It was time to interfere, and they did it brilliantly.
The OP wrote, “I heard him perfectly fine the first time (I had my music off by this point to listen in), but I was pissed. I took out one of my earbuds, and asked, ‘Sorry?’ He repeated his question. He probably thought I would be more than willing to jump in or something.
Well, I, with a very disgusted look on my face and in an aggravated tone, said, ‘My mom can understand English perfectly fine.’ I didn’t wait for him to respond and instead put in my earbuds and looked back at my phone, completely ignoring him. I wasn’t loud or anything, but enough people were paying attention for him to look very embarrassed as he glanced around to look at how people are reacting (his coworkers were smirking).
My mom, holding back her amusement, proceeded to politely ask her question for what must be the 7th time. Surprise, surprise! He suddenly perfectly understood what she was asking and answered it. He then tries to backpedal and keeps repeating something about how he thought she was asking something else, and he was helping by doing this, and blah blah blah.
I ignore him the entire time, scoffing, my mom cordially says thank you, and we step away. I make a point to immediately start talking in our native language about him to my mom while shooting a nasty glance his way.”
