this week to a small job due to my team making "unwanted sexual advances"
The client owned a small Serbia business and employing Serbia staff and one of them was only in the UK for a few weeks.
My crack team arrived at the job, a female staff member ask them if they wanted anything and they said "tea"
I'm told the woman turned pale and looked really shocked, then the phone calls started
So i get called over, ready to start sacking people for "unwanted sexual advances". A hr team is brought over from head office too. All work stops.
The owner of the business arrives and talks to the woman and then talks to me. He walked over laughing and apologies for all the trouble and asks for the work to continue. No action to be taken ageist any of my team.
It turns out the Serbian word for you is pronounce "tee" ( ти)
I was a little unsure about this so I put it thru google translations for my report and there is was.
Just when you think you've seen it all...something like this happens
Unwanted sexual advances and tea !!
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Re: Unwanted sexual advances and tea !!
A scary moment with dreadful connotations, luckily averted due to you and your team's speedy intervention.
On a similar vein, but not as scary, I have a wonderful physiotherapist attending me at the moment who is from a different culture to my own and whose English is beautiful and who lives in my home city.
The other day, we were discussing how and where I have my medication delivered from/or not. I said, "from Boots the chemist" (others are available of course).
Now, keeping in mind he is used to my city-born accent where he has lived for many years, his bewildered facial expression was a picture.
After many repeated "boots the chemist" phrases from myself and even a spelling of said phrase, he began pointing to his shoes and asking why?
It turns out, after him rising to leave before his time was up, with me frantically trying to find various words for Chemist, he laughed and laughed apologising and explaining he had heard of Boots as a place to get medication and he had heard of chemist, but both together in a sentence implied something very nasty to him. If I had said "Boots the Pharmacy", all would have been well. Thank goodness for MrG! I'm still not too sure how I offended him! One for me to learn from.
We had a good laugh and with a few more teachings of my home city lingo pointing him to learn from Billy Connolly videos, all was well in the end.
"A candle loses none of its light by lighting another candle."
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