To err is human. But to make mistakes this big, this humiliating? Well, that experience can make us feel like a one-in-a-million type of dunce. These Redditors shared their real-life stories about work errors, dating blunders, brain farts, stupid misunderstandings, and embarrassing moments—either that they witnessed, or that they were the perpetrator of. Prepare to cringe to these horrifying mistakes and dumb blunders.
#1 The Customer is Always Wrong
I had a customer yell at me that the two donuts they were purchasing were supposed to be Buy-One-Get-One-Free, instead of half price, which was the discount I’d given. I had to explain how 1/2 + 1/2 was 1. He never understood it—just sneered “Whatever” at me and had me cancel the order.
#2 This isn’t the BBQ You’re Looking for
I invited a friend over for a BBQ. He didn’t know anyone and has never been to my house but seemed really eager to go. So, I was a little irritated that he was almost two hours late. I was just about to text him when I happened to look over my neighbor’s fence. My jaw hit the floor. The neighbor was also having a BBQ. It was like it happened in slow motion.
I saw my friend in the neighbor’s yard chatting up some old lady. Our eyes locked. I saw the realization literally hit his face. I still laugh about it. I swear the guy turned white!
#3 Planning Ahead
A girl I know got a nose job. When I complimented her on her new look, she said: "I didn't do it for me—I just didn't want my kids to be born with big noses."
#4 Gone Fishin’
When I was a teen, I worked at a full-service gas station. One day, a guy came in towing a boat to get gas. A guy a couple years younger was working and thought the owner had taken the gas cap off of the boat. He placed the gas nozzle in a fishing rod holder. It is basically a hole on the top of the side of the boat.
He proceeded to pump about $40.00 worth of gas onto the floor of the boat. The owner was understandably upset.
#5 Could’ve Been Worse
I think I was four or five. There was a rock quarry/gravel pit about a mile from my home that my parents didn't want me going to because a bunch of unseemly youths hung out there. So, of course, this is where my flying experiment took place. I tied four kites to my bike and thought if I rode fast enough and then took my bike off the steepest bank of the quarry, the kites would lift me off and I'll glide to the bottom.
Probably lucky for me, but the strings of the kite wound into the bike spokes and completely locked it, throwing me and I slid all the way down the edge of the gravel pit rather than make a measured jump. Scraped up to my elbows and from my knees down, all I could think on that painful walk home dragging my busted bike full of kites was how my mom was going to kill me.
Suffice to say, when your five-year-old walks in looking like the finale of Carrie you don't immediately jump to punishment.
#6 Not the Best Lie
I had just gotten my first ever job at ACE hardware and a week in, my buddies hit me up asking if I wanted to head to the beach for next week and I was like, “Yeah of course!” So I told my boss at work a family member died and I couldn’t come in the next week. So my boss called my dad who also works for the owner of the company in a different department and starts telling him, “I’m so sorry for your loss, please let me know if I can do anything to help!”
And my dad was like, “What do you mean? What happened?” He ended up telling my boss I lied about the entire thing. I still got the week off and went on the vacation, but the next few days at my job were nerve-wracking, to say the least.
#7 You Had One Job
Back in the dark ages, I worked for a small-town daily newspaper. There was one large discount store that refused to advertise with us, and would only use the other paper in town (our sole rival), which was more of a "weekly shopper"-type paper. For unknown reasons, the store finally decided to give our paper a chance.
Ad ran, and there in the double-truck, full-color ad, was "Men's shirts $9.99"—minus the ever-important R in "shirts." Yep. Needless to say, they stuck with the other paper.
#8 Clearly Unattached
I have a really bad habit of typing an email and including, “please see attached” before actually adding the attachment. I’ve sent a lot of emails like this, usually noticing right away, and re-sending. I was emailing a resume once, and said, “please see attached resume” and of course didn’t send it. They told me as much in their next email.
I responded with something like, “Sorry for the inconvenience, I should have looked more carefully before sending that email. Please see attached resume.” I didn’t attach the resume. I didn’t get the job.
#9 The “G” Is Silent
I once sent a direct mail piece out quoting an Angus Reid poll. Left the "g" out, so of course, the spell-check didn't catch it. Based on the feedback I received, virtually all those who noticed thought it was an improvement.
#10 A Lovely Teacher
A teacher whose name I don't even know at my son's daycare said, "Bye, love you too," after I told my son, "Love you buddy, have a good day," on my way out. I'm pretty sure she had a morning full of cringe.
#11 Let’s Call a Square a Square
About a year into our marriage, my wife and I bought a dining table and chairs. It was our first “real” furniture! My wife was so happy, she posted pictures on Facebook and wanted her mom to look. Well, her mom commented on the phone that it was a nice “oval table.” Wife is immediately upset. "You didn't look," she says. "Yes I did!" her mom insists.
"It's not oval, it's rectangular." "No, it's an oval, I looked." Wife finally gets her mom to actually go look for real. Her mom sees that she is incorrect, and then it gets even worse. She creates this gem: "Well that's what I call it!" “Um, you call rectangles ovals?" This has become a running gag for us. Whenever we lose an argument, we always end it with, "Well, that's what I call it!"
#12 Can You Feel the Stupidity Tonight?
A few years ago, I was traveling in Kenya and a few of us shelled out for a safari. Our guide was great and at one point said all the names for the animals in Swahili—the word simba is lion, for example. An American tourist then asked, “Did you always call them that, or did you decide to change it after The Lion King came out?”
I really wanted to apologize to the tour guide at that moment, who had to respond with respect to that guy.
#13 Float Like a Butterfly...
I found a beehive in the wall of my house. I thought it was a good idea to try DIY extermination. Big. Mistake. Sprayed bee killer into the hole. They attacked... I screamed and fell over a folding table by the couch. Luckily, I was only stung three times. Once on my neck and twice in my arm. I learned it’s not a good idea to spray bee killer inside the house because they only have one way to go.
#14 Foreign Policy
During a really long car trip with my parents, we were discussing countries we'd like to visit someday. My mother said she'd like to visit Japan to see the Great Wall of China. My dad and I don't let her forget that comment.
#15 Shred the Evidence
I pulled what I thought was my expired credit card out of my pocket, and ran it through the shredder at work. It wasn’t my credit card. It was my government ID card, which I also need to log onto my work computer.
#16 That Would Be a Stupid Emergency
We were in the car and an ambulance passed us with the lights on. My friend turned to me with a very serious look on her face and asked, "If you were a blind and deaf driver, how would you know to pull over for an ambulance?" This became my senior yearbook quote.
#17 Lost and Found
I was at a holiday party at a friend’s house I had never been to, in a swanky neighborhood I was unfamiliar with. There were completely illegible house numbers plastered somewhere illogical. I parked on the street and had to walk through those newer construction townhomes with ridiculously long staircases and two-inch tall house numbers.
Heard a party going on and thought, "Welp, this has to be them, who else would be having a party with this many people over?" I Waltz right in, say hi to the dog, start chatting with various people, grab a drink and start thinking, “Hmm. I should recognize at least three people here. I wonder where they are?” Then it hit me. I was not in the right house.
The hosts were super cool about it, knew my friends and pointed me in the direction of their actual house. I met up with my friends and regaled them with this story of confusion. It was wildly embarrassing, but swiftly forgotten after a few drinks.
#18 A Hostile Atmosphere
My grandpa's cleaning lady was making fun of me for believing that the ozone layer exists. She laughed out loud at me and said, "Then how do the rockets take off from Earth without crashing into it?" She continued to laugh and make fun of me for it for a good ten minutes straight.
#19 Hey Tough Guy...
I was at a bar, chatting with some friends. My girlfriend was across the room sitting with some other friends. Some drunk dude showed up and started getting handsy with her. I jumped up, pushed him away and yelled "back off." When he turned around, I realized the terrifying truth. He was like twice my size and not in a fat way, in a tall and muscular way.
I mean I did the right thing, but if the bartender hadn't leaped over the bar and jumped in between us immediately that guy would have wiped the freaking floor with me. The moment the dude turned around I thought "Geez, this is gonna hurt."
#20 A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
My family and I were watching a program on TLC about cavemen. There were actors dressed up like cavemen doing caveman things, as the narrator explained the scientific theories of what they thought their lives were like. My sister was just in awe watching this. Mouth slightly open, eyes open wide. During a commercial break, she asked the room, "How did they get the cameras back then?"
We will never let her forget that she said that.
#21 The No Pants Dance
I invited this guy over to my place for dinner after we'd been casually seeing each other for three weeks or so. Things were going pretty well - we were chatting, getting along like a house on fire, and he was helping me cook dinner—when I started to feel extremely intestinally unwell. I've always been kind of a private pooper, and I could tell that this one wasn't going to be fun, so I asked him if he'd pop down to the shop at the end of the road to grab a bottle of wine for dinner.
He agreed, and toddled off down the street, and as soon as he was gone, I raced to the bathroom and relieved myself with something roughly akin to the force of a... well, you can use your imagination. I took a minute to catch my breath, reached over to the toilet roll holder, and came back empty. Well, darn. No matter. I had a full nine-pack of toilet paper in the back room—I didn't have space to keep it in my tiny bathroom; it was a very small apartment, so I usually just grabbed a roll or two—and he'd only just gone.
I had plenty of time. Cut to me, thirty seconds later, pants around my ankles and my poop-caked bunghole shimmying my way down the central hallway of my flat when I hear a still, small voice from behind me. "Erm... what are you doing?" Turns out he'd managed to get to the shop and back in record time, and was sitting on my couch in my living room with a perfect, perfect view of my little fecal burlesque.
I was framed in the doorway like an unholy Renaissance painting. It was as though I was presenting myself to him in the worst possible, “You like?” come-on in the history of dating. It's very difficult to have a civilized dinner after that.
#22 Crash Landing
I was once making small talk with an acquaintance and mentioned that I'd flown out to visit my family in Korea over the summer. She got this smug grin on her face and said, "You can't fly to Korea, it's an island!"
#23 The Pickle Pal
When I was a kid my family moved a lot, I started at a new school in the town I’m in now. Now my parents were always pretty strict; if we wanted food we could only have just one of that thing. I had a love for pickles and I thought everyone did too. So I told some new friends of mine that if they came to my house they could have TWO WHOLE PICKLES.
14 years later and it's still brought up
#24 Thank You, Facebook Robot
I was sending an "adult" link to my girlfriend and accidentally shared it to my Facebook wall instead of in a message. I don't know how, I must have been tired or something. We're talking some really bad stuff here. I didn't even realize I'd done it until the following day. I woke up to a message from Facebook telling me they'd auto-removed my post.
I don't think anybody saw it, thank god. I've never been so grateful to a robot in my entire life.
#25 It All Comes Tumbling Down
I accidentally knocked over two aisles filled with wine glasses. Lucky for me, everyone was too busy freaking out—there was apparently a customer nearby who also got a few cuts on his legs—that they didn't notice me slowly slipping away and reappearing a few seconds later to ask what happened like I was totally innocent.
No one ever suspected it was me, but I still felt horrible because it was over a few thousand dollars worth of stuff that I broke, which may not sound like much, but when you're 15 years old working on $11/hr, five hours a week...
#26 Silly Rabbit, Tricks Are for Kids
I was 15 or 16 and teaching the 2- and 3-year-olds at church. It was Easter, and one little boy comes in crying up a storm. Nothing that my friend and I do can console him. About halfway through he stops and just sniffles. At the end when the parents come and pick them up, he sees his dad and starts crying again, telling his dad that he doesn't want anything to do with him. His mom comes and gets him, and my friend and I tell her about her son.
She was trying SO HARD not to laugh and told us why. The boy’s dad hit a rabbit on the way to church this morning, and the boy started to cry, thinking it was the Easter Bunny.
#27 Liquid Courage
I was at work when my crush (and supervisor, yep great situation) calls me into the office and asks me why I called her the night before. My heart sank. I got wildly drunk that night and honestly could not remember a thing. She also informed me that several minutes into the conversation/monologue she handed the phone over to her mother.
I still pulled a blank. In fact, I was so convinced that nothing happened I was sure she was winding me up. If anything like that had happened, after all, why was she still even talking to me, let alone letting me continue to work with her? She insisted that I called and I refused to believe her. It was not until late January when I received my detailed mobile phone bill that showed a 48-minute phone call to her number late on December 31 that I finally had to believe her.
The difficult part was facing her mother after my boss and I became an item. We are now very happily married but even now my MIL still takes the piss out of me over that phone call. My wife, however, is very happy.
#28 Prefix Trouble
When someone said their food was too hot, a friend suggested putting it in the microwave on defrost to cool it down. I guess he figured anything with frost in its name automatically meant cold…
#29 The Doo-Doo Tree
I pooped my pants laughing at a friends house and was so panicked that I would never live it down that I threw them out the bathroom window to get rid of the evidence—I apparently threw them too hard that they ended up in a tree and have been hanging about 50 feet up in the tree ever since. It’s been seven years.
#30 Dearest Ex-Wife
I used to work at a call center for a popular gift company. This one couple calls up and says "We need to cancel our order!" I look it up, and tell them UPS already has the order to deliver it. Then they tell me the horrific truth. They say, "You don't understand. We are sending this to our son and his wife. We accidentally put his ex-wife's name on the card. It will ruin Christmas if they receive this gift!!!"
I was finally able to call UPS and get them to not deliver the package. Not my screw up, but dang.
#31 A Super Screwup
Back in high school, I had a job as a web designer at a small webshop servicing non-profit organizations. My bosses didn't let on that I was as young as I was, and they handled all the face-to-face client meetings. My job basically entailed designing and preparing the website for our clients. One of our big clients was the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation.
I sliced up the site and put in filler text, knowing full well that only people coming from our internal IP would be able to see the development. I should mention that my company was small, close-knit, and had a great (albeit vulgar) sense of humor. Rather than going the standard lorem ipsum route, I did what ended up being the worst thing imaginable.
I instead filled in something along the lines of "Herp derp I'm Christopher Reeve, I drive myself with a straw. Weaknesses include kryptonite and falling off horses." It got worse, but I'll let your imaginations fill in the blanks. There were about four paragraphs of filler text. I came into work after school one day and all three of my company's owners/my bosses were waiting for me.
I thought they were pulling some prank, but they asked me to come into their office. At this point, I knew something was definitely up. My boss: "Chris and Dana saw the site." Me: "What? Who?" Him: "CRPF. Chris and Dana Reeve. The director wanted to show them the progress. Apparently he didn't check before he showed it to him in person."
At this point, I think my stomach hit the floor and kept going straight on to the Earth's core. My boss told me he'd let me know what the next steps were, but just to know that I was in deep, deep trouble. Anyway, I didn't get fired (despite how adamant Dana Reeve was about that fact) and I had to write an apology to the Reeves.
I found out later that Chris actually had a pretty solid sense of humor and thought it was funny. RIP, Mr. and Mrs. Reeve.
#32 Half-Naked Dad to the Rescue
When I was in fifth grade, I got hit by a car. I was relatively fine, but my friend called my parents to tell them what had happened and my dad was in such a rush to get to me that he showed up at the scene in nothing but his underwear. It was very embarrassing but, at the same time, I appreciate his care and sense of urgency.
#33 Save Some Cringe for the Rest of Us
A female friend of mine—to whom I was admittedly attracted—had been expressing her reservations about an upcoming vacation with her family. Though it wasn't being overtly presented as such, the trip was meant as a way of re-solidifying her parents' marriage, which had been a touch rocky at the time. They would all be driving from San Francisco to a small town in Northern California, where they'd stay at a bed-and-breakfast inn for a weekend before continuing northward for some unknown destination.
In keeping with the alleged purpose of this so-called vacation, two rooms had been booked at the inn in question. To her dismay, though, my friend discovered that her mother would be occupying one room, her father would have the other, and that she and her sister would each have to bunk with one of their parents. This was worthy of lament on its own, but it was made unforgivably worse by the verbal diarrhea that I offered in an attempt at providing comfort:
"Aw, it won't be so bad!" I told my friend. "Your father will probably enjoy sleeping with you." A moment passed before I realized what I had said. Then, with a feeling of growing horror, I tried to explain myself. Yeah, things only got worse from there. "Wait, I didn't mean it like that!" I hurriedly said. "I mean, like, he's probably sick of sleeping with your mom. No, wait, I mean... I just mean that he wants to spend some quality time with his daughter."
If I had stopped there, I might have been able to salvage the situation, but as it happened, I decided that the best course of action would be to keep talking. "I can't say that I blame him, really. I'd love to sleep with you." She and I don't talk much these days.
#34 Identity Crisis
An employee was looking through the box where we kept the nametags and asked: "Which one is my nametag?"
#35 Hot Apple Juice
Back in the good ol' depression days, I made it a habit of peeing in cups so I didn't have to leave my room (It's gross I know). Well, I had a bunch of friends come over and we were having fun gaming and I wasn't paying attention and went to grab my drink but it was a pee cup I forgot about. I don't pee in cups anymore
#36 Going for a Ride
I was walking into a dorm building with a friend one time, and she saw one of our friends coming into the dorm a few hundred feet behind us. She decided to scare him, so she hid behind a big pillar right near the entrance. The guy walked through the door, and she jumped onto his back, grabbed him around the neck, and started smacking his butt, yelling "Giddyup, Cowboy!"
The guy flipped out and got my friend off of his back. At that moment, we realized her huge mistake. It was not our friend, it was just some random, strange guy. My friend turned bright red and ran up the stairs without saying a word. From then on, that guy would see her sometimes in the halls and say "Hi, Cowgirl" and she was always way too shy to reply.
#37 Let’s Go to the Tape
I used to work for a TV company that makes a lot of high profile shows, including one of the most popular shows on British TV, which is also broadcast around the world. Our client had gone out on location and shot all their footage for an episode of this show and brought it back to my work...only for me to then lose their tapes.
The show goes out on a Wednesday night, and it got to the Sunday beforehand and we still couldn't locate five of their tapes of footage, because I had put them somewhere, and not in the location I logged them into on our system. Everybody chipped in to help look for these tapes, staying behind and pulling 16-hour shifts to search for them.
But when push came to shove, we couldn't find them and my company had to pay for the client to re-shoot their footage. Not the end of the world, right? Wrong. It turns out that the footage on the tapes I had misplaced had been shot from a goshdarn HELICOPTER. So my company had to fork out £18,000 for the camera rentals, the crew, and the hire for a chopper!
And then real kicker is that as soon as they had shot it again, the original tapes turned up.
#38 Bad Dads 2
My dad, influenced at least in part by the movie Bad Boys II, decided to mess with my boyfriend on my first date by acting like a tough guy. He filled a whiskey bottle with tea and, when he answered the door, he started chugging down the whole thing while scanning my boyfriend up and down. He then tried to break the bottle over his own head.
The date was canceled due to the ensuing hospital trip, and I became known as the girl with the totally insane father. "Don't concuss yourself this time, Dad!" became the running joke in my house once I was able to get a date again.
#39 Manual Labor
I clogged the toilet at my boyfriend's house. I was dog sick with a stomach bug and he was at work. The plunger was no help at all and there was no way a plumber could get there before he got home. I was in an absolute panic. There was no way I was letting him see what I did in that toilet. It was the stuff of nightmares. I would have to move and change my name out of embarrassment had he borne witness to what my body produced in that bathroom.
I had no choice: it was this or nothing. I had to unclog it manually. It was not pretty. I will never speak aloud of the things I did that day to keep my boyfriend from seeing my poop.
#40 Long-Term Investment
I watched my friend stand there and do ten separate ATM transactions in a row, taking out $200 in several $20 increments. I was baffled. I asked him why he was doing it that way and whether he was aware of the $2.50 transaction fees he was collecting by doing that. My friend’s response was "It all adds up in the long run!"
I don’t know what he thought was going to “add up” by doing this, but he clearly didn’t understand that it would be his bill...
#41 No Kids Allowed
My place of work has a 21 and over policy after 9 pm, and a group of people walked in and I immediately assumed they walked in with their child because I couldn’t see her over the counter. So I said, “Hey guys, I’m sorry but we’re 21 and over right now.” It turns out she had dwarfism. Oh my lord. I tried to save myself by apologizing and telling them they all looked young despite obviously referring to her earlier.
MORTIFIED.
#42 What’s in a Name?
When working at Taco Bell, I once had a guy at the drive-thru ask if we sell tacos. All I could say was “Let me check...”
#43 The Hockey Player’s Smile
Blackout drunk with friends, we decided to walk and get more snacks. A friend told me she would give me a piggyback ride so I ran at her back at jumped—turns out, that was a terrible mistake. She wasn't ready and fell forwards, resulting in me awkwardly going over her, landing on the pavement and sliding on my face. I popped up real quick, felt at the blood on my face, and shouted out, full of panic to my friends, "AM I STILL PRETTY?"
I looked like I had barely survived a car accident. I was not pretty in that moment but my friends all kindly assured me I was still beautiful as they drunkenly applied first aid. This was years ago; we all went our separate ways, but I still hear it every time I run into them in our small city. I healed up nicely with a small scar.
#44 Worst Trade Ever
I work at a slick entertainment company in LA where every executive has an assistant. The head of the company has had floor seat Laker tickets for the past 13 years. The waitlist for those tickets is over a decade long. One day, the executive told his assistant that he also wants four non-floor seat tickets for a certain game. This is where the trouble began.
Assistant thinks he means instead and switches his floor seats for non-floor seats, releasing these precious tickets forever. The executive screamed so loud that the floor above us came down to make sure everyone was OK—I am not joking. Apparently, the tickets were worth over a MILLION DOLLARS and he gave them away for free.
The executive had to shell out for other tickets but not the same ones, so now every game he goes to he has to stare at the people in his precious seats.
#45 His Loss
I left a huge folder for a multi-billion (yes, that’s a “B”) lawsuit on the subway. Some homeless guy finds it, calls the opposing attorney, and ransoms the darn thing. Luckily, there was nothing in the file that wasn't secret or not public record. Needless to say, I was fired.
#46 Trouble on the Telephone?
One day at work, I was in the middle of an important meeting with a client in my office and I had not been checking my cell phone during this time. All of a sudden, my boss walks in to interrupt my meeting and hands me a cordless office phone, telling me that my mother is on the line. As it turns out, my mom had Googled my boss' phone number, called him up on his office phone, and asked him if he could please put me on the phone.
Now, you’d think that all of that excessive hassle was for something important, right? Nope! She just wanted to whine about my step-father, and was in the mood to talk at that particular time. No emergency or anything whatsoever. She just wanted to chat and had zero concern for the consequences of her actions, as per usual, unfortunately.
And so, that was the day that my boss and pretty much all of my coworkers throughout the entire company lost all respect for me. When the mom of one of their coworkers calls him on the boss' phone just to talk about personal nonsense, there’s pretty much no way of recovering. A few months later, I resigned. There was nowhere to go in that place anymore...
#47 Good Luck Explaining This One
I connected my phone to the car Bluetooth to play music during a road trip with four of my friends. For whatever reason, as soon as the Bluetooth connected, it immediately played the last video viewed on my phone. This was not good. It was an adult video. Yup, still haven't been allowed to live that one down.
#48 To Thine Own Self Be True
Someone once asked me and my twin sister if we ever mistake ourselves for the other one. I like to think she was joking, but I don't think she was.
#49 The Worst Kind of Cold Shower
When I was 13 a kid I knew bet me $20 to stick my junk in the vacuum hose. Me being a dumb teenager grabbed the vac, closed my door, and stuck my member in the vacuum. My little brother came home with my buddy and walked into my room and found me on the floor with a full stiffy and a vacuum hose stuck to my unit.
I couldn’t get it off, so we did the logical thing: unscrewed the hose from the vacuum and poured cold water down the hose. Let me tell you all that getting almost freezing water poured on your member when it’s fully chubbed and being squeezed intensely FREAKING SUCKS. When I got it out there was so much dirt and dust in the water I had to scrub myself clean.
But now my brothers and that friend will not let it go, and this is 11 years later at that.
#50 Taking the Fall
So, I work in a workshop, and we often engrave stuff for customers. This particular guy wanted a nice wooden jewelry box for their wedding anniversary with a custom message he emailed me. For some reason, he chose to give the box to his wife at the workshop. Not the most romantic place I can think of, but whatever.
The guy's wife starts to look confused and tear up: "You don't remember the date?" Guy turns pale, looks at me with a deep stare, says: "No, I'm sure it's a mistake." Me: "No, I've copied it straight, can't be wrooon...waaait a minute, oh my god, it's my fault, I'm so sorry, I will redo it right away, no need to pay, please accept it as a gift..."
Wife gets angry a bit at me, but they leave with a different box and the correct date. But that wasn't even the best part. Guy comes back next day and pays triple the original price without a word.
#51 Full Transparency
I accidentally sent out the salaries of every one of our executives and the owner to about 100 people in the company. I had requested info from HR (just a list of eligible employees for something) and what they sent had the default sheet 1/sheet 2/sheet 3 tabs at the bottom of the workbook...
Sheet 1 was the list I had requested, Sheet 2 was, for some reason, executive compensation.
#52 The Original Captain Underpants
When I was a young kid, we had a pajama day at school. This posed a problem for me because I always just wore my boxers to sleep. Well, obviously a kid can't just show up to school wearing nothing but underwear, but I was too little and dumb to understand that at the time. Why my mom allowed me to go in that way and even drove me there, I have no idea.
It was the most embarrassing day of my life, and the school had to call my parents to come pick me up less than halfway through the day.
#53 Chicken Tartare
I've been a cook for 15 years. One time, a server asked me to rush a chicken breast through because she forgot to ring it in. I said, "Ok, it will be a few minutes though, it's still a bit raw." "Just give it to me, it's fine," she says. I tell her I don't feel like giving anyone salmonella poisoning today and she will have to wait.
Her jaw drops and her face turns red. She rather belligerently shouts that she’s losing tip money because of me, then adds "Besides, people don't get salmonella from chicken, they get it from salmon. You're a cook, you should know that by now." Every person in that room did the slow neck-turn of “What did I just hear??” and just stared at her.
#54 Uno, Dos... Oops
In college, I was applying for a co-op internship at some big corporate company. Of course, like all applicants, I wanted to make myself sound as appealing as possible. I decided to change “Familiar with basic Spanish” to “Proficient Spanish Speaker” on my resume. The job didn’t have anything to do with speaking Spanish as far as I knew, so I figured it was a harmless fudge and they’d never find out the extent of my Spanish knowledge was the three years I’d taken in high school.
Well, I get to the interview. Everything starts out seemingly going well. Until she says, “Oh, you speak Spanish! That’s great!” She said, “We’ve been hoping to find someone to help in our South American division. Let me grab my colleague.” Before I could respond she leaves the room and quickly returns with a woman who is clearly of Latin descent.
The original interviewer says to her “This is him; he says he speaks Spanish well.” I’m sweating at this point. The Latina lady looks at me and immediately starts going off in full-speed Spanish. I could tell she was asking me questions, but have almost no idea what she’s saying. I tried desperately to remember anything left in my brain from high school, but think I just stammered, “Si” a bunch of times while smiling and nodding like an idiot.
Eventually, I just said, “Sorry I’m a little rusty, it’s been a while.” She just gave me an annoyed look and left the room. Needless to say, the rest of the interview was pretty awkward. A decade later and that remains the only job interview in my life that I didn’t get an offer from. Valuable lesson learned that day: Don’t put anything on your resume you’re not prepared to potentially get called out on.
#55 Classic Gamer Moment
Not me, but my best friend got ripped by his mom and forgot to mute his mic while we were playing games one day. An approximate 10-minute scream fest, about him forgetting to put the garlic bread in the oven before dinner.
We still ask him about the garlic bread to this day.
#56 Ashes to Ashes
One time, my husband called me at work, "Babe, you're going to be so mad! I made a mess but don't worry, I'll fix it!" I just sighed because he is basically Lucy from I Love Lucy. I wasn't prepared for what I saw when I got home. Our living room was COVERED in grey powder. Meanwhile, my husband was completely filthy with a trash bag, a broom, and a super panicked look on his face.
Turned out, he'd decided to help around the house and wanted to clean the fireplace. He just decided the best way to clean it would be to stand in front of it with a trash bag and use the leaf blower to blow the ashes in. Spoiler alert: that doesn’t work. I didn't want to hurt his feelings but I laughed so hard at him. He deserved it.
#57 They Don’t Call It Pop for Nothing
I used to be a product merchandiser for Coca-Cola a few years ago. Basically, what I did was go to grocery stores, meet the driver dropping the delivery, and stock the shelves as fast as possible, then get to the next store, repeat. My second day on the job, I was stocking 2L bottles at this mega grocery store, running a bit behind because the order came in late, so I was moving fast.
Dropped a bottle of Sprite on the floor, and it hit cap down. That little jerk shot up in the air and cleared four aisles. Luckily, it didn’t hit anyone. Then, on my last day of working for Coke, same thing happened, except this time it went flying straight for the cash and nearly hit some lady in the head. As I headed to the back room to get a mop, every employee was lined up, applauding.
One of them offered to clean it up, as it was the funniest thing he'd seen working at the store. That was the last bottle I stocked working for Coca-Cola.
#58 Without Even Breaking a Sweat
I believe I was in third grade when this happened. I had two of best friends over at my house for a sleepover, and we were doing something in the living room when it was time for dinner. My dad thought it would be funny to take me into the dining room by picking me up at the feet and carrying me upside down. The only problem was that I was wearing loose sweatpants, and when he lifted me he was grabbing more pant than ankle.
I was in the air for less than a few seconds before I fell out of my pants and landed on the floor bottomless and dazed. And when I say bottomless, I mean out of the sweats, and boxers, and all. I immediately ran away, Porky Pig style, to go and cry in private. My dad came in to try and apologize, but he couldn't stop laughing. At the time, it was the most embarrassed I had ever been.
In retrospect, it was hilarious.
#59 Central America
A girl in my geography class thought that North Korea was in the center of the US and that that’s why we have so many problems with them. My main concern was that I was in the same school district as her for all 12 years, and I wondered how the same system that worked for me had completely failed to work for her.
#60 Nice Save
One time I went to send my buddy a picture of this girl I matched with on a dating app. Derp no. I accidentally sent it to her instead. Talk about freaking panic mode. Felt like the biggest creepy tool ever. My saving grace was that the picture wasn’t just of her, and had some of her friends in it. She texted, “Why did you send me this?” My mind worked at the speed of light to recover the situation.
I responded with “Who is the girl to your left? She looks super familiar. What’s her name?” even though I had never seen her in my life. My buddy still rips me to this day about it.
#61 Francais Only
In my second year of middle school, in French class, we had to do short conversations with groups of two or three people in front of the class. I had to do my conversation with this girl that I didn't really know and with whom I barely talked. We had prepared the entire conversation because we were still allowed to back then.
The conversation was just someone passing by the supermarket and talking to a cashier. I knew in advance (or at least I thought I knew) what she was going to ask, which was something about the weather, so in my head I already had the sentence I would have to respond with ready. So... Then it was our turn. We go to the front of the class. The nerves were killing me, but everything was going to be alright...then she threw me a total curveball.
Suddenly the girl I was doing the dialogue with asks me "Ca va bien?" which means "How are you?" This was not how I planned it to go. It's a simple question but it really threw me off, so I started getting really nervous and I just couldn't think of the right words for a response. LITERALLY A WHOLE MINUTE OF ME SAYING "ERM" PASSES before the girl I was doing the dialogue with asks, in the middle of the dialogue, "Can I go to the restroom?"
Meanwhile, I still didn't have my answer ready, and I still didn't when she came back probably almost five minutes later. The best I could come up with was "Bien," which isn't even a full answer, it should have been "Ca va bien" or something like that. So, to this day my friends still answer with "Bien" when someone asks them how they are doing.
#62 Consider Me Plucked
My first job when I was 16 was at PetSmart. I had been working there for a few months when one night I was cleaning out the bird/small animal habitat. The procedure was to haul a ShopVac into the little room and vacuum up the spilled bird food/seeds/litter. Easy peasy. So, I'm cleaning out the cage with the cockatiels in it, when one of them decides to investigate the loud sucking machine. FWOOMP. The bird is gone.
I opened up the canister, no bird. I take the hose off the tank and, bird. I used a box cutter to rip the hose in half so I could get him out. So, this freaking bird is missing feathers and is bleeding and I am in tears. I run to my boss crying and say "IJUSTSUCKEDABIRDUPINTHESHOPVACHESGOINGTODIEIAMAHORRIBLEPERSON." He takes one look at me, then the bird, and starts laughing.
I ended up driving him to another PetSmart that had a Banfield vet in it; he laughed and gave the bird some fluids. My coworkers named him Hoover and he lived in quarantine in the back of the store for months until his feathers came back.
#63 A Slip of the Hand
I was in the middle of a remote assistance session with a user who was having trouble with his Outlook. I resolved his issue and proceeded to send a test email to myself along the lines of “test test this is a test.” I was doing a million other things at once, so I wasn't paying attention to the screen or keyboard, so when I looked at the screen, my heart sank.
“Twat twat this is a twat.” Luckily, the user I was on the phone with was a good sport and thought it was hilarious. I was pretty mortified.
#64 What’s in a Name?
This happened to my dad recently. He had a coworker who was a bit of a cat lady. She and her husband never had kids, so the cats played that role in their lives. One day she came to work pretty visibly shaken up, so my dad pulled her aside and asked what was wrong. She said her husband was doing laundry last night and while loading the dryer, the cat must have jumped in behind his back. He then proceeded to turn on the dryer and unfortunately, the cat didn't make it.
My dad says, "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that! What was your cat’s name?" She answers "Fluffy". Dad lost it. Come on, Dad!
#65 Mrs. Potato Head
A girl in my class didn't know that chips were made from potatoes. When asked if the huge potatoes on the bags didn't give it away, she said she thought that was only for design. She also added that she never reads the ingredients list, because she doesn't have time for that.
#66 As if it Couldn’t Get Any Worse
I locked my keys in my car, then called a tow truck and gave him the wrong address (I’m an evacuee staying at an Airbnb). If you don’t think I’m winning at life, it gets worse: I then crushed my hand in a door, which in turn crushed my wedding ring which had to be cut off by a jeweler.
#67 Moving into the Friendzone
When I was 14 (just starting high school), there was a girl I started talking to who I just clicked with, pretty much my first real friend in high school. After a while, I got a crush on her and some of my other friends would always joke about how we'd be a cute couple, blah blah blah. High school freshman stuff essentially, and each time we'd shrug it off as a joke.
One day right before lunch is over we're just chilling and talking, I forget what it was about, but as the bell rings she just kinda awkwardly asks, "Hey OP you wanna walk me to class?" Now at this point, most people would have alarms going off in their head, "This is your chance," but not me. Me, being the fantastic student I am, simply said, "I can't, I'll be late to class."
And walked off after that. I get to my next class and then it hits me, and I immediately tell my friend, who just looks at me like I'm a dummy. Long story short, friend-zoned, and to this day I still get the occasional, "Hey OP wanna walk me to class?"
#68 An Incompetent River Flows Through It
I had an employee who was working night audit (hotel). I was the manager, so he called me when I was on-call and told me that a guest complained about water dripping from the ceiling in his room on the first floor. Uhhhh did you go up to check on the room above it? "No"... How long ago was this? "Like a couple of hours ago."
I've never flown out of bed faster. I threw on some clothes and made it to the hotel in record time. By the time I got to the second floor, I could hear a WATERFALL. The source of the water was, in fact, not the second floor. Nor was it the third floor. No, no... it was the FOURTH FLOOR. We had the water shut off earlier in the day for work that was being done on the pipes.
A guest got angry and checked out because it took too long for the water to come back on. Apparently, they had tried to turn on the bath and didn't think to freaking turn it off. So, the bathtub overflowed for god knows how long, flooded the room, and the room underneath it, and the room underneath that, and finally the room underneath that.
As it turns out, my idiot employee had moved someone from the room on the third floor for the same thing, but he didn't think to check on it. Instead, he decided to call me when a second guest, now on the first floor, complained of the same thing. THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of dollars of damage.
#69 The Town Fool
I worked as a cameraman in high school. One night, I was working alone in our town hall filming a committee meeting and my boss gave me the keys. I was told to break down and lock up after the shoot. I forgot to lock the town hall. My freaking town hall was wide open for a whole weekend. I realized this after I returned the keys, so for the whole weekend, I was freaking out, thinking everything would be taken and they would trace this mistake back to me.
Nothing was taken and everything was fine. I've never actually told anyone this before.
#70 Life is a Highway
When I was 17, a huge photo radar ticket came in for my truck. I had been going something like 40km over the speed limit. My mom was furious at me. HOW DARE YOU DRIVE LIKE A MANIAC! I RAISED YOU BETTER! The whole ordeal. Then it turned out I wasn't the driver that day! My dad had borrowed it to pick something up. I asked him how desperately he needed me to take the fall for him, knowing she'd turn on him with the fury of an angry mama bear.
And that's how I got myself a new HDTV that year!
#71 Everyone Poops
I work at an animal shelter and a woman asked me if we had any dogs that didn't poop. I told her no, all dogs poop. That’s when she asked about cats…
#72 A Clean Misunderstanding
A couple was looking for a new apartment and the next-door neighboring apartment had a 6:00 PM open house. They were looking for the manager's office, and I directed them to the apartment across from mine, not knowing that was the apartment complex's laundry room. It was the apartment building adjacent to mine that had the open house.
I was going to apologize to the couple who thanked me, after telling them where the wrong apartment was. But I couldn't find them and they probably didn't want a doofus as a neighbor. Still thinking about it.
#73 A Short Ride
I don't see these people so much, but I can only assume that they remember. In elementary school, the route I was on for the bus didn't have many kids, so they had sent along a smaller bus until they combined our route into another, thus a full-sized bus. I wasn't very aware as a kid, and had no shame of this fact, and never thought of it much.
As a teen, someone made some crack about "taking the short bus," to which I responded by blurting out, "Aw I remember taking the short bus to school." As they started laughing, I realized why I shouldn't have shouted it out. Was long after graduation when I ran into an old classmate, and the first thing he asked was if I took the short bus there.
#74 An Awkward Coincidence
On my first date with my wife, we started talking about tattoos. I have a rule that if I have an idea for a tattoo, I sit on it for a while to see if it’s something I truly want. I mentioned this to her and explained how glad I am that I do this because otherwise I'd be covered in Tool (the band) tattoos or some, "other dumb stuff."
Little did I know, I'd just messed up big-time. She rolled up her sleeve to show me that she had the lyrics to one of their songs tattooed across her arm. Oops!
#75 Bad Time Management
It was my first day flying solo as a manager at Burger King. It was a Sunday morning. A lady had called in a moderately-sized order to pick up. I made sure we had it ready to go and thought all was well. It had been about 15 minutes past the time she was expected to arrive to pick up the order. Soon, it was 30 minutes and the three or four bags containing the order were still sitting on the heat chute.
By this time, breakfast had closed (at 11:00 AM). About another 10 to 15 minutes later, I figured she probably wasn't going to come in, so I threw it out. As luck would have it, she showed up just after the food she had ordered went into the trash. When she asked for her order, I had to politely tell her that since her order had been sitting on the heat chute long past the time she was due to pick it up, that I had thrown it out.
She gave me the iciest stare anyone had ever given me. She didn't say a word and then she walked back out. I can't say it was necessarily entirely my fault, since the food was long past its shelf life as she had come in so much later than when she was expected. Since I was the only manager on duty and it was my first day alone, I wasn't sure what the protocol was for holding late call-in orders, so I had to just make a judgment call.
#76 Nepotism Doesn’t Work, People
I lost my father's company three million dollars in assets due to a typo. As an 18-year-old intern.
#77 The Question Heard Round the World
During World History class in high school, this girl seriously asked how we won the American Revolution when the Germans had airplanes. I had to remember to breathe.
#78 Chemical Warfare
I was doing laundry and noticed our washer had a bit of funky smell to it, so I looked up some home remedies online that involved baking soda and vinegar. While I was standing at the washer I thought, "A cup of bleach wouldn't hurt." As soon as I threw it in and started the washer, my brain went "HEY! YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN'T JUST BE MIXING CHEMICALS ALL WILLY NILLY!"
So I pulled out my phone and googled “vinegar + bleach.” I almost cried when I read the result. “Vinegar + bleach = Toxic Chlorine Gas.” I proceeded to panic and scream for everyone to get the hell out of the house. Be careful with chemicals people.
#79 The Lemon Guy
When I was around ten years old, so fifteen years ago, my school had its traditional school disco. For some reason, I thought drinking as many cups of the free lemonade as possible would make me really cool—huge mistake. Over the course of what could have only been a couple of hours, I drank somewhere between twenty and thirty of those small plastic cups (like, 7oz/200ml cups) of lemonade, threw up everywhere, and had to leave.
To this day I don't know why I did that, and my oldest friends still bring it up.
#80 Money on the Counter, Gum in Your Mouth
I get very nervous around women that are into me, especially when I know she's watching me do something (even if it’s something trivial). On an early date, we went to the local shop to pick up some things for a picnic, including gum. I was overthinking and aware that I was being watched. I kept reminding myself of my next moves.
Money on the counter, gum in your mouth. Money on the counter, gum in your mouth. Easy. Suffice to say, when I put the gum on the counter and the €2 coin in my mouth, the cashier was baffled and my girlfriend (now my wife) was crying with laughter.
#81 Having a Gas
When I was a kid, I used to work at a gas station. It was one of those one-man stations where the attendant sits in a little booth in the center of the pumps. This was before the days where you could pay at the pump. You would go to the booth, give your credit card to the cashier (through the little slit under the plexiglass) and they would open your pump.
One day, one of the pumps jammed, and I had to go out to fix it. As the station was very busy, I hurried out to the pump, and then I heard a sound that made my stomach drop: the click of the door closing behind me. I had locked myself out of the booth. Needless to say, the variety of people who were trying to get gas and now couldn't were quite upset.
Not quite as upset as the people who had their credit cards locked inside the booth, though. I ended up having to call my manager at home from a payphone to bring another key to let me back in. I was left dealing with irate customers for the hour it took him to arrive, and turn away other irate potential customers, one whom was completely out of gas and stuck there.
My manager had a chuckle when he arrived and I later learned that this eventually happened to everyone, and that you could use the stick used to measure the gas levels in the tank to push through the tiny slot in the front through the booth to unlock the door.
#82 Cooking With Gas
A friend of mine once said, “I’m not worried about the price of gas going up, I only ever put $20 in at a time anyway!”
#83 Little Troublemaker
I'm a high school teacher, and this one student in my class is notorious for being a little troublemaker, to the point that no one in the class thinks he's funny. I had my back turned and was trying to help a student when the delinquent asks to use the restroom. Problem is, he already went 30 minutes ago near the beginning of class, and passing period is about five minutes away, so I said “no” and to wait until passing period.
He then repeats: "Mr. can I use the restroom, Mr. can I use the restroom." Over and over again, this kid is 16 years old...not a little kid, bigger than me in fact. The other students are telling him to shut up, and he keeps going. Finally, I turn around and snap at him, "Shut up you little turd!" He had his phone out and was recording me the whole time.
"Ha! I'm sending this to my mom!" I messed up. Then I get an email from his mom later in the day, "He is a little turd, isn't he? My apologies."
#84 A Tight Squeeze
Me and a couple of friends went train traveling around Europe after high school. When we were in Paris we slept in this hostel up in Montmartre which meant if we were in the city center we would walk about an hour to get there, which was honestly fine, we didn’t have a lot of money and we had gotten used to walking a lot on the trip.
But one night we are drinking on the Seine and we think maybe we can spare a couple of euros to get the metro this one time. We check and the last one is leaving in like five minutes, so we run like crazy and realize we wouldn’t have time to buy tickets. No problem, I say—I’ve seen other people just kind force the doors and since they’re pneumatic, they open on their own.
So, I go first and I just get completely stuck between the doors, I can’t even go back. They’re laughing their butts off and then this Frenchman kinda just glided under this opening, so they follow suit. Now they’re in and I’m still stuck. So, I just squeezed through as hard as I can, my face completely smashed onto the plexiglass and somehow, I made it through.
To this day I’m Fartman to them.
#85 A Case of Mistaken Identity
One time, I went up to my girlfriend in a busy mall and put my arms around her from behind, greeted her and went to kiss her neck. Then, I felt my blood run cold. At that exact moment, the stranger I was hugging said, “uhh, hi.” The stranger thought it was hilarious, my girlfriend who saw me do it thought it was hilarious and everybody in the vicinity who witnessed it was laughing.
#86 Horsing Around
My very first job in high school was at a horse farm with about 25-30 horses. One of those places where rich people board their horses because they don't have the time or space for full-time horse ownership. The owner spent about a week training me on my duties. Each horse had their own stall and most of them had special diets that had to be memorized.
I figured the hardest part would be remembering which stall got which feed so I concentrated really hard on remembering it. The part that seemed easy was bringing the horses in from their pastures to the barn. There were three separate paddocks for obvious reasons; one for the geldings, one for the mares, and one for the stallions.
The owner showed me how all you really had to do was open the gate for one group. The horses would make their way to their own stalls. After locking that group in their stalls, you let the next group out. Simple enough, right? Well, the day came that the owner let me do my work unsupervised. I mean completely unsupervised. I was the only one at the stables.
I'm pretty proud of myself that I got the food combinations correct, so I head towards the mares. Normally, the horses would be waiting because they knew it was feeding time. Today, they were nowhere to be found—until I opened the gate. Suddenly, 25,000 pounds of horseflesh came charging up over a hill and toward the gate.
Every single horse on the farm was within the mare's paddock. I freaked. There wasn't a darn thing I could do but get the heck out of the way and hopefully they would go to their own stalls and I could save the day. Nope. I don't think a single one of them went to the right stall, and moving them around was impossible.
I sat there, not sure whether I was angry at whoever put them all in the same field or disgusted in myself for failing so miserably at my first job. After they were all done, I put them back where they were supposed to go, although I'm quite sure I was so flustered that I put some mares in the gelding pen and vice versa. Convinced it was somehow all my fault, I was too cowardly to call the owner and tell her what happened, and I never went back.
To this day, I imagine them coming back to the stables, only to find horses in the wrong pens and complaining about what an idiot I was.
#87 Historically Challenged
I was on a school trip to Germany and we visited a local casino. One kid asked, “Do the Native Americans run the casinos here too?” I almost fell over.
#88 Weathering the Stupid Storm
I was out for dinner one time with a group of colleagues from summer camp. One of the girls was staring outside, then looked back at us and said something so stupid, I'll never forget it. She said: "Isn't it amazing that it's raining all around the world right now? I mean like, it's raining in Rome right now." She literally thought that when it rained in one place, it rained all around the globe simultaneously.
It's mind-boggling. Local weather stations? Nope, never heard of ‘em. Different climates? Heck nope. I lost contact with this weather-goddess a few years ago but I still see my other friends a couple of times a year. No matter what the weather is, we reference this quote.
#89 The Mail Man
I was 16, driving while stoned, with friends in the car. For some reason, the front passenger seat was empty, with two friends sitting in the back (maybe we had dropped someone off—this memory bothers me for its vagueness). Up ahead I saw a hitchhiker so I pulled over to offer a lift. I even went so far as to lean across the seat to roll the window down...before I noted it was a mailbox.
To this day, I’m still close with one of the people who sat in the back and he does not fail to mention it whenever we get together. Funny he can even remember it.
#90 Lucky Pull
Dentist here. I was performing a simple extraction and preparing for the case when I didn't realize that I had the X-ray flipped the wrong way the whole time. I was viewing the film backwards and pulled out the wrong tooth. When I realized my mistake I started freaking out, only to find out that by some dumb luck, the tooth I extracted had to go as well.
#91 A Black and White Issue
I was officiating a soccer game of 15-year-old boys. The teams’ respective colors were RED and WHITE. There was one African American boy on the Red team. As the game progressed, it got more dangerous and out of hand. At half-time, I informed both benches that I would be calling the game tight, and that the next flagrant foul would not go unpunished.
30 seconds into the 2nd half, the African American boy had a hard foul. I blew my whistle very aggressively and yelled, "TAKE A REST BLACK!" After realizing what I had said, I immediately tried to correct myself. I stumbled over every word. The damage was already done. One player on the other team said to me, "Not cool dude.”
#92 That Escalated Quickly
I was sitting in my back garden with my best friend, and we'd recently acquired an air rifle. So obviously we started shooting it at things in an increasingly destructive manner—because we were 11. We shook up and banged out a can of Coke and then laughed as it went nuts spraying its contents everywhere. Then, we got a can of deodorant and it was even MORE ridiculous because it basically went bang but in a relatively harmless way.
Then we got a can of shoe polish. Turns out shoe polish is…a little bit flammable. A little bit more flammable than you might expect. The explosion set fire to my step dad’s shed. The can itself went straight up like a surface-to-air missile. Armed police arrived shortly afterward. At the time I lived in reasonably central London, and this was in 1991, which just happened to be slap-bang in the middle of the biggest-ever spate of IRA terrorist attacks on the city and a couple of months after some IRA members had driven a motorboat up the Thames and fired mortar shells at the actual Houses of Parliament.
The bollocking we got from the police was...extreme. But it was nothing compared to the look in my mother's eyes the whole time it was going on, because my friend and I knew that it was when the police left that things were going to get very bad indeed. The sense of apprehension was even worse than a riot cop carrying a rifle screaming in our faces about how stupid we were.
It was horrifying. We were doomed. And so it came to pass. She went absolutely mental. My mother is a mild-mannered person but not that day. Not that day. It still terrifies me to think of it almost 30 years later.
#93 Like Mother, Like Daughter
My first year of college I met a girl and we became fairly close. She lived nearby so we’d spend time with her family for free meals and whatnot. One day, we’re sitting in her living room with her mother, and besides the obvious 20 year age gap, they looked nearly identical. Discussing getting into the bars, my friend says, “Mom, I’ll just use your ID and they won’t even notice. We look the same.”
I tell her that won’t work, because her mother’s ID says her birth year and my friend most definitely does not look 40. I thought my friend was dumb for not realizing that, but somehow, her mom was even worse. The mom thinks for a minute and then blurts out, “Oh, I have an old ID from when I was 21, you could use that one.”
My friend agrees and they talk about how smart their plan is... they were both equally stumped when I reminded them that just because she got the ID when she was 21 doesn’t mean the birth date would be any different.
#94 Blame it on the Banana
So, I used to find passing gas in front of anybody horribly embarrassing. When I was pregnant, I had the worst smelling gas known to man. Like, sometimes it would make my husband gag. Which is saying something because his job is literally cleaning up human poop all day. One day, my friend walked into my house 30 seconds after I had let loose a big one.
If I wasn't so embarrassed at the time, I would have found his immediate look of disgust hilarious. Him: "What even is that!?" Me: flustered and looking for anything to blame it on, sees an old banana peel in the bin: "Oh, umm, must be that banana rotting in the bin." In comes my husband: "Oh God, you've let it rip again! Hahaha."
Now, five years later, if someone smells a toot, there must be a rotten banana around.
#95 Inside Jokes Are Not Outside Jokes
At work (on my personal email) I was emailing my best friend who was Polish, and we often used “polak” as a joke. Me being part Italian, I also referred to “greasy Italians.” Sent the email to my friend. Then I looked again, and my stomach dropped. I realized I had typed it up in the wrong email window and had sent it to a client.
#96 She Would Swim Any Waters for Me
I'd been drinking one night and peed the bed...my girlfriend's bed. With her in it. I spent an hour wide awake and mortified, as we hadn't been living together for very long at that point and I had no idea how to handle it. I eventually woke her up and shamefully told her what happened. Without ridicule or anger, she got up, helped me get the sheets in the wash, and took a shower with me.
It's been three years since that day, and she hasn't once used that event as harmful ammunition in an argument, or even mentioned it at all except as private playful banter once or twice. I understood then that she respected that embarrassing things happen to everyone and that I could always count on her to have my back, and to always keep our secrets.
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#97 Frogging It
Not me but my cousin. We were really close growing up as kids, our parents took us all sorts of places We had these local woods nearby with various walking trails, little paths that showed you around so you didn’t get lost. Anyways we are halfway through one of the 45 mins trails and me and my cousin both needed to pee. My mom told us to pick a tree and squat to go.
It took us a few minutes of working up the courage, being like 8-9-year-old girls we were aware enough to not wanna be seen naked. So there we are, mid-stream, eyes darting everywhere, ears pricked, peeing as hard and fast as we could, I had finished just in time to hear this family literally come out of nowhere, they must have been walking off-trail because holy balls, there they were.
I have never pulled my trousers up so vigorously fast in my life, to the point where I’m gonna have to dig this wedgie out or I’ll be rocking it back to the car with a jaunty step. My cousin on the other hand, wasn't so graceful. I'll still laugh when I remember what she did. She literally shrieks and starts running, tree to tree, still peeing, trousers around her ankles, her pale white butt flashing through the foliage like some sort of rare phenomenon.
Her butt looked boney and triangular, like a frog butt, so we’ve called her frogbum ever since. She’s 30 now and heavily pregnant but frogbum still lives on.
#98 Irresponsible Faculty Meeting
One of my favorite moments: I walk into the school office to check my mailbox. A parent of one of my students sees me and says very loudly, almost screaming, "Oh, FINALLY!!!! LOOK, EVERYONE, I FOUND A TEACHER!!! Do you realize that I left work EARLY to come here after school to talk to my son's teachers about his report card, and you are LITERALLY the ONLY teacher I have found?!!! I went from classroom to classroom and everyone is GONE!!! Do you know what time it is?!! It's 3:45 pm! School ended FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO!!! FIFTEEN MINUTES!!!! And you're the ONLY teacher STILL HERE!!!! CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME WHY EVERYONE IS GONE?! CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME WHY EVERY TEACHER HAS LEFT THE BUILDING WHEN SCHOOL JUST GOT OUT?!!!!"
I paused, waiting to see if there was more. When I realized he had finished, I said, "All the teachers are in the library. We're having a faculty meeting." The look on his face was priceless. He knew he was in the wrong, but by that point, he had committed so fiercely to his anger and righteousness that he couldn't just apologize. So he said, "Well that's just irresponsible." And he walked out of the office.
#99 How Do You Say ‘Stupid’ in French?
I had a crazy French teacher who banned getting out of your seat during class for any reason. She was constantly handing out detentions for things as inconsequential as walking to the trash can to throw away a piece of paper. She absolutely could not deal with the fact that we periodically might need to actually leave our chairs for a perfectly valid and harmless reason.
One day, she accidentally locked herself out of the classroom and nobody would let her back in. "Sorry! We aren't allowed to get out of our seats!"
#100 To Be Fair, TV Is Pretty Complicated
A girl my dad dated for a while. Even while dating her, my dad would say she was dumber than a bag of rocks. One day, she sat down to watch a movie with my dad. The movie was all about this guy and his twin brother. She sits and watches the whole thing, no interruptions. At the end, she turns and asks, "So there were two of him?"
That would explain why she always had the TV turned to a music channel. Apparently, she couldn't follow normal TV or movies.
#101 What Time Is It?
One time I woke up late for school because my alarm didn't go off. I am incredibly blind without my contacts and just glanced at the clock and was very late. In a furious panic to try somehow make it to the bus, I put my contacts in, dunked my hair in water and grabbed my backpack and jacket as I sprinted to the bus stop.
It was the time of year where it's dark outside well into the morning, so it was still pitch black. No one was at the bus stop, so I figured I missed. I still waited for quite some time in case it showed up. When I realized I was so late it wasn't coming I walked back to my house, knowing I would have to wake my mom up to take me to school.
Fortunately, when I walked through the front door, she was already up and waiting for me! I thought she'd figured out what had happened, but she greeted me with, "WHERE THE HECK HAVE YOU BEEN?!?!" I responded that I was sorry, but late for the bus and needed her to take me to school. She glared at me, and that's when I realized my idiotic mistake.
It was actually something like 4 AM. I had somehow misread my alarm clock in my state of panic and tried to explain that I really did think I was late and was really at the bus stop. She just assumed I had snuck out with friends the night before and was just coming home, something I had been doing off and on for a while at that time. So, I was grounded for sneaking out, when in reality I just woke up too early to go to school.
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Source: Factinate
