Embarrassing Social Situations

[Gus Mears]

Happens to the best of us. Relay your tales of woe. 

Inspired by a horrendous moment yesterday. I was walking home after work and there was an adorable Spaniel trotting along with his owner ahead of me. I walked past, smile on my face and song in my heart and wanted to take one final look back at the dog. 

Unfortunately, as I turned around, a woman happened to be walking in the other direction and was parallel with the dog. Her rear almost exactly in the same line of sight, and she looked back to see me, grinning like an idiot, appearing to leer at her arse. 

She looked absolutely appalled, tutted, shook her head threw her arms up. I'm still there, pretty much incapable of movement, mouth agape like Homer Simpson in the car with the babysitter, which probably made things worse. I really should have just ran away at this point, but for some reason I decided the best course of action was to yell "I WAS LOOKING AT THE SPANIEL!" twice, while thrusting my arm in the general direction of the dog. 

The woman shook her head again, the dog owner shook his head, people turned around and stared at me. It was catastrophic and I will be playing it back in my head for years. 

[Kaz Hayashi]

But seriously, the Spaniel line cracked me up.

[Guest]

She was clearly covering for the reason she turned round.

[Bellenda Carlisle]

I once told a barmaid her Jim Morrison portrait tattoo was cool only to see her face instantly transform into a grimace of despair as her wavering voice informed me it was in fact a picture of her mother. I sent someone else to get my next round.

[Sergio Mendacious]

The worst thing I ever done -- I mixed a pot of fake puke at home and then I went to this movie theater, hid the puke in my jacket, climbed up to the balcony and then, t-t-then, I made a noise like this: hua-hua-hua-huaaaaaaa -- and then I dumped it over the side, all over the people in the audience. And then, this was horrible, all the people started getting sick and throwing up all over each other. I never felt so bad in my entire life.

[RancidPunx]

Left work the other evening . It was bumper to bumper traffic on the way out as there are many businesses in the estate where I work. 

 

I spy my colleague Damien, who is coming up from behind walking and he doesn’t know my car.  My plan is that I will put my passenger window down and when he passes my stationary car I’m going to give him a fright. He will be startled, then he’ll see it’s me and we’ll have a laugh.

Damien walks by, I put the window down. For some reason I do a big shout while not actually saying any particular word. Kind of a loud “HEEEEEEWOOOOOOOO” sound . I did shout it but it turned out Damien had his earphones in and is a very quick walker. He goes straight by oblivious to my hilarious prank.

So if turns out that there was also another pedestrian walking by immediately behind Damien and she did hear my cry.

She came over to my window and asked was all ok ? In a really concerned way. Just as I tell her about my prank that has misfired the cars in front of me had pulled off and I was getting beeps from the car behind . Before I could answer her I just drove off.

 

Of course I made about 40 feet of progress and then traffic was stopped again had to endure her walking past me again. I looked straight ahead but could see her looking at me out of my peripheral vision. 

 

Bad bad prank.

[Gus Mears]

12 minutes ago, Sergio Mendacious said:

The worst thing I ever done -- I mixed a pot of fake puke at home and then I went to this movie theater, hid the puke in my jacket, climbed up to the balcony and then, t-t-then, I made a noise like this: hua-hua-hua-huaaaaaaa -- and then I dumped it over the side, all over the people in the audience. And then, this was horrible, all the people started getting sick and throwing up all over each other. I never felt so bad in my entire life.

Did this actually happen? Or am I missing some cultural reference you're highjacking? Jesus Christ, Serge. 

[Sergio Mendacious]

18 minutes ago, Gus Mears said:

Did this actually happen? Or am I missing some cultural reference you're highjacking? Jesus Christ, Serge. 

Here I am, confessing my misdeeds to some nice Italian-Americans that came to our restaurant.

[RancidPunx]

My Mrs was shopping in an Irish budget women’s store called Penny’s.

She happened to be wearing a dark dress which wasn’t a million miles away from the staff uniform . 

A nice little old lady assumed that she worked there and asked her for some help picking out some items and my Mrs happened to know what she was talking about and didn’t want to make the old lady feel bad so she started helping her choose her items.

As she is helping her, another person starts to patiently wait for her attention as they also have assumed that she works there.

Then another person starts to wait beside that person.

 

She helped 3 people and then scampered out the door before she was rumbled.

[Pinc]

I was on a packed train once but managed to get myself sat down. A couple of stops later a woman gets on with 5 or 6 kids, all of whom are running around her causing bedlam. She looked stressed out. She managed to find a seat for herself and maybe one of the other kids to sit down, but the others just had to squeeze in with them. They were maybe 20 yards away from me in the carriage.

After a while I went to the loo and when I got back one of her kids was sat in my seat. Little girl no older than four or five. I was going to let her keep the seat as her need was greater than mine, but my bag was underneath it. "Excuse me, can I just get my bag from under your seat?" I asked.

The little girl came over all shy and started to run back to her mother, twatting her head on one of the arm rests as she did so. By the time she got back to her mother she was in floods of tears, too upset to explain what really happened. The mother looked at me with a face like thunder - "did that man kick you out of your seat? The fucking prick!"

Cue a whole train carriage of eyeballs on me, smiling weakly, unable to explain what had happened through the crowd.

Had to just sit there absorbing the collective ill-will of the whole carriage til I got home. Most mortifying experience of me life.

[cobra_gordo]

Took the Mrs to that London for our wedding anniversary a couple of years ago. We don't have an in-car sat nav so we were relying on phone maps to get us out of town until I got on the motorway and I could figure it out from there myself. The wife's iPhone battery was temperamental at best so she's sat in the back with her phone connected to a charger running off the fag lighter in the boot, relaying the directions to me in the front. It speaks volumes that our car came with a few nice extras like jet black limo tinted windows in the back but doesn't have a working fag lighter in the front.

Phone map decides to take us an interesting route and we're going past Lords cricket ground just as England have finished playing. There's thousands of people flooding out of the ground, it's a lovely summers day and I've got the front windows down making the most of the sunshine. We're cruising along at 3mph with pedestrians all over the road as Mrs Gordo tells me to take the next left. I absent-mindedly look in the rear view mirror and say something along the lines of "Cool, where abouts am I going after that? Just keep me clued up". What I didn't realise was that there was a woman walking next to the car, who can't see my Mrs because of the tinted windows and can't hear her because of the radio (10CC's "Dreadlock Holiday" had come on Radio 2 in the greatest bit of timing possible). All she can see is some guy seemingly asking the voices in his head for updated directions whilst partly singing "I don't like cricket". I wasn't paying attention but the Mrs spotted her and unbeknownst to me let me answer a few more questions whilst this woman looked on. I eventually made eye contact with her and she looked at me like I was a total weirdo before disappearing. The wife found it hilarious, I just hoped nobody else had heard and I couldn't get away quick enough.

Nowhere near as bad as Pinc's though.

[Sergio Mendacious]

I'm harvesting the last two for a sitcom I've just decided to write, because they're both glorious. The signifier for if they've worked is if the Curb theme starts to play in my head over the second half of the story.

[John Matrix]

Simple this, but needs a bit of context.  I used to work for a family intervention project, part of which involved the families concerned completing a monthly appraisal of their appointed therapist, these were called a Therapist Adherence Measure, or TAM for short.

My role was simply to print a hard copy of the questionnaire and prepare a pack including that and some other paperwork for them to take to the home visits when due.

One day, my boss - a lovely, but incredibly straight laced lady in her 50's, well spoken and always impeccably dressed from head to toe in elegant designer clothing got up to leave for her visit.  She was almost out the door when I spotted her paperwork on my desk, prompting me to yell aloud amidst an open plan office of around 80 professionals...

"ZOE!!  YOU FORGOT YOUR TAM PACKS!". 

 

[Kaz Hayashi]

Two here:

1)... About a year ago I popped to the bogs just before a meeting. These particular work bogs don’t have a mirror and the only mirror near by was in the disabled toilet adjacent to the ones I was in. Anyway, I had a bit of a cold, so I blew my nose, finished off and as I was leaving I decided I needed to check myself in the mirror, just to ensure I wasn’t a mess, the cold had puffed my eyes up you see.

So I waited outside the disabled toilet waiting for it to become free, after 5 mins the person exited and I pretended I was just waiting for someone else, purely so it didn’t look too weird. As I was about to enter they turned to head back in as they’d forgotten something, they looked at me like I was a piece of shit whilst I stood halfway in the door, proper staring with a frown, que me stating “I just need to check the mirror”, they got their stuff and left. As they did someone else turned up who needed to use that toilet so I just left, my phone simultaneously rang to say my visitors for the meeting had arrived.

I headed out, back through the canteen (only route from bogs) and passed the person I had the exchange with at the toilets. They were with 5 or 6 other people, at a lunch table. They all looked at me, again, like a piece of shit, I stopped and looked at them for probably about 2 - 3 seconds and was about to re-explain but decided not to bother as it would seem weird, so headed to the meeting.

I entered the room. My boss, my colleague and 4 visitors were there mid discussion, they all stopped and looked at me. My boss hinted that there was a smudge on my face, my colleague handed me her compact... “Fuck” slipped out of my mouth as I looked at a reflection of a beard covered in snots and bog roll.

 

2) Same Boss.

About 3 months later I was hungover on a Monday morn. A good mate of mine was renting a room in my house and on the Saturday we started up a new season on Champ Man. We got incredibly pissed and stayed up until about 4.00am playing.

I’d never taken a sly sicky before but it just wasn’t going to happen. I texted my boss and said that I was ill. I got a reply just saying “ok, see you tomorrow”.

My mate was a mature student at the time who pretty much only attended uni twice a week. Monday was a day off for him, so I thought “champ man it is then”.

I texted him full of beans saying in the style of 3 lions “I’m staying home, I’m staying home, I’m staying.. I am staying home”. I was pleased as punch, heard my phone beep, looked at the message “yeah, see you tomorrow “.. I’d texted it to my boss.

 

[Kaz Hayashi]

Double post