Ever accidentally insulted/offended someone who turned out to be important?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Have you ever gotten in trouble because you insulted/offended someone you didn’t recognize? Like you got in a little road rage, then later discovered that the person you screamed, “FUCKING MORON!” to turned out to be your boss/pastor/etc?

One time last year I was trying to find a parking space at school. Hard to do if I get there at the wrong time, and I was getting very irate at the prospect of being late for class because the only people getting parking spaces seem to be the people breaking just about every traffic law in the process (driving 40 mph going the wrong way in the parking garage for example).

There are a certain caste of people whom I particularly loathe- the parking campers. These are people who park their car in the middle of the aisle, shut off the engine, then take a nap waiting for a space to open up nearby. Its a hazard and not an effective way to get a parking space. This fateful day there is such a car parked in the middle of the aisle. A car some distance in front of us is pulling out, so I drive around the illegally parked car to signal to indicate I am waiting for the space of the person who is leaving.

The woman who illegally parked did not like this. She started her engine, and pulled up next to me saying, “You know I was waiting for that space” (No you weren’t, your engine was off, you were LYING DOWN in your car, you were illegally parked in my opinion, not waiting for a parking space) without even looking at her, I gave her the finger as I pulled into the space.

That morning, I was surprised to discover my American Lit professor was late (she was NEVER late previously). She told the class, “Sorry I’m late, the parking situation today was apalling” while glaring at me. I turned very pale. Her voice was familiar, in fact, she was the driver I had flipped off not 30 minutes earlier ugh the class was a big uphill battle from that point onward :frowning:

2

Mmm. This is why I’m always so careful not to be rude when I’m in my university town–I’m always worried that the impatient driver I flip a V-sign too might just be one of my tutors :(!

3

About 10 years ago I spent a month as a legislative aid for my state representitive. On my second day in Olympia while waiting in line in the capital cafeteria for breakfast, a guy comes waltzing in and cut in line in front of me and a couple others. When a young gal asked him to wait in line like everyone else he just ignored her. So I tapped him on the shoulder and said “Line starts at the back asshole.” He asked me if I knew who he was. I told him I didn’t care, the line starts at the back. He then left the cafeteria. Some guy that just got in line told me I shouldn’t have done that. I blew off the whole thing.

A couple hours later a memo was distributed to all members of the house and senate. It concerned the conduct of aids and in particular, the foul mouthed person in the cafeteria that did not know that the legislative leadership DID NOT have to wait in line in the capital cafeteria. The memo was signed by the president pro tem of the state house. I took extraordinary precautions to avoid him the rest of the month I was in Olympia.

4

We drove down the Alcan Highway from Alaska back in 1958 or so, when I was a kid. After visiting relatives in Montana, we drove to Oregon. The street system in Portland was truly bewildering for someone from Alaska; multiple lanes, signs of all kinds, and we were unfamiliar with the layout.

My father got into the wrong lane, which would have sent us heading to Seattle and cut back across, which elicited a shout from a guy on a motorcycle. My dad, ever the reasonable man, leaned out the window and yelled something to the effect of “Fuck you, ya fuckin’ punk!!”. A look of shock crossed the guy’s face and then he flipped on his lights and siren and pulled us over. Humble pie, anyone?

5

Incubus, a guy I knew in college had a similar experience with a professor whose course he was taking (insulting him more or less to his face accidentally). He dropped the course rather than face the guy again!

6

I used to work in a bakery frequented by “important” people. My boss hated the business and encouraged the staff to be as unpleasant as they wanted.

One busy day, I had a dozen people waiting on line (I was the only cashier) while one lady stood there and was wondering alound whether or not she should get the soup, after all, it was pricy. The line was getting longer, there she goes, “What kind of bread comes with that? Can I see the bread? And how is the chicken in the chicken noodle? Is it cubes or chunks?” I was getting SO mad, as were the people in line. Primadonna finally deigned to buy the cup of soup, expensive as it was. I poured it for her, shoved it in her general direction. I gave her a ripped paper bag, and no spoon or napkins. Muttered smething unpleasant under my breath. She gave me a cold look and marched out saying something about never coming back, soup that expensive isn’t even worth it.
A few minutes later my boss, who had watched the whole thing, came by to talk to me.
"I hope she doesn’t come back. Soup’s too damn expensive for her, my ass.

“That Martha Stewart is such a bitch.”

7

So I hear this knock on the door of my house about 1/2 hour before my scheduled wake-up time. I drag myself to the door and there’s this guy who looks like he’s an insurance salesman.

He asks me if I am “Joe Blow”. I tell him no. He asks who I am.

I tell him, “Blank you. You woke me up. I’m not your blanking business. Get the blank out of my yard and don’t blanking come back here.”

He then shows me his US Marshall badge and asks very politely for ID.

8

Brit Dopers will probably be the only ones to recognise this name, but: My dad (a big Formula 1 fan) was sitting in British Airways’ first class cabin flying from London Heathrow to Zurich, and ordered a bottle of champagne (I’d been born about 27 hours earlier).

Ever the generous fella, he offered some to the gentleman sitting next to him, who was wearing a big flat cap and gigantic Ray-Bans…

His neighbour proceeded to finish the bottle, and Pops got rather pissed off, and suggested he buy his own bottle next time, in colorful language.

Jackie Stewart pulled off his sunglasses and responded that he was going to replace the bottle anyway, and not to worry…

9

I’ve done this twice, it’s never pretty.

The first time was back in Jr. High. We lived pretty close to the school so I usually biked to and from school each day. One day on my way home (riding in the direction of traffic, on the paved shoulder like you’re supposed to) a truck coming up behind me starts honking like a crazy person. I figured he was just some redneck asshole who didn’t approve of bikes on the road so I move over onto the softshoulder to aviod him. He keeps honking. I run the bike into the drainage ditch next to the road and stop. He keeps honking and appears to be shaking his fist at me as he passes. I jump back on the shoulder and give him the finger with both hands and yell “Asshole” at him. That’s major verbal agression for a 12 year old. Much to my shock and horror the truck stops and turns around. I panic and bolt off into the woods (with my bike) off to the side of the road and make my way to the residential roads past the trees (maybe 50 yards or so) and continue making my way home that way, until I reached the point where I had to get back on the main road in order to get home (there was a bridge I needed to cross) I also figured by then the crazy redneck asshole would have given up his search and destroy mission. Wrong.

He had apparently been patrolling for me, riding up and down the road waiting for me to come out again. When he did catch up to me I was mortified and relieved to discover that my antagonist was not, in fact, a murderous redneck but my PE coach. Still an asshole redneck mind you, just not a muderous one. He proceeded to lecture me from the side of the road about innapropriate behaviour etc… explaining that he recognized me on his way home and was just trying to say “Hi”. I explained that sneaking up behind a bicyclist and leaning on your horn was not the best way to say “Hi” and that he’d scared the hell out of me. We say there for I don’t remember how long, basically demanding an apology from one another. We didn’t resolve it by the roadside and had to take it up in the principles office the next day. The principle listened to both sides of the story and much like a parent dealing with fighting siblings made us apologize to each other and shake hands before kicking us out of his office.

The second time I did something like this was in college, while working as a computer lab monitor (ie front line tech support) I was in the lab in the library (where I actually a little office) one day when one of our Netware servers took a dump, which it had been doing a couple time a week. We had about two dozen windows 3.11 PC’s that ran EVERYTHING off this server, they couldn’t even boot without logging in through the Netware client. Normally the server let them login automagically at boot time with no user intervention, but since their server was down they were trying to login to the first Netware server that replied, which they didn’t have access too. So they were all hung up at the Netware client’s login prompt. This caused a lot of confusion when people came in because they’d try to use the only U/P they had, which was for their school email account. Naturally they wouldn’t be able to login with these so they come to me griping about it.

I had a pretty standard speech worked out after enough people griped that went something like this “There’s nothing wrong with your U/P, the server those machines login to is down so no passwords will work, if you need to get your mail or surf the internet use one of the Macs, they’re still working.” That got most everyone out of my hair. Until this real pushy bitch walked in. The conversation went something like this:

Her: “My password isn’t working”

Me: <standard speech>

Her: “No you’re wrong, my password isn’t working”
Me: “No really, it’s a totally different password than you’re thinking of. You see the server that all of the PC’s have to login to in order to boot is down and they are trying to login to the wrong server, it should be up in about 20 minutes. Use a Mac if you need you’re email”

Her: “No that server isn’t down, dial Ops and give me your phone”

Me: “Yes it is I was just on the phone with Jim ten minutes ago, and this phone isn’t for student use, you’ll have to use a payphone in the lobby”

Her: “Dial Tammy in Ops and get her to fix my password”

Me <getting suspicous now that she’s dropping names of important people>: “Look, Tammy doesn’t even run the server that’s down, Jim does and I’ve already spoken to him, it’ll be up soon.”

Her: “Call Ops at 2455 and give me the phone.”

Me <nervous now becuase there’s no way she could know that ext if she doesn’t work for my department>: “Fine.”

Her <on the phone>: “Tammy it’s Dianne, look at my workstation, is it logged in? Oh CATS312 (the name of Netware server) is down? Ok thanks”

Dianne, whom I’d never met, did in fact work for the IT department, as head the training department, and was a peer of my boss. This didn’t stop me from…

Me: “Told you so”

She got all pissy and stormed off in a huff. I heard about it the next day from my boss. And again at our next staff meeting. And once more when they declined to re-hire me after summer break. What I thought was going to be a black mark on my record ended up being quite helpful when I applied for another student job in the IT department for Library itself. The incompetence and arrogance of campus IT was well known and my boss at the library considered pissing off Dianne (and being right at the same time) a good thing and hired me despite a negative review on my record. I worked there at the library for the rest of my time in college (three more years)

10

The factory I work at opened a new satellite plant in '96. Working out all the complexities of the new system(s) involved meant a lot of downtime spent standing around, chatting, reading, etc. Most of the supervisors had nothing better to do than yell at us to stay in our assigned positions and continuously clean, understandably they got cheesed when they’d get chewed out for production being stopped yet again and see us just standing around shooting the breeze.
8 hours with only 2-3 hours work makes for a really boring day, however. After two weeks of this boredom I was going out of my mind.
One particular day the boss gives us all the ‘clean up and stay next to your machine’ pep talk, but doesn’t specify the reason is that a bunch of bigwigs are coming through to tour the new facility. We had a special lunch that day, the company usually pacifies us with free food if they want us all in one spot to be lectured to. Various muckety-mucks said a lot of things that I’m sure they felt were quite important, the only part I really listened to was the safety lecture.
We’d had quite a few serious injuries in the short time the new facility had been launched, some due to equipment malfunction but most happened because folks weren’t paying enough attention. New material handling employees running people down with forklifts, workers unfamiliar with working in the body shop area recieving multiple cuts from not wearing enough protective clothing, etc. The message was to watch out not only for yourself, but everyone else you see, also. Help each other stay safe, blah blah.
I’ve consumed numerous free sodas at the luncheon, and go back to sit at my non-running machine and sit there and vibrate with the caffeine high and be bored spitless. Oooh, cool, here comes a bunch of folks down the aisle, sometimes they have us demo the equipment and that’s entertaining for a moment.
I notice this group of about 8 has 2 or 3 women in it, somewhat unusual, and they’re all dressed in a very unsafe manner, short skirts/pants, sleeveless tops, etc. I’ve seen folks badly hurt just by bumping into warehoused stock and not realizing just how sharp galvanized steel edges really are.
So, I helpfully approach the bunch, say hello and offer to lead them to the general store area where they can get protective coveralls and other safety gear. They just stare at me.
I stupidly continue explaining that this is the body shop and while the jumpsuits might be unattractive, they really are a good idea, and in fact are required for anyone traversing the department.
They just goggled at me like one of those travelogues where the Victorian english were on safari and stared at the natives “Look honey, she’s talking to us! Wonder what she’s saying?” One woman actually stepped back like I was contagious.

Well, whatever, I tried, no biggie.

An hour later I’m visited by my boss’s boss, asking if I was the one who talked to the little group that had went thru. Yeah, offered them coveralls, so what?

That was a Vice-president of our company, and his family I was talking to.

Hey, it’s a giant corporation, I can’t even keep track of the multiple layers of management at the single facility I work in, how was I to know? Apparently mr.v-p and his family thought I was being sarcastic and were insulted by my behavior. Oooops.

2 days later the entire 4000 person workforce got a memo handed out about visitor etiquette and specifically, what safety requirements were and were not necessary for visitors to adhere to. :o

11

Not “important” per se, but…

At a friend’s party I was chatting to some people and, admittedly, standing in the middle of a narrow walkway.

A woman wearing black leather (it was that kind of crowd) came up behind me and ordered me - a little too snottily for my taste - to get out of her way. I wasn’t in a great mood, so I turned around and asked her what the hell she wanted.

She got even snottier, mouthed off and made to raise the riding crop she was holding. This annoyed me.

Over the course of the next ten minutes I started to explain to her that she was not an adequate use of our planet’s finite deodorant resources. I started listing her shortcomings in terms of her physical appearance, her mode of dress, her genetic flaws and her psychological and intellectual shortcomings with special attention given to her overcompensation for her obvious and much-justified insecurities. If I say so myself, I was in pretty good form.

By the end, a crowd had gathered to watch the carnage and she was in tears. I turned and left the area.

I was told shortly afterwards that she was one of the city’s top professional dominatrices and that there was a good chance she hadn’t actually been spoken to in that way in quite a while…

12

I’m going to try to tell this story without giving away the location, though I suppose it doesn’t really matter…

I used to work in a business where people would steal the parking spaces a lot, especially when they were using the business next door. One day I went out and gave my usual (brusque but not rude) speech to someone who needed to move.

When the woman got out of the car and (not rudely) asked what I meant and then agreed to move, my coworker said “Why were you so mean to poor Whoopi Goldberg”?

I’m saying “I wasn’t mean and that definitely wasn’t…” when it hits me that the business next door is closely connected with Mr. Very Very Famous Movie Person, and that Ms. Goldberg in fact acted in one of those movies.

I try to convince myself that everybody deserves decent treatment anyway and that in fact I wasn’t so bad, but mostly I’m just hoping it wasn’t her.

13

…so I says to Tommy, “Is the f***in’ pope Catholic?” Turning around, I gasped, adding, “Sorry your Holiness, I didn’t hear you come in.” Was my face red!

14

To the OP in reverse - Two years ago I was driving to my first class of thr semester. It was 7:30 in the am and I was coming out of a local diner with my wife. This Kid comes screaming along and almost hits us. I glare at him and he says, “Watch where your going Moron!!!”

An hour later in Reseach Methods 202. First Class of the semester. He’s sitting two rows up from me The Instructor… I look at him and he turns quite crimson.
I ended up giving him a c+ for the semester. He just didn’t get psych stats I guess…

15

Not really an important person, but it was a funny and embarrassing situation nonetheless.

Last year when I was still living in Eugene, OR, a bunch of secretaries and myself left work at the Public Defenders office to watch them tear down several businesses next door to our office to make room for a new apartment building. Among these businesses were a restaurant, St. Vincent’s, and a local bar called John Henry’s that I had been to on many an occasion. A crowd had gathered to watch the destruction, and my coworker turned to me and said something about how she had never been to John Henry’s before. “It was okay, I saw some good shows there,” I said, “but it was always kind of dirty and slimy. And I heard they found a tarantula on the pool table one night.”

Right then, random guy sitting on a lawn chair behind me pipes up. “Oh yeah, we did! We’ve still got him as a matter of fact!”

Me, feeling a little bad for saying what I just did about what was obviously this guy’s place of employment: “Oh…do you work there?”

Guy: “Oh yeah. I’m John Henry.” :smack:

16

Man… Just last night i was talkin with my friends. See, they have this one person that they have prank called for a few years and called her names and just messed with every once and a while. I just learnt that that person is rissa smart, which is one of the hottest girls… ive ever seen in person. She graduated a few years ago and her (hot as well) sister graduated last year.
Its so funny cause they called her like, miss piggy, and weird names. And she even agreed to hang out with us… lol.
i find it hilarious

17

I’ve worked at a fairly prestigious golf course for 3 years now. During my second year there, I was driving, in a utility vehicle, through the course with a co-worker. Following proper golf course etiquette, I stopped the vehicle when we approached a group of golfers teeing off. As each member of the group took their SWEET time teeing off and teeing off again after they’d shot their ball into the pond or fescue, my co-worker and I grew more and more impatient (we were on our way to the staff room for lunch. While waiting, we continued a conversation that we had started earlier about illegal immigrants, the state of the labour market, and the lack of appeal of travelling to the US. When one of the golfers turned around and looked at us, we switched our conversation topic to the lack of talent this group of golfers possessed. We were in the midst of thoroughly bashing their golfing skills when they finally finished teeing off. The group collected their equipment, looked over at us and began to agree with our assesment of their game. I was slightly embarrassed that they had heard us, but I just waved at them and continued driving. While passing the parking lot, I noticed alot of red lisence plates on SUVs. (In Canada, that signifies a government vehicle.) Once at the staff room, my boss asked if we had seen the American ambassador to Canada out on the course. I didn’t clue in until I remembered the ear pierces and outfits of some of the men in that group. Within earshot, I had personally bashed their golf game, bashed the U.S., and my co-worker had admitted some not so legal labour practices in the U.S…wow, I clearly earned bonus points for Canada-U.S. relations. :smack: