Dog-gonit...
A customer called our office one morning and spoke to Terry, a nice enough bloke who never really got on bad with anyone while he worked there. Terry quickly got the customer comfortable talking to him to find out what they wanted; apparently their dog had chewed through some cabling behind their telly and blew the lot. Terry advised them that their equipment wasn't held under warranty for direct damage and started raising a charged replacement order forthwith.
During this time, one thing our managers have had to drum into us is to try not to leave any gaps in any conversations, so the customer still knows you are there. As Terry is raising the order he asks "By the way, how's the dog?"
"He died" was the response. "Oh....errm...sorry..."
I don't think Terry's raised a quick enough order. Managed to earn himself the nickname "Terry the Dog-killer" though.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 14:11, Reply)

At work.
I approach someone that I dont know that well, and go "Have you got this weeks roster on that computer? Who am I working with tomorrow?".

She goes "It's Fred Bloggs" (name changed obviously).

I roll my eyes and she asks why. I run blindly into a situation by replying "Because he's a wanker".

She says "Do you know who he is?"

I wince and go "Your husband?"

I was right. And now I have to work with both of them.
( Kung_Fu_Russ ran out of amusing signatures on, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 13:48, 3 replies)

Wrong brother
A few years back I bumped into an old school friend and we had a ten minute chat and catch up about life in general.

As we were going our seperate ways I said: "Nice to see you again Matt..."

Matt was actually this guys non-identical twin brother who died in a horrific car crash when we were at school together.

I realised as soon as I said it and spluttered out an apology. He said it was fine, but the ground couldn't have swallowed me up quick enough.
(Deskbound You insignificant speck of dust, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 13:22, Reply)

cock and balls
came home from work to tell the wife that I needed to go to Amsterdam the following week on business.
"you going to bring me back something nice?" she asked
"STD!" I volunteered brightly

she didn't see the funny side
(kaptinkurtz, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 13:21, 3 replies)

A friend had a 1940s-themed birthday party this year, and everyone made a real effort - there were a lot of WWII soldiers and RAF pilots, and of course a couple of nazis.
One pretty girl in her mid-20s had come as a WREN, giving me the opportunity to tell her, "You remind me of a picture of my grandmother".
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 13:14, 1 reply)

And again...
www.b3ta.com/questions/foot_in_mouth/post8281
( pxyzyzygy, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 13:12, 1 reply)

Fat and women. Again.
Got asked in the pub if I had any rules regarding women.

I'd been mildly annoyed by the people I was with and wasn't moderating myself as per usual.

'Yeah' I said, 'No size 14s. Scratch that no short size 12s.'

Girl who I took to be a 10 at most, angrily replied 'I'm a 14'.

I stopped and had a think about that. The only thing I could muster was 'Well your doing very well then'.

Thankfully I got saved by my girlfriend at this point.

Length? 34 inches around is the common belief.
(skgorsky, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 13:08, 7 replies)

I played drums badly in a band for a few years.
It was the usual story of four 20-somethings taking themselves far too seriously and having ideas well above their station, but our friends seemed to enjoy it and so did we, so no harm was done.

One evening before a gig, we were sitting with a couple of mates in a pub, discussing the demo we'd just collectively spent quite a lot of money on recording. We were discussing how many to get pressed, and who to send it to - I had the predictable idea of sending it to a few select but odd choice celebrities like Will Self, and Johnny Vaughn (before his radio shows), and suddenly my mate clicked his fingers and said triumphantly "You want to send it to Jo Wily on XFM - she'll play any old shit!"

Silence.

Ah.

"No ... what I meant was ... " he said, desperately back-pedalling, "I don't think she listens to any of the stuff before she plays it ... " he whined.

I was actually a little bit aroused by the shapes his face made.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 12:49, 1 reply)

I watched an ex do this one, and it was fucking excruciating
Loads of us miserable in a pub after a glamorous and beautiful friend had died very suddenly and unexpectedly from a brain tumour –  collapsed on new year's day, three day coma, then died. Her young sister was obviously very very upset. She was trying to console herself with the fact that, had it been diagnosed early, it would have just been a torturous and horrible few months of chemotherapy before her sister would have inevitably succumbed.
“Yeah,” laughs my girlfriend. I recognised that scoffing introductory ‘yeah’ and immediately went tense. It always meant an ill-conceived torrent of shit was about to fall from her gob.

“If all her hair fell out ….”

Christ no please just stop there this is horrible just please please please close your fucking mouth please shutupshutupshutup

“... SHE WOULD PROBABLY HAVE KILLED HERSELF ANYWAY!”

Fucking hell.
( Wet-chinned bag shanker Cannot parse Wogan, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 12:40, 12 replies)

Read & Take Heed
This is a pearoast from a QOTW a while back called 'Tactless'

(To say my foot was firmly lodged in my mouth would be an understatement)

I was in the passnger seat driving with a friend along Baker Street. It was a very hot day and everyone had their windows open. Stuck in traffic, as one tends to be along that street, the lanes on either side would occasionally move a bit quicker.

To the left of our car you could hear horses feet, I turned to see a horse drawn carriage pull up and I made eye contact with quite a stunning bride. She was very beautiful, all fairy tale dress and flowers.
So, of course I just had to say “congratulations, you look very beautiful”. She demurely smiled and thanked me, and so the bloke at her side (in my defence at LEAST 30 years her senior, although my conscience may be exagerating here) turned to see who she was speaking to “Congratulations, sir, you must be very proud, your daughter looks stunning”

“I'm not the Father, I’m the Husband”

God, I really wonder if I just totally ruined their day...neither looked even remotely amused..I was so shocked, my friend had to close the window remotely as I was just frozen with embaressment
(sabre32, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 12:26, 14 replies)

A difficult choice
Not so long ago I mistakenly said to my Wife that no one is both really good looking and has a fantastic personality, and that there is invariably a trade-off.

"Which do I have then?" she asked

I was fucked.
(wrigglesworth, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 11:56, 6 replies)

Colour-blind...
So I'm at this bus stop, waiting for a bus (as yer do), and I got chatting to this attractive young lady. We were just making typically British small-talk - about the weather (it had been all lovely, hot and sunny for a couple of weeks).
"I love it when it's like this and you get a chance to flake out in the garden - soak up a few rays. You look like you've been making the most of it."
She raised one eyebrow, "No - I'm always this colour."

For once, the fates intervened and snatched the shovel from me before I could compound matters by saying, "Sorry."

:-(
(minimalist ..., Fri 17 Aug 2012, 11:55, 6 replies)

Weight limits on lifts
Ever noticed those little signs in lifts? "Maximum weight 1400kg or 20 people", that sort of thing.

One day when I worked at the hospital a friend and I are in a lift. It stops, someones goes to get on and mentions there's not much room. Everyone shuffles around a bit creating a space and I, being oh so witty and clever say something along the lines of "Don't worry, according to the sign there's room for six more people in here! Haha, or two really fat ones".

I don't even need to finish typing this, do I?

My friend's eyes widen ever so slightly as she looks at me; the lift continues and I stand absolutely silent, looking resolutely at the floor in front of me until we disembark, along with everyone else in the lift - including a massively massively fat woman who I'd somehow managed not to spot before.
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 11:41, 12 replies)

On a busy tube a few years ago
Coming from a little seaside village in predominantly white, middle-class England, my children had rarely, if ever seen anyone from any other race.

One day in London, my eldest says to me:

"Daddy, why is that man covered in chocolate?"

Thank Christ he had a sense of humour.
(dchurch bah, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 11:37, 3 replies)

Don't worry
sitting with a group of people I vaguely knew in the pub, one of their friends comes in. She's clearly very upset, and the next 10 minutes are spent with her tearfully recounting the ongoing complications with her fathers advanced and aggressive cancer.
"Don't worry", I piped up with a big grin, "it could be worse"
Silence descended
Then she fixed me with a stare I will never forget and asked, "how?"

I got my coat
(kaptinkurtz, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 11:05, 10 replies)

At a friend's wedding...
...I was chatting to a group of guys, and we all agreed that it'd been a lovely service. The couple seemed happy. But the elephant in the room was that it was a shotgun wedding, with a heavily pregnant bride, and the groom was a bit of a notorious shagger. "See you in a year's time for the divorce!" says I, trying to shoot the elephant.

Didn't really work. One of the guys turned out to be the bride's dad. So basically I'd just introduced a new elephant.

I was right, though.
(Land of Green Ginger It's dreamy weather, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 10:42, 7 replies)

Back in my school days
there was this lad called Ben who was in a band, played in assembly once or twice and stuff, and then when we were in sixth form they actually started to play a few gigs locally and got in the local paper, were in a quick feature on local news, etc., about the novelty of a bunch of 16/17 year olds playing 'proper' gigs. It was the sort of thing that makes you feel a bit of a celebrity in the sort of one-cow-town where I grew up.

But anyway, he seemed generally a nice enough lad, so I was mortified when he overheard my friend and me saying we didn't actually think much of the music. To be fair, we didn't, but we were a bit personal and hurtful and it probably seemed like we did it deliberately so he'd overhear. Being extremely embarrassed, and trying to be quite mature about the whole thing, I apologised and told him it was just daft talk, and we didn't mean it, and my mate who'd started the conversation was probably just jealous anyway, because his own band were total shit. He received the apology with a curt thanks, and we never spoke of it again.

Anyway, several years later, in my mid-twenties, I'm at the bar in a pub in Manchester and a bloke comes up and introduces himself. It takes a minute to click that this is Ben from school. We have a brief chat, in which he seems at pains to stress how well his music career is going and that he's playing gigs, recording an album in his spare time, etc.. I'm polite about it, give a brief update on what I'm up to, etc., and wish him well. We part company, many beers are drunk, and later in the night I'm having a smoke outside as him and his mates leave. He turns and says 'So I fucking made it, didn't I, eh? You twat...'.

I went into appeasement mode: 'Ben, Ben... don't be like that....'. Then I thought better of it. 'Because one day, you might want me to tip you when you're waiter-ing, you fat talentless cunt.'. Needless to say I had the last laugh, etc., Though I did have to leg it back into the pub to stop his mate punching me.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 10:38, Reply)

This morning I built a time machine in my kitchen.
Beat THAT for home science.
(Monkey Tennis isn't Spartacus, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 10:01, 8 replies)

On a trip to NYC...
My wife and I were in our hotel after a day of sightseeing. In the lift, I noticed it was made by a company called Schindler. Spotting an opportunity for a pun.

"Ooooh Schindler's lift" I said.

I didn't notice the skull cap on the now clearly Jewish chap until he walked out before me.
(Fridgy, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 9:55, 4 replies)

GMTV
The Gossip have just appeared on GMTV, the rather "big boned" Beth Ditto was asked about what she is wearing today...

Beth Ditto: "I'm wearing Westwood, but this dress was chosen by Tim my Dresser."
GMTV Bloke: "You have a dresser?"
Beth Ditto: "Yeah"
GMTV Bird: "She probably has several"

y'know... because she's fat
(Fridgy, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 9:46, 5 replies)

Saying hello to a comedian.
A couple of weeks ago I was in Edinburgh, in a cafe in the Pleasance Courtyard having a nice cup of tea. I wanted some more biscuits, so I went up to the counter, where there was a man I recognised from having seen him on the telly. So I strode up to him and confidently said "You Sir, are Tim Key." Which, I think, would have been a nice way to greet him as a prelude to telling him how much I enjoyed his work. It would have been, if he'd actually been Tim Key. However, he was in fact Tim Vine. And I knew this fact perfectly well. I'd just choked when required to actually five words in a row to someone famous, and somehow pulled the wrong surname from my mess of a memory.

To his credit, he laughed pretty hard and took it very graciously, and when I tried to style it and pretend I'd done it on purpose out he insisted it was much funnier if I hadn't meant to, and that he knew Tim Key and would definitely tell him. I have been kicking myself about once per waking hour since this incident. Thank Bod his name wasn't Russell, there are bloody hundreds of them. If I ever see him again I'll probably call him Jeremy.
(SonofRojBlake, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 9:31, 8 replies)

Dig deeper
I work in quite an upmarket furniture store, and as such the majority of our customers are in their 60s/70s, however they do seem to have morphed into clones of each other, same hair, similar clothing.....

I had a regular customer in earlier this year, and I told her "your husband was in last week", to which she replied, "my husband died last year"..... now every ounce of common sense would have caused the next words to leave my mouth to be "sorry to hear that".... what actually left my mouth was "no, it was definitely him"

So, monster munch, it is possible to dig a hole even deeper!!!
(the_icks has the sweet essence of giraffe, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 9:15, 1 reply)

Jokes about raping babies
don't tend to go down well with new parents at nice middle class garden parties.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 8:59, 13 replies)

None so blind...
I was standing at a pedestrian crossing in deepest darkest Aberdeen once, when a man carrying a long white stick and wearing quite dark sunglasses hirpled up and waited beside me. The lights changed to the pedestrian phase but for whatever reason (possibly they'd got their clock wrong and thought it was night time) they didn't beep.

"That's the green man, mate, do you want me to help you across?"
"What? Yes, I can see that, and no..." said the guy, as he gesticulated with a length of new curtain track...
(gordonjcp, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 8:08, Reply)

What not to say for a quiet life....
So, about 6 or 7 years ago now, I found myself working for a logistics company in their shiny new head office. It was indeed a lovely building, and I was to be working as a part of their internal helpdesk staff, tasked with resolving all of the minor quirks and queries that our 2000+ users had around our choice of IT systems.

Being fresh through the door, I spent my first week or two being inducted into their setup, shadowing the rest of the team as they took the calls and worked through them to a reasonable solution. All in all, it was a pretty nice gig. Mornings were a little more stressful due to the flood of people who couldn't remember passwords, but apart from that, it was a really enjoyable entry-level job.

As I got into it, and was soon to be promoted to having my own desk, computer and phone (head-spinning times indeed!), I had only to visit one more of the established team to pick up a few bits on one of the more obscure systems. I had been warned previously that he could be a little bit quick-tempered and prickly, but it shouldn't be a problem as I'd only be with him for a couple of days.

So, the day dawned and I went and sat beside him, plugging my phone into the 2nd headset point so that I could quietly shadow his phone calls whilst taking notes. Our other new guy was also destined to be sat there for the same period of time, so there was a sense of solidarity there as our difficult days started.

As I had been warned, our instructor's mood went from tepid to foul within 4 phone calls. Every customer that he hung up from was a twat, every problem stupid and caused by the person who had made the call. I have to admit that I was finding it hard to keep my 'keen-as' attitude amongst all of his complaining and was trying to find a way to lighten the mood. I had noticed a single photograph adorning his cubicle wall, and after a particularly bad phone call, I pointed to it and said:

"Hey mate, what's this picture of? Is it you dressed in drag?"

As soon as I spoke the words I knew how utterly wrong I was. It was obviously not him now that I'd looked at it for more than 2 seconds. It was obviously just a slightly blokish looking woman.

He never looked at me, but he stopped his rant-mid sentance. After about 15 seconds, he looked at the picture and coldly replied.

"Actually, that's my Fiancee."

I worked my mouth a couple of times, wondering how I could undo this train-wreck of a sentance. My fellow trainee was sat with tears of silent mirth rolling down his cheeks at my misfortune. Without ever knowing why, I leaned in towards the photo, looked at it for a few seconds and stammered my follow-up

"N-No, that's impossible. It can't be a woman."

My fellow trainee's mirth was no longer silent, and I had made my first great foe in that particular job.
(Ryushin, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 2:39, 13 replies)

Or what.............
Working on a building site,I had a workmate who liked to keep himself to himself ,bit shy so to speak.Around a busy canteen table one lunchtime he waltzes past and I,m thinking I,ll try and get him too join the rest of us I uttered the immortal line "am I black or what?"
Fucksocks,as soon as it left my lips,I felt like a right twat,he hurried off to another table glancing at the Afro-caribean painter and decorator sitting and glaring across the table from me.
I smiled at the guy,I couldn,t say a fucking word,God help me out of this one I thought.
I FELT LIKE A RIGHT CNUT.
(andycrass loves two hats on, Fri 17 Aug 2012, 1:29, 10 replies)

I met up with an old friend who had...
...moved to another town with his work and was going through a general bad spell in life. We went to a packed pub, grabbed a few drinks and started to talk which proved very difficult as the music was full on. After a few more drinks and once we had got through the high volume catching up ritual and general pleasantries I asked...
"Eddie, are you happy here"
"What?"
"Eddie are you happy here?" I screamed.
"Mumble mumble mumble" Says he.
"What?"
"Mumble mumble mumble mumble" He shouts.
"I still can't fucking hear you." I holler as the nusic reaches a crescendo of deafening proportions.
And just as the song ends Eddie screams at the top of his voice...
"I'M FUCKING LONELY!"
...which didn't exactly cheer him up but at least made our fellow drinkers feel better about their own crap lives.
(Tugnut Ex of this parish, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 21:42, Reply)