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This is a question Foot in Mouth Syndrome II

Have you ever said something and wished the ground would open up and swallow you? Tell us your tales of social embarrassment.

Thanks to BraynDedd for the suggestion

(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 14:12)
Pages: Popular, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

This question is now closed.

First Impressions
She was a radiant Nordic princess on the school bus; I was a nerdy halfling. I noticed she was playing with the ends of her long, blonde hair. I screwed up the courage to approach her, and cheerfully inquired, "Nits?"
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 21:20, Reply)
One of many
Embarrasing moments, but probably the most cringeworthy. I was 17, and working in a local decorating shop. Now I was spectacularly shy at that age, and I always seemed to get tongue tied around women. not women I fancied or girls my own age, but all women, with the possible exception of coffin dodgers.

This particular day I had been left on my own in the afternoon, and due to it not being busy, I buried myself in a copy of the local evening paper to pass the time. Iwas reading the story of a local man who had stabbed his wife to death and must have been engrossed because I was only dimly aware that a customer had walked into the shop and was browsing the paint aisle.

As was the custom, I would immediately ask them if they needed assistance. The trouble, on this occasion, was that I still had the story from the paper clearly in my head, and once I saw the customer was a youngish woman, the combination of shyness and an inability to shake the story led to the following line from me..

"good afternoon, can I hurt you at all?"

She stood there looking at me for what felt like a lunar year before laughing and saying that she was ok thanks. I was probably giving off the same heat from my face as that Olympic torch by this point and simply walked back to the counter to see if It were possible to physically tear out my own tongue. She left the shop without saying another word.
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 20:42, Reply)
Embarrassment is for the weak and the mediocre.
This week is going to overflow the internet.
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 20:17, 7 replies)
Visiting the Reichstag in Berlin
As a crowd control measure, they let you in through some slidey glass doors. Then you are trapped in a glass room before some other slidey doors open up and admit you to the building proper.

As the door closed, I said "They'll start pumping in the gas any minute now..."
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 20:02, Reply)
Mint!
I used to work in a secure area (no, not a mental hospital!), access to which was through a door directly behind me. Anyway, a guy comes in one day who had a reputation for having breath that could strip paint and a lovely complimentary habit of leaning in close to speak to you.

So, one afternoon I hear the door open and close, and then he's over my shoulder talking to me, whilst I fight the urge to barf over my keyboard. He finishes talking to me, and shortly after I hear the door open and close. At this point I start to rise from my chair and say in general to the room:

"Fucking hell!, somebody ought to tell him that a mint wouldn't kill him".

To find as I complete my turn that he's stood behind me fiddling with his phone!
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 19:48, 4 replies)
The lives of others.
Naturally, this happened in a pub.

There was a group of us, and we'd all had enough to drink to be loquacious. The conversation meandered around the normal range of pub conversations, and - inevitably - we ended up talking about politics. Or maybe film. Yeah: film. That was it. The Lives of Others in particular: that film from a few years ago about East Germany and the guy who worked for the Stasi.

I started chuntering on about how it was a pretty good film in the main, but a bit obvious in its moral and political stance: the DDR, after all, wasn't all bad. It did a lot right. Fantastic social services and education, for example. Great childcare. You could do a lot worse than live in the DDR.

I didn't know everyone sitting around the table well - only by name. How was I to know that one of them was from East Berlin, that her parents had been openly critical of the regime, and that they'd spent quite a lot of time in a Stasi prison?
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 19:42, Reply)
Trolley Dolly
Have a speedy pea!

A friend of mine who was a trolley dolly, saw a man on her flight who looked miserable, she asked him if he was OK and he said he wasn't because he was being deported. She responded with:

"Oh well, don't worry, you'll be home soon!".

She was renowned for little things like this.......
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 19:36, 1 reply)
I couldn't help it.
One night a girlfriend and I were watching TV and Sarah Palin appeared on the screen. I shook my head. "She's insane, but I'll bet she gives a great blowjob."

The girlfriend (also not a fan of Palin) chuckled. "And how can you tell that?"

"Because she's batshit crazy. The crazy ones always give the best blowjobs."

"Oh yeah? How do you know that?"

"Hell, everyone knows that. Just ask your dad."

I parsed that one through myself as I saw the eruption starting to build, and remembered that her mother has been on lithium for the past thirty plus years. "Ummmm... I didn't mean-"

Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of this scene.

It's true, though. And in reality I don't regret that line- hell, a corpse couldn't have resisted that one.
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 18:01, 15 replies)
Roasted Pea.
Now a fair few years ago I was dating a girl. We were taking things slow, on behalf of the fact she'd been seriously hurt in a former relationship, and had a 12 year old son. Things were going swimmingly. Weekends at hers, weekends at mine. We settled into a routine as you do when in a relationship.

We'd had a great day, shopping, pub lunch, then back to hers for a few beers, food and an early night.

Lay in bed, starting to dose, facing away from me, she says 'I love you' I was feeling the same way, but we'd not yet said it. So foot in mouth situation was that I laughed, farted, and had a very cold shoulder for the rest of the weekend.

Not pearoast. I feel awful about this one - I feel guilty for even mentioning it on the interweb.

A very close friend from school finally decided to add herself to the evil that is bookface. She was my best mates first love, in every sense. She always had long hair, always looked after herself, now in her photo she has really cropped hair. One of the first things I was going to say was typical foot in mouth. Your hair looks a bit carp. We hadnt spoken for years so I decided to for once be a gentleman, and put it down to a bad hair day and an angry hairdresser.

It was soon after, I found out she'd had cancer.

Thank you brain, for once you saved me!
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 16:57, 3 replies)

I used to work for social services in an area office, and would sometimes help cover reception as we got a lot of drop in 'trade'. One day a middle aged woman and an elderly gentleman came in. She came to the counter, whilst he loitered near the door saying nothing but shaking vigorously, didn't take a doctor to work out which degenerative condition he was suffering from. I took some details from her, filled out a form and went in the back office to hand these details to the social worker who would shortly go and sit with Mrs Jones and her father to see how we could help. As I headed back out to let them know someone would be out shortly I realised I'd spoken only to her and hadn't involved him in the conversation. Schoolboy error thinks I, he's probably fully switched on under all that shaking and what not, I needed to involve him, make him feel part of the process. I deliberately ignored the lady and shouted out across the busy waiting area to her father, I was bursting with pride at how thoughtful I was being as the words " RIGHT THEN MR PARKINSON'S......" came tumbling out. Silence followed, save for the gentle rustling of Mr Jones' coat. It was a silence that spanned a century or so, until I could take no more and ran into the back office and hid. Not my proudest moment....
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 16:43, 2 replies)
We were gearing up for our team Christmas lunch, which - as everyone knows, involves "Going out for lunch" and not coming back in the afternoon.
Just as we're doing so, one of my team - Kay - gets a client come over - "Oh - can you just change this a bit, please? And move that up. And make that bold ... actually ... what would it look like if we moved that over there, and had that in the corner instead? Could you make the text smaller? No not all the text just that bit ..."

I'm going to have to lock up after them anyway, so I send an email 'round saying "Go - I'll meet you there."

Another member of the team responds "Well - we might as well all wait until Kay's stopped having the piss taken out of her by that stupid client"

... just as, during a pause while her computer thinks, Kay decides to check her email.

With the client sitting next to her staring hard at her screen.

Somehow - through the magic of office science - I was the one who ended up being instructed to go and apologise.
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 16:40, 4 replies)
The best gruesome moments are when everyone pretends it didn't happen.
Scene: a gathering of various families with people of all ages. I had hoped it would be a cheerful way to complete someone else's sentence. I presumed anyone could recognize the line from a 60's pop song.

Young girl talking about the night of clubbing; "It was sooo, like, you know..,"

Me; "Rama, rama, ding dong."

Silence as everyone regrouped away from me.
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 16:23, Reply)
Oh yeah and then there was when I went to meet my girlfriend's parents
and came back from the toilet with my cock still hanging out my trousers except I didn't realise cause I was muntered on smack and rocks and I said "I'm free" like John Inman and they just stared until my girlfriend did a fake laugh then we went for dinner.
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 16:07, 2 replies)
Video Conferences
Great, if you're in far flung places and all need to catch up or discuss projects etc. However, up until last week, I'd never added more people into the conversation, it was just the client and me.

So we're ploughing through the to-do list when she (and this is important) recommends adding her colleague into the conversation.

"Not a problem, let's see if this works," says I, "I've never done a three way before" just as her colleague, of super model looks, pops up in the screen.

Not even a hole punch sized hole opened up, gah.
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 15:54, Reply)
Mobile in mouth rather than foot
When sitting across the table in a pub from a flatmate who's been getting on your tits, never text them by accident, rather than a mate, describing them as a "fat cunty bitch"

Never.
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 15:54, Reply)
Don't mention the war!
A German student had come over to our office to learn more about the (German-owned) business. She'd been helping out with documenting something or other, and had asked me to check her English. I corrected a few things, and then got to some error or other that was very minor. I explained "Not wanting to be a grammar Nazi or anything, but...", then realised that probably wasn't the best choice of words. I continued to blather on, and to be honest, she probably thought nothing of it. Still, I felt like a bit of a prick. Nothing new there though.

tl;dr? I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 15:51, 2 replies)
There was this time
when I was paying two fat germans to wee up my back at my gran's funeral and I said "waaasssssuuuuup" like off the budweiser adverts and no-one laughed oh my god it was awful but we all laugh about it now other than the two fat germans, humourless cunts.
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 15:49, 1 reply)
Never agree with your girlfriend that her sister is really pretty.

(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 15:33, 11 replies)
Feeling Sheepish
I find myself in a group of people who I mainly don't know. The conversation comes around to the fact that they are from various different regions of the UK, and the truth - or otherwise - of supposed regional stereotypes. One particular couple were Welsh, and naturally we were talking about the differences between the Welsh and the English.

All was light and happy, until I innocently commented that the guy looked, to me, very Welsh - in fact, I said, he really reminds me of Rhys Ifans.

Stoney silence and stormy looks ensued. I swear a stylus was dragged across a jukebox record. All eyes were upon me, and they weren't friendly.

Turns out that what everyone knew, except me, was that Rhys Ifans was the girl's fairly recently ex-boyfriend...

I'll get me coat.
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 15:26, 2 replies)
I'm at 6's and 7s on what to say
Too shy to think what
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 15:20, Reply)
I'll take the 5th on this one...

(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 14:54, 1 reply)
Extended friends and family gathering one Christmas.
About 15 of us gathered for food, drinks and a catch up. We'd all brought various dishes to the function, Starters, Mains, Sweets etc. One section of the family had come over form Liverpool.(How exotic)

We all tucked into the food.

The head of the Scouse section came round to me and asked if I was enjoying the prawn curry (I'd never had prawn curry before).
"It's nice, I always say you should try anything once, except for morris dancing and incest..."

She walked away.

It was then I remembered that one of her daughters had gone off with one of her husbands (not blood related, but still related) and had some kids together.

I'm glad I'm not directly related to them as I'd probably have webbed feet.
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 14:51, 5 replies)
Pea...
...roast:

www.b3ta.com/questions/cringe/post315089
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 14:37, Reply)
I told a joke about a sh*d on a comedy forum once.
Boy did that go wrong for me.
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 14:23, 106 replies)
GET IN!

(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 14:17, 10 replies)
First, and NOT PREGNANT
I'm sure this is a pearoast, but...

I met a former colleague by chance at Paddington, and she was *glowing*.

"So", I said pointing to her belly, "When's the baby due?"

"I'm not pregnant," she replied, the look on her face adding an unsaid "You bastard".

Not pregnant. CAKE.

As it happens, full pearoasted 12-inch version HERE
(, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 14:17, 4 replies)

This question is now closed.

Pages: Popular, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1