Putting your foot in it

[Chips Ahoy]

2nd semester of high school chemistry. I'm having a conversation with A and B who sit near me during a lab. B says "she" in reference to A. We've been together in this class for months, so I'm quite sure A is a guy. I correct B with "he". B says "she" again quietly. I'm not backing down. This insult to A will not stand. I break out my advanced debating techniques. I talk louder. "A is a guy." I state unequivocally. B narrows her gaze and stares me down. While I wonder what B's problem is, A bursts into tears and runs out of the class.

Oops. I apologize to B, for all that's worth. I felt awful. Being in high school is tough enough, I didn't want to make an innocent girl miserable.

I can forgive myself for being an idiot. I can't forgive myself for not tracking down A and trying to make things right. I didn't try because it would have been uncomfortable for me. How bad was it for her?

I don't remember if she ever attended that class again. That was 20 years ago. Sorry A.

[Mrs. Utah]

I posted this a while back in another thread...

I was in the 11th hour of a 12 hour shift this last weekend and had a patient that was a paraplegic.
She is in her 2nd trimester and there for evaluation of abdominal pain. As part of my usual assesmment I ask if she has felt her baby kicking or moving around.
She replies, "She is moving constantly, never stops"
I then(stupidly) say, "Well, she will keep you on your toes."
A moment of uncomfortable silence and I move right along to the next question.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
freshman year of college, early in the semester

i was asleep in my room one evening when i was woken up by the voice of a girl laughing. i was pretty hungry, so i stumbled to the dining hall still half asleep. my friend asked me if i had just woken up and i responded "yeah. i'd still be asleep but some girl was squealing like a banshee in our common room." he gives me a "nice going, dumb ass" look and then the girl across from him says something (don't remember exactly what) and i immediately recognize her voice as the one that woke me up.


edit: i apologized 3 or 4 times and then walked away w/my tail b/t my legs. somehow we still became friends.

[/ QUOTE ]

Awkward, but you didn't have much if anything to apologize for. It sounds more like she was the one caught out.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
This summer my older sister, her husband and I were sitting around talking about her their new baby and life in general. My sister turns the conversation to herself and makes some comment about being overweight and ugly. Completely not thinking, I look my sister dead in the eyes and say "You are not ugly". Of course, she takes this to be me admitting that she is in fact fat and starts bawling. I felt like [censored].

[/ QUOTE ]

Hahaha, women are professionals at this. Don't try to compete as an amateur!

[Blarg]

There's a sort of goofy one I remember. It was kind of a reverse putting your foot in it.

Some guy came by a place I used to work at many years ago, fixing some wiring somewhere. We talked a bit, and he seemed like a nice guy. Then he asked me a casual question, and I responded, "Do you have any idea who you're talking to?"

He looked shocked and not one more word came out. After a bit more of him working, and talking in the process to others in the office, I realized what had happened and told him, and we both breathed a sigh of relief. He thought I had suddenly put on huge airs and put him in his place, which was down down down. "I thought you were the owner or something," he said. Actually, he had been asking for an authorization or something and what I had meant to get across was that I was so low on the totem pole that my stapler probably had more authority than I did.

[Dominic]

[ QUOTE ]
Every year, down here in sunny Orlando, Epcot has a food and wine festival. We get as many friends as we can gather and go on an all out drinking around the world fest, it's a total blast. Well, among my friends, I'm known as that crazy, super lazy poker guy. So far be it from me to dissapoint, every year I rent an electric wheel chair to ride around in as I get crazy drunk.

Out of the thirty or so of us that attended that day, I knew about 20 or so, a few were newcomers, who didn't know my gig. So I meet everybody and off I go to rent my electric wheelchair, a hoveround type of device. Immediately at expected, I'm mocked for being that lazy. Prepared for this, I tell them that we're going to be drinking all day, and within a few hours they'll be begging for rides. So I suggest that they all rent one and we can be a "gang".

Fast forward to a few hours later, of course by this time we're all faced, and one of the newcomers, a guy named Reggie, who I had just met that day, asked me if he could get a ride on my wheelchair. I told him to piss off, I had told him to get one, and he had refused, now he would have to suffer, because there was no way I was giving up mine. By the way, Reggie had burn marks all up and down both his arms, but I didn't ask, and he didn't tell, so no big deal.

So a few more hours pass and a friend of mine Bob approaches me and asks me what I think of Reggie. I reply, he's a solid guy, very funny, and cool all around. Bob then tells me that Reggie is a Desert Storm veteran and was in an IED explosion, where he lost both of his legs. Yes, both of his legs, he's got prostethesis from above the knees. You'd never be able to tell looking at him if you didn't know. [censored], I just turned down a legless vet for a ride in my wheelchair that I don't need. Ummmm yeah, that pretty much makes me the biggest prick on the planet.

[/ QUOTE ]

sorry, but this is funny as hell. Plus, you get a pass because you didn't know! How could you?

[Dominic]

I'm racking my brain for a story, but I really can't think of anything the slight bit mortifying.

Either I'm a saint or just so vain my ego chooses not to remember the times I've made a fool of myself.

I'm guessing the latter.

[tarheeljks]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
freshman year of college, early in the semester

i was asleep in my room one evening when i was woken up by the voice of a girl laughing. i was pretty hungry, so i stumbled to the dining hall still half asleep. my friend asked me if i had just woken up and i responded "yeah. i'd still be asleep but some girl was squealing like a banshee in our common room." he gives me a "nice going, dumb ass" look and then the girl across from him says something (don't remember exactly what) and i immediately recognize her voice as the one that woke me up.


edit: i apologized 3 or 4 times and then walked away w/my tail b/t my legs. somehow we still became friends.

[/ QUOTE ]

Awkward, but you didn't have much if anything to apologize for. It sounds more like she was the one caught out.

[/ QUOTE ]

interesting. i insulted someone to their face, albeit unknowingly, so i apologized w/o even thinking about it. the fact that i called her out in front of a group of people, some of whom she didn't know, makes it even more appropriate.

[Blarg]

Well, you didn't call her out, because that's something you can't do unknowingly. You lacked the intent to call anyone out. You didn't even have the intent to so much as hurt anyone's feelings or address anything that you knew someone in the room did. What you did was make a simple statement. Whether the statement was fair or not is all that's at issue. Did she indeed howl like a banshee? If so, you may rest your case.

It seems like one of those awkward situations where nobody is really at fault, but if you want to apologize, it can't hurt. Doing it over and over and feeling it's still not adequate, and carrying guilt and shame around for years because of it, seems like overkill to me, but to each their own.

[clownassassin]

So I'm meeting with a couple(husband and wife) of customers at work. I'm doing a satisfaction survey with them to make sure that everyone was polite with them on their visit to our resort. I'm friendly and like making friends. The man is wearing a pair of Persol sunglasses. I genuinely like Persols so I say, "Hey great sunglasses." He replies yeah they're OK and takes them off and puts them on the table. I start explaining to him how Persols have world class lenses. I talk about the history of the company and how they were first designed for Italian fighter pilots in WW I. I point out to him the the Persol insignia on the side of the glasses. He says that he just likes them because they're comfortable, and seems generally disinterested in conversing about the subject.(This doesn't slow me down though) I respond that of course they are comfortable because of the way the temples of the glasses are designed, but the true greatness of the Persol sunglasses is the world class lenses. At this point he is making no eye contact with me, and just staring off into space. I feel like I'm talking to myself. I finally give up on the conversation. I finish up the survey with them and ask him to sign his credit card receipt. At this point his wife takes the pen and places it in his hand and then guides his hand to the paper to sign. Yes he is blind. Of course he doesn't give a [censored] about the lenses, he just likes them because they're comfortable.