I had an interview for a teaching position today. After observing my teaching demonstration, they sat me down and proceded to ask me a series of typical interview questions. (They even asked me what was on my iPod :dubious: ). Eventually one of them asked me, “Do you have any life goals that you think would surprise us?”
I stared back her, thinking: ‘What an inane question.’ And before I could stop myself, I blurted out: “Well, I’ve always wanted to become a vampire.”
I froze. They froze. We stared at each other for a split second, then all of them burst out laughing. It wasn’t until then my heart started beating again.
I dunno if I got the job, but I’m really glad all of them had a good sense of humor, at the very least.
When interviewing for a job as a correction officer, I couldn’t resist saying the ultimate answer to the question “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”
I had just been hired and was being given a tour by the dean of the division. She asked about my wife’s job, and when I mentioned that she’s an attorney, she asked “Oh? What kind of law?”
Without thinking I said “General civil; legal malpractive; medical malpractice, wrongful termination…”
Way to go, dork: not-so-subtly threaten the new boss!
I was talking to my Uncle when he was passing through recently, and was asking about my Aunt who wasn’t on the trip with him. After he told me some innocuous story about her new job or something, I inexplicably said “Well, life’s a bitch and then you marry one.”
Then my mouth dropped and I just stared horrified at him. He gave me a confused look and changed the subject.
I still have no idea why I said that, and still feel mortified.
a few years ago – when smoking was still allowed in bars here – the bar i was working at had an incredibly slow mid-week night. around midnight, there was only four patrons in the bar, and i was standing at the back corner of the bar, talking to one of the bartenders, and enjoying a cigarette… when the manager showed up. he walked over to me and said, “hey, i know it’s dead here right now, but you can’t be smoking in the bar when you are working.”
without thinking, i replied, “well, {name} i would not exactly call this working.”
three, four seconds of staring passed, then in unison we said, “i can’t believe you/i just said that to me/you.”
immediately followed by my saying, “i’m sorry. this will never happen again.”
Oh I’d never ask the ipod question, ipods are intensely private. But I’d hire based on the vampire answer. But what is a teaching demonstration?
A couple years back I was having lunch at a little cafe with a gaggle of women I worked with. One of them, bless her, was this sweet-natured but highly neurotic and extremely unattractive woman not least of all due to the size of her nose, which could have doubled as a ski jump at the Winter Olympics. She was lamenting her perpetual single status and receiving sympathetic ears from all assembled. I took a break from staring out the window to mention that:
“In Roman times, you would have been considered attractive.”
Time stopped. Horror. What did I say? Oh goddammit. Total failure at the thought-to-voice checkpoint.
Someone calmly took a mini-muffin out of the bread basket and hurled it at me. It bounced off my forehead and rolled to stop on the floor, mushed, lonely and dejected. I went back to staring out the window.
This wasn’t ‘talking,’ but work-internal instant messaging: My boss was at another location, IM’ng me at 5:00, when I was trying to close up and leave, with a bunch of questions. I was getting frustrated, and several other people in the room were giving me smart-ass comments to write back to him, egging me on. After about five more minutes of this, I quickly wrote, “Eat sh*t and die” then hit Enter by reflex. :eek:
Well, I confess I floundered for a bit, initally blaming one of the co-workers of taking over my IM, which he took in stride, knowing that particular co-worker, but I couldn’t do that. I owned up to it, apologised profusely, saying it would never happen again.
I genuinely felt bad for doing this, because he is a good man, and a great boss, if a little annoyingly micro-managing at times. Still, no justification for saying that to him. Makes for a great story, though–most people know I don’t normally do anything like that.
I now NEVER write anything in IM or email that I really wouldn’t say to the person to their face.
Someone bumped into me once while waiting for a ferry. I said, “Hey watch where you’re going.” Then I saw his white cane and turned bright red. I slinked off into the crowd hoping no one could see me.
Nothing that I’ve done has come to mind. But here’s a story about my friend: He was walking out of a resturaunt, holding a bag of takeout food. A homeless man walked up to him and asked “some food?” and my friend replied, “no thanks, we’ve already eaten.” It took him half a block to realize that he’d said something wrong.
I used to work as a stagehand for the Trump casinos in Atlantic City. The employee parking lots were a couple miles away on the Atlantic City Expressway, so at the end of every shift we’d have to take a shuttle bus from the building to the lot. One day were were on the bus and had just pulled away from the building and we were sitting at a light. I looked out the window and saw a shift of maintenance workers leaving the building to wait for the next bus. One of the guys was stumbling out of the door, barely able to stand up, and sort of lurched over to the bus waiting line.
I blurted out (louder than I realized): Holy sh*t, look at that guy- he’s drunk off his ass!
About a dozen of my fellow bus riders turned to look out the window, then turned and glared at me.
“Wha-”
Then I realized what was obvious to everyone*- he had cerebral palsy.
The rest of that ride was uncomfortably silent.
*In my own defense, I was a summer hire and this was about 2 weeks into the summer session. Everyone else was a permanant employee, and knew the guy really well. I had never seen him before. I still felt like an ass, though.
I’m at work and sitting in a row that’s across from the one I used to due to an ex. It wasn’t a particularly bad breakup but some things happened afterward that make me want as little to do with her as possible so I moved for both our benefit. I do have some friends in that aisle still, though, and one of them passed by about twenty minutes ago asking me if I was too good to sit with them because the people who would normally sit with me are not here today. Without even thinking, I told him “Some of you” and he just stopped in his tracks, shook his head, and continued walking.
That doesn’t sound as out there as some of the examples already posted but considering my geneally meek demeanor and that I’m actually trying to keep the peace between us, I’m pretty surprised I said it.
I did something similar. I was standing behind an older man at the convenience store. He had a pile of stuff on the counter and the clerk was out of bags. The man was trying to scoop everything up with one arm. I said, “Can I give you a hand?” He turned to me and said, “Sure, you got an extra one?” Then I noticed he was missing his left arm from the elbow down. :smack:
My friend was undergoing a psych evaluation for a higher security clearance. They asked him, “What would you feel if you shot your mother.” He responded, “Recoil.” The shrink looked at him like he had three heads.
My friend then told the shrink that it was a BS question because there was no context to the shooting (accidental, self-defense, murder, mercy killing, etc). My friend got the clearance. BTW, it was for working with nukes. Be afraid.
It’s where you stand up in front of a group of interviewers and pretend they are a classroom of students, and you give a short lecture on whatever your field is. I hate doing it, but it’s easier in a college setting since your students are also adults. I had to do one for an ESL school once, imagining my peers were all actually 8-year-olds.
I haven’t decided whick of mine to post yet so I’ll share someone else’s
Just talked to my cousin. He told me he’d been chatting up a lovely woman, and that it had been going along well until it was time to give her his phone number.
His number is comprised of only 2 numbers and follows this pattern: 545-5445
She said “Wow, that’s really confusing”.
Alas, he could not stop himself from saying “No, actually it’s the exact opposite of confusing.”
Apparently neither of them made any kind of effort to find some paper on which to write it down after that.
I was having lunch with some co-workers. One of the guys was staring wistfully at the waitress, who had a Jane Mansfield-type bullet bra on. I blurted out “Careful! You’ll put your eye out!”.
Did he have a glass eye? Yup.
Some new neighbors moved in. There was an awkward pause during the Meet and Greet. I offered up a joke. “If a couple from Arkansas gets divorced, and moves to California, are they still considered to be Brother and Sister?”.
Was the guy from Arkansas? You betcher bird, Buster.
I was listening to a customer on the phone, who was turning feral. He started a rant about what a shitty product we had, whined about the cost, and finally finished with a how-can-you-even-call-yourself-a-tech finale.
I finally hung up, and muttered under my breath “What a fucking asshole.”.
Was I using my new headset? Check. Did I forget to turn it off after hanging up the receiver, allowing the customer to be able to hear me? Double check.
I’ve posted this one before. I was about 14 and playing chess with my mother’s boss’s African American boyfriend. He reneged on a move and I teasingly protested. A few minutes later my mom and her (African American) boss came in the room and someone asked who was winning. I said “The reneger.” Which, when spoken aloud, sounds just awful. It took about a beat for me to realize what it sounded like and I apologized about 56 times.
While watching my mother’s house (she was out on a week-long business trip), our closest family friends called. Specifically, the nice lady who was close to my mother’s age. There were so many trips going on that she didn’t remember if mom was home this week or not. We chatted for a while and caught up. Then, as I as going to hang up, I called out -
“I love you!”
in the most chipper 'bye-by-mom" voice.
I froze.
“Ah, I’m sorry, I was momentarily… confused - I somehow thought I was talking to mom - it, I…”
“That’s O.K. Smiling Bandit.” I get the mild idea that she was as ambarrassed as I was, although also amused greatly by my self-induced humiliation.
I was about ready to smack myself with a rock and die of embarrassment.
