In my situation, this pertains to what to do at a bike shop. I’ve owned cheap dept. store mountain bikes in the past, and for the first time in 10 or so years have purchased my own, quality bicycle from a friend. Anyway, I’ve never been to a bike shop. Do I just walk in with my bike and see if someone can look at it? I’m assuming the answer is yes…it must be the same as going to the garage and having a mechanic look at your car. I’m just totally new to everything bicycle thus don’t know the proper etiquette.
Does anyone else have any stories of being totally baffled by (relatively) commonplace situations? Am I just being a nutter?
Why don’t you just call the bike shop and tell them whatever your concerns are? Make an appointment? If my cat is sick, I don’t just walk into the vet’s office with him, I call first.
I normally go to the bike shop without the bike and book it in for a service.
I often feel a bit bewildered in clothes stores that don’t clearly show which is the mens section and which is the womens. Jeans stores can be the worst as the intended sex isn’t always obvious from the style of clothes.
I thought the OP was looking for examples of commonplace situations in which we don’t know how to act. Based on my success rate, “Encouraging a woman to have sex with me” is such a situation.
Perhaps I should introduce a bicycle into the scenario.
About the bike shop, there’s no harm in bringing the bike in, as long as you’ve got another way home.
If the shop has a spare moment they can do something while you wait. If they’re busy they’ll have you leave the bike. Either way they can diagnose the problem better that way then from listening to you on the phone.
You can’t infer from the other clothing near the jeans? Maroon and white hockey jerseys, ringer t-shirts printed with numbers or lewd messages, heavy orange sweatshirts/hoodies on one side of the store. Pink halter tops, sequined tank tops, flowery print blouses, wall of jewelry on the other side. I certainly know which side I want to shop on.
I used to feel out of place at the school, when parents (mainly mothers) were asked to come in to volunteer for picture day, fundraising, volunteer luncheon. “Oh, we desperately need parents to get involved and help out, PLEASE come by and sign up for an hour or two!” they would say on the phone. I would get all the way over there, ready to serve, (on time, not walking in late!) and find all the ladies already cliqued up, chatting away like BFFs from birth, situation covered! Much laughter and chatter and discussion of buying supplies, the schedule, who would be calling what companies… I would stand around awkwardly, pretty much ignored, and eventually drift out the door unnoticed.
Did you have a day job at the time? I used to feel this same way trying to volunteer at the school, until a friend clued me in that the stay at home mom clique had dibbs on in class volunteering.
As a single working mom I never knew how to handle school social events. All of the other parents seemed to be friends with each other and my kids wanted to play with their friends so I usually ended up just hanging out by myself.
These days I’m not sure how to manage work events. We have a lot of receptions etc and it’s weird because everyone comes out from behind their desks, grabs a glass of wine and…mingles? Are we supposed to talk about non work related stuff now? That’s weird and I don’t want to do it. I wonder if I’m the only one who has no interest in “partying” with my coworkers? They are mostly nice people, but if I’m done working I’d rather go home than mingle.
I’m kind of estranged from my family, so don’t visit them on holidays or visit when I have business trips back to the US, where I’m from. They don’t visit me here, either. But co-workers inevitably ask these questions whenever I visit the US/whenever the holidays come around.
It’s just small talk; they’re no more interested in the real story than I am in telling it, but I can’t seem to come up with something vague enough to answer the query without lying.
Same thing when people talk about how mothers/parents never stop worrying about their kids, etc. I don’t feel like harshing everyone’s mellow, so I nod politely. So I know how to act in situations where I don’t need to respond, but kind of get tongue-tied when asked directly.
I’m not estranged from my family, but I only talk to them every few weeks. When people ask me how they are doing, I often say something like “I wouldn’t know.”
Setting up playdates. My daughter seems to be at an awkward age for this. She’s just turned 5 and her kindergarten classmates are 4-6. Some parents are good with them at this age just being dropped off and picked up later (I am totally ok with this) but some of the other parents think they’re too young for that and so a playdate for them means the moms have coffee while the kids play (I am also totally fine with this).
So when a mom tells me their kid would like to have my kid over to play (ALWAYS worded this way - “Susie would like to have Betsy over for a playdate next Tuesday”) I never have any clue if I’m supposed to stay, or just drop her off, or what. And I have no idea how to ask, either, because no matter what it seems to turn into an awkward nobody-wants-to-offend-anyone dance - If I come out and ask if they want me to stay, they are bound to tell me it’s up to me, regardless of what their original intentions were, leaving me with the possibility of either staying when they really would have preferred to not have to entertain a grown-up, or not staying and snubbing what may have been a perfectly welcome social invitation for myself as well as my kid.
All I can think about the school moms is that they were perhaps involved in PTA from day one, talk about cliques, and I was just some outsider. Same at church, when we were jumping through hoops to get our girl confirmed (which took YEARS) - fundraising, car washes, spaghetti dinners, bottle drives. We weren’t steady churchgoers, but our hearts were in the right place and we pitched in when asked. Same situation as with the school - show up to do some church-related free labor and all those good Catholics (who were probably on church committees, volunteered at religious ed classes, and went on bus trips together) just stared at you as if you were some street person wandering in. Very shabby treatment, and we were not inspired to go back to that church…Now, as for the work events, of which we had many, I couldn’t help but notice each little group from each department clustered together. Just like in the lunch room! And we were supposed to mingle and talk to other people who worked in that building. But it never seemed to work out that way. Accountants clung to accountants. Bosses chatted with bosses. Only the maintenance staff were at ease mingling, since they were all over the building every day (and everyone loved them for the hard work they did keeping things in repair, moving heavy objects, and sometimes acting as security guards). Maybe we should have been assigned numbered tables, like at a wedding, lol. I think humans are hard wired to form exclusive little clubs, leaving the outsiders floundering.
I never know what to do in bars. I don’t go to them very often, which is probably why, but every time I’m in one I just think “so…can I just order any drink I want? And they’ll have it??” I’ve heard of bars that didn’t serve wine (not that I order wine in a bar, that’s just an example), but there are some that do, and I would feel like an idiot if I ordered something that they turned out not to have. Not just because they didn’t have the drink I wanted, but because it would mean that I had somehow misunderstood the culture of that particular bar, and everyone would know me for a greenhorn.
I remember reading that Pit thread about ordering milk in a bar and just feeling completely overwhelmed. Not that I would order milk in a bar, either (if I’m going to a bar, I’m damn well going to order something with alcohol in it) but holy shit did people ever get all hot and bothered in that thread. Over milk, of all things!
You’re overthinking, Maiira. You need a drink. I’ve told the story before about a bartender friend of mine who worked in a tiny, seedy local dive, and said every evening a woman got off the bus from work, walked into the squalor filled with old rummies nursing beers all day long, and she ordered exotic tropical drinks. As if she was on vacation. Blue Hawaiians, pina coladas, mai tais. She wasn’t embarrassed, though I certainly would be. Besides,
every bartender should have a drink recipe book and be able to make anything, within reason, that you fancy. That’s what all those bottles are there for.