One Time I Offered a Patient an Apricot Condom...

I had just started a job as a hospital housekeeper — delivering meals to patients. A great opportunity… except for one small detail: My English was basically: "Hi", "Good morning", "Goodbye", "OK", and "Fine". That’s it. That’s all I had. Everything else? Pure improvisation, hand gestures, and lots of smiling.

Each day I’d roll the food cart through the hospital, try to read the menus (with my broken English), and ask patients if they wanted soup, a main dish, or a dessert. Simple enough — in theory.

The scene of the crime:

One afternoon, I walked into a patient’s room — a sweet older lady and her husband were there. Big smiles, super friendly. I did my best professional voice and said:

“Would you like drink? Soup? Main dish? ...and today... for dessert…”

Then I looked down at the menu card and read:

"Apricot condom."

Yes.

I said condom!

Out loud.

With confidence.

Instead of "Apricot Condé."(A fancy name for a pretty basic apricot dessert. Of course.)

The reaction? The couple burst into laughter. The husband wiped tears from his eyes and said:

“Oh no, thank you dear. At our age, we don’t need that kind of dessert anymore.”

I stood there, frozen, my face turning fifty shades of red. I apologized, tried to laugh it off — but the damage was done.

The aftermath?

By the time I got back to the nurses' station, everyone had heard.

“Hey, any apricot condoms left?”, “Is that the new hospital special?”, “Can we order that with whipped cream?”... Even the doctors were laughing.

What did I learn?

Read carefully. Apricot desserts are dangerous. Humor saves lives (and dignity… kind of).

Sometimes, your most embarrassing moment becomes the story people remember you by — and weirdly, it brings people together.

New chapter

I have a few more stories like that where my poor knowledge of English hindered me more than it helped me, but that's the charm of emigrating without a language.

If you think that in my country learning a foreign language at school looks like in American movies, you're sorely mistaken. I learned English for literally 3 years, i.e. 2 times a week for 45 minutes.

In my first year, I transferred from another school where I had continued German, so I ended up in a class with English where others had been learning it for years, so they had an advanced level and I didn't even have a basic level.

It's like learning math 2+2 and you get an equation with fractions, or calculating sine and cosine.

Of course, the teacher was an older, sharp-tongued with a strong Ukrainian accent, so even in my native language it was hard to understand her.

It was hard, but with a few clever tricks I managed to pass the most important exams and at the end of school I left the walls of that barn with sincere joy.

And then came the idea of ​​going abroad...

What a crazy idea... what courage when I look at it now. I admire myself for what a hard path I had to go through. Without the language, but I was able to find three jobs at once. I could work even 18 hours a day. I slept during every break, wherever I could and as much as I could. Stubborn as a donkey, but that was only because firstly I needed financial stability, and secondly spending time with English co-workers very quickly taught me how to speak English so that I could be understood to some extent.

Always fight for yourself

Later I started to improve my language skills just to be able to argue for myself. Yes, that was my motivator. When I opened my unwashed mouth, nothing could stop me. Even their arguments that I was a young girl with no experience and knowledge of the language could not be used when I asked for a raise.

So, if you have the opportunity to learn the new language of bees, it is best to enter their nest and build a hive together with them.

Do you have your own awkward, “language barrier” moment?

Share it in the comments — because if we’re going to be hot messes, we might as well laugh together.