Me and my new caregiver, Amber, were shopping at our neighborhood Costco shopping for some groceries. It was about 5 or 6pm or thereabouts, so it was packed up the ass. Going around corners involved slowing down and hoping a middle aged soccer mom wouldn't crash into me at 3 mph, I can't handle that kind of high speed collision. So Amber was walking in front of me for completely unrelated reasons looking for whatever she was looking for. I was lost in my own head thinking about how much I hated Costco and whether or not a wheelchair bomb would create a big enough explosion to bring it down. Probably not, "DEATH TO THE SOULLESS BOX STORE!" wouldn't really pack that big of a punch. Especially when you're going 0.5 mph and can't scream very loud. I discarded the idea. As I pondered other ways to destroy this place (become CEO and turn it into a Chuck E. Cheese? Buwn it down, to the gwound?) I heard a loud, high pitched voice behind me. It kept repeating the same thing over and over again. After about three times of hearing the same thing, I realized it was addressing me. "WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?" A little boy of about 10 years of age sprinted up next to me. He had short hair and grandma glasses. You know the ones with the string that goes behind the head? Yeah, those. He looked up expectantly at me, waiting to hear a story about how I fought off a pack of roving ninjas that were trying to eat baby kittens. But I froze. My face turned ten different shades of red and I felt my body temperature rise about 5 degrees. I knew the answer to his question, but I was in shock. For all my experiences I've had, no one had ever asked me point blank like that. Everyone thinks it and wants to ask it, they're just too polite. "WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?" he repeated, "DID YOU BREAK YOUR BACK?" The concept of an inside voice was completely foreign concept to this kid. "Umm... I was born this way." I said. I wasn't really born this way, but that was the quickest way to explain it and get out of this whole embarrassing situation. I felt like everyone was staring at us. "WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?" I started to realize that he wasn't quite right. That, or he couldn't hear me, which was entirely possible since I can't talk very loud. I looked at Amber for help, she was as embarrassed as me. "Um... he was born that way." She said with a smile and a sweetness in her voice. "AND WHO ARE YOU?" He pointed at her. "I'm his friend." "I'm sorry, he's got problems." His mom came out of nowhere. Apparently she had been there the whole time. Why she hadn't dragged him away was beyond me. "ARE YOU GONNA BE ALIVE?" He asked me. I suspected he was trying to ask if I was going to die. I just shook my head no. You can stop this at any time lady, I thought. He then started to ask about my equipment, "WHAT DOES THAT DO?" "It helps him breathe." "WHAT'S THAT FOR?" "So he can drive his chair." Finally, when it looked like he was going to start touching stuff, the mom apologized and dragged him away. I'm convinced there has never been a more awkward situation in the history of the universe. FOCUS: Share the story of your most awkward moment.
Kind of makes my "I swear this has never happened to me before" thing more than a little pale in comparison. (But at least her dad was sympathetic). Bump.
One of my most awkward, feel-shitty moments was in high school during a conversation misstep in a lull in class. A couple of us were talking about how our classes should be weighted more so your GPA doesn't take a big hit for getting a B in a hard class, compared to taking a class for an easy A, and I made the mistake of emphatically referencing one girl as an example. Said girl was ranked 3rd in our graduating class, but didn't take any hard classes, didn't do anything extra-curricular so there was a generally uneasy feeling about her class standing among our classmates. She was so damn quiet huddled up in the corner of the classroom that I had no idea she was even in that class, when I starting talking about her. As I spoke I could hear the whole class go silent and finally someone whispered "Dude, she's in this class!". Cue awkward eye contact with the subject and me slumping in my chair, beat red, feeling like a pile of shit the rest of the class, since I was the dick who talked shit about the defenseless, quiet girl right in front of her. Definitely not my finest moment.
Since I've been bringing up my call center days: High ranking executive: I'd like to figure out what my pension payments would be if I stopped working in 5 years. Me: Sure no problem, you can use the website or contact HR and have our analysts review and provide an estimate. HRE: Great, how do I get the ball rolling on that? Me: All you have to do is e-mail or call your local HR rep and they'll take care of the rest for you... But it looks like you must have mentioned something to HR in passing because we received a request for you ten days ago... Hmm, that's weird, they asked for an estimate of benefits if you left at the end of the month, I'll see if we can get it pushed to 5 years form now. HRE: I never told HR I was curious about my pension... *awkward silence* I'm sure he never thought he'd find out he was being laid off from some phone rep in a benefits call center. Seriously though, this guy had NEVER called about his pension before in his 15 years with the company, how the hell was I suppose to know that's when he'd be losing his job? Luckily everyone agreed with my line of logic and I didn't get in any serious trouble. Well... everyone except his local HR rep who would immediately ask to be transferred to "someone who can think before they speak" whenever she called in from then on. Seriously? Do you have to be that much of a bitch? You can just hang up and call again, you'll get to someone else faster that way and avoid the needlessly awkward tension. The hilarious part is that 50% of the time whoever I transferred her to would end up putting her on hold and ask me to answer her questions, since by that time I was the lead rep for pension calls (also had an actuarial exam and analyst experience under my belt and was WAAAY overqualified for that job).
I made a "your mom" joke once at someones house, I can't remember the exact phrasing. "Dude, my mom's dead," my friend, who I didn't know all that well at the time, replied. YEAH RIGHT! I'VE HEARD THAT ONE BEFORE! "She wasn't dead when I fucked her last night, but I've been known to have that effect on people." BAM! ZING! BOOM! Then he told me to follow him and showed me his moms ashes. There was a very long silence.
Perfect timing for this thread. So a few days ago I bumped into this girl I know whom I hadn't seen in a while and for most would be considered to be in the pretty fucking hot category. As we're getting past the typical pleasantry bullshit my nose starts quite literally taking a piss out of both nostrils. See, this isn't the first time it's happened to me. When you've been in the water all day swimming/diving, you're sinuses sometimes get full of water without you really noticing or feeling it. If you don't find a way to drain them after you get out, they'll do it for you at the most inopportune time. Usually it's when I'm talking to someone and usually they happen to be of the fairer sex. Anyway, the conversation immediately stops, and we're both watching the water flow out of my nose. I tried to salvage the encounter by explaining how I was saving baby seals but I don't think she bought it. Fuck it, we still had a laugh about it. Also, I once mixed up my appointments with the urologist and the optometrist. It ended up with me explaining how "you know, they're red and watery" to the urologist where he is shocked and asks that I pull down my pants. After a lot of yelling at each other we both collapsed on the floor laughing once we realized what happened. Oh and this always happens: I'll be in a restaurant, the waiter will bring me my food and then tell me to enjoy my meal. I'll ingeniously reply "Thanks, you too." Then we'll exchange awkward smiles and I'll be left feeling like a retard.
Monday afternoon, one of my friends from my hometown stops in at my work to say hi. Her: So when are you bringing your boyfriend home to meet everyone? Me: We broke up last night. Her: Ohmygod, I'm soooo sorry. Me (unsuccessfully trying not to cry): It's okay. The rest of the conversation was equally as awkward until she finally left.
Gah, I could fill up this whole thread by myself. I have a knack for stumbling into and/or creating awkward situations. It's awful. Something like this happens to me basically every day. It was hard to choose just one, but I think this one is probably most relatable on this board: Sometime in the last year or so, I heard that my favorite model, Lily Cole, was going to be on the cover of Playboy, and I wanted it. I thought it would be easy, especially in comparison to buying sex toys. I strolled up to the men's section of Border's, and set myself in between two gigantic, scruffy men (Note: I was a 19 or 20 year old little girl) and started browsing. I found Playboy, but it had someone else on the cover. Since it was right at the beginning of the month, I thought maybe they hadn't changed it over yet. So, I found the nearest employee (of course it seemed that not a single female was working that day) and asked if they had the Playboy with Lily Cole in yet. He didn't know, so then he sends out a call over the walkie-talkie system, so that everyone can hear, and yells into it to some other worker "HEY, DO YOU KNOW IF WE HAVE THE PLAYBOY WITH...WHAT WAS HER NAME AGAIN? SORRY, I HAVE A GIRL HERE WHO'S LOOKING FOR A SPECIFIC ISSUE OF PLAYBOY BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO SEE THIS ONE GIRL...WHO? OH, HER NAME'S LILY COLE. DO WE HAVE THE PLAYBOY WITH LILY COLE ON IT FOR THIS GIRL HERE?" That other person doesn't know, so this conversation repeats 3 or 4 times. All the while, he's walking around the floor with me trailing him. I don't know where he was going. I'm convinced it was just to maximize the number of people to hear about my Playboy desires. Then, he leads me to the counter, and yells "MAYBE IT'S ONE OF THESE MAGAZINES," and gestures towards the, like, Borders hardcore porn section (who knew?) where all the magazines were about gay dudes and bondage and stuff. And I give him this shocked look and say, "No, it's just Playboy." "WELL, SORRY, MISS, BUT I GUESS WE DON'T HAVE THE PLAYBOY YOU'RE LOOKING FOR." So then I finally left, so embarrassed. I went home to double check that this was indeed the month she was going to be on it, hoping that my embarrassment hadn't been for nothing, only to find that she's on the cover of French playboy. Bien sur.
I'm an office manager for a concrete construction-esque company. My boss is the estimator, and he drops his estimates off with me every morning from the day before so I can scan them in and attach a PDF copy to customer contact info. It's not unusual for someone to call 6 months to a year after we've done an estimate for them, and want to see if they can still get the work done. So, it's handy to have the PDF file to pull up, email it to the boss, and get a quick "yeah sure, do it" or "fuck this guy for waiting so long, now it's going to be a mess, add $$$ to the bid" from him. Also, sometimes people misplace a bid, so this way I can just shoot it to them in an email. The thing is, the customer gets the top white copy of a quote, and I scan in the yellow carbon copy. Sometimes my copy - the copy I will later give to the crew who goes and does the job - has some extra notes on it that my estimator doesn't want the customer to see. Like, how long the job will take, quantities of different materials, and special instructions on being careful not to destroy customer property. So, that's how this happened: I get a call from a customer one day saying he's misplaced his copy of his bid & could I please send him a copy of it. No problem. I slam his email address into an email, attach the bid, and hit send. About an hour later I get a phone call that goes like this. Me: "The Skirt, How can I help you?" Customer: "Hi, you just sent me a copy of my old bid." Me: "Oh yes, Mr. So-and-so, glad you got it, is there something else I can help you with." Customer: "Yes. I was wondering if I could get the NON Dick price?" Me (confused): "I'm sorry, what was that?" Customer: "Well, on the copy of the estimate you sent me there's a note towards the bottom that your estimator must have added after he gave me my copy of the bid that says "Bid higher because guy was a Dick." Now, I don't give a damn if some shit-for-brains-high-school-drop-out construction worker thinks I'm a dick, but I'd prefer not to get charged extra just because he didn't like me." Fuck. Me. On a normal day I would have opened the PDF before I sent it. On a normal day I would have checked the bid for extra notes and made changes to it so that the customer wouldn't see our add-on notes. And normally my estimator NEVER comments about a customer's personality (in writing). But that was not a normal day for a whole other circle-jerk of reasons. I'll be damned if I even remember what floundering apology and excuses I gave. It was the single most awkward moment of my life trying to come up with the right way to handle that. Long phone conversation with the customer, & then my boss, & then the customer again short - my boss stood by his pricing & his character judgment and the customer did NOT have us do the work. The whole thing just makes me wince to even remember.
I recently had this conversation with a cashier at a bottle shop. Me: Sounds like you have a nasty cold there. Her: Why? Me: Your voice sounds really nasally. Her: I don’t have a cold. Me........ Luckily there is another bottle shop nearby, I might stay away from that one for a little while.
I´m a 21 year old stereotypical nerd and work as a waiter. I was talking to this one Irish gentleman who looked around 50 for a good while and he seemed overly friendly. When he was leaving he asked if I wanted to go to his hotel room to make some money on the side. I just froze and stammered out: "No thank you, I have a girlfriend". Unfortunately one of my co-workers heard all that and got a good laugh out of it and of course told everyone to make it even more awkward.
1. I'm a big user of the middle finger and horn when I drive. Yeah, I know it's bad and stupid and someday some asshole's gonna get out of his car and beat me up or something. But, sometimes when people do dickhead moves you have to let them know. Cut to driving in rush hour one afternoon. This girl started to turn left at a light, but it was so congested the light turned red and she had nowhere to go. She blocked the entire lane I was in. (Call me crazy, but maybe don't pull out into the middle of a busy intersection during rush hour if the street you're turning onto is literally at a stand-still.) Anyway, you can see where this is going. I honked, flipping her the bird. I was pissed this harlot made me miss the light. Unfortunately, the girl turned out to not only be someone I know, but someone I saw every day on a regular basis. We locked eyes, and then I awkwardly spent the next 10 min preoccupied with something until she cleared the way. It was pretty fucking awkward when I saw her the next morning. She was a bitch to me from then on. 2. I went to a stylist for the first time, and she broke into tears while asking how much I wanted cut. I was like, "Um, should I come back later?" She insisted I stayed, and proceeded to spill this story about her boyfriend getting thrown into Army jail and how nobody would tell her what he did or something. She had mascara running down her face the entire time. It was really awkward, and she ended up giving me a shitty, uneven cut. I'm surprised she could even see anything with all the tears. I kept asking if I should leave, but she wouldn't let me. It was a really awkward 45 minutes. I didn't know what to say since I met her minutes earlier. I guess she really needed money in addition to a new boyfriend. Professionalism, people! 3. My best friend since childhood died when we were 17. My mom made me get a haircut before the funeral (an entirely different story about how crazy my mom is). Anyway, I was pretty upset. I had been crying pretty much the whole day. I sat down in the chair and the stylist says, "What's up with you? You look like you just lost your only friend." I just looked at my mom and burst into tears. The stylist felt really, really bad. I didn't mean to make her feel weird, but looking back it's kinda funny.
My mother has walk(ed?) in on me masturbating a few times, but there was one day in particular when it was extra embarrassing. I was lying in bed with my laptop open, a pair of underwear right next to my head, and my pants at the bottom of the bed. My mom knocks, and before I can say "just a minute", she flings the door open and insists that I talk on the phone to some random woman I have never met about library sciences. There is nothing more awkward than talking to a stranger on the phone wearing nothing but a blanket while your mother stands over you, waiting for her cellphone back.
Getting caught cranking it is the worst. The only time I've been walked in on was in my first apartment by my roommate, and I didn't even have my dick out yet. Ive told this story before Im sure. I got off work at 6 and he was supposed to be off at 8 then we were going to go to a party. As usual when there is time to kill and no one home jerking it becomes inevitable. I had my computer hooked to the stereo system in the common room since I had the most music on it when we'd use when people were over. Unfortunately I forgot that the volume was turned way up for playing music. I fired up my trusty go too porn "Virtual Sex with Jenna Jameson," it goes right into her fucking at volume level 11. Before I can even jump up to turn down the stereo my roommate waltzes in the door, home an hour early from work. I didn't have my dick out and there weren't jizz soaked tissues laying around but porno blaring with me fidgeting to turn it down gave it all away. My roommate busted out laughing and I was beet red. We ended up going to the party where he told every living soul that we knew the whole story. The feeling of awkwardness did not subside for days.
Went with my girlfriend up to her friend's house for early dinner and drinks. This woman's little boy from a previous marriage was in town visiting. I'd heard the story of how the boy wanted to live with his mother, but her new husband wouldn't allow it. So I felt bad for the boy, having never met him. In fact, I even went out and bought him some cool wasp warrior kinda thing. So we get up to their house. We ask about the boy and I tell his mother I have a present for him. She calls him. He comes in sniffling, holding his hand over an eye that is discolored and swollen shut. Given his dysfunctional upbringing, the first thing that popped into my mind was child abuse. Yet the asshole husband was at sea (why I agreed to the dinner in the first place). I was just about to raise some serious concerns when my girlfriend asked about the eye. Turns out a wasp took it out. Cue me handing wasp warrior gift to tragic one-eyed kid. Awkward moment #2: after dinner, said kid and friends talking in a room they thought was out of earshot: Friend: do you like the toy breaky gave you? One Eye: NO!!!
The most awkward moment of my life came when my dad came home early from work (the only time this ever happened) when I was a jr. in high school. He walked in on me with pants around my ankles jacking it to some porn on the family computer. His only words were "holy shit! you better be able to delete that history before your mother gets home. I knew we should've gotten you your own computer." Neither of us have mentioned that fateful spring afternoon since then. The second most awkward moment of my life occurred during my first semester of college when I walked in on my roommate jacking it while watching porn on the tv in our dorm room. I immediately walked out and went and had a beer at a friend's room and came back a little while later. We sat in awkward silence for a while and then he went to bed. We never discussed the happenings of that night.