"Oops!" Embarrassing Public Accidents.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So, I guess I didn’t learn everything I need to know in Kindergarten. I’m pretty sure they never covered this!

I’m a big girl, and a fairly poor one at times, so I tend to wear out my belongings, especially clothing and shoes.

I’ll wear a pair of shoes until the soles fall off if I can, and I’ll wear clothing until it gets holes. I’d never wear unsuitable clothing out in public, but I will definitely wear it UP until the point it’s no longer suitable. It’s hard to find clothing that fits properly, so when I find it, I wear the hell out of it.

Tonight, getting ready for work, I wasn’t paying that much attention to my clothing, since I didn’t get near enough sleep. I spent the afternoon watching episodes of Cold Case with a friend I rarely get to see anymore, and thusly stayed up way too late.

I grabbed a pair of plain, hunter-green dress slacks and an ugly, button-up plaid dress shirt. It’s ugly, but it’s warm, and the lab is cold, damnit, and I was running late. I was out of it enough to notice that the seams on my pants were getting a bit frayed.

Upon getting to work and sitting down at my desk, there was an unflattering ‘rrrrrrip’ sound.

Oops. :eek:

The seam on the inside of the right leg of my pants chose that moment to give way.

I work nights, and though I only work about 2 miles away from where I live, I don’t have a car, so I couldn’t just run home and change. And unfortunately, where most people might be able to run to the ER or ICU and beg a pair of hospital-issued scrubs off the staff there, my hips are JUST big enough that they don’t properly fit into any of the sizes of scrubs that they offer. If I take the largest size offered, they do fit, but the waist is far too big and poofs out and even the drawstring won’t hold them in tight enough, and I’m stumbling over my pants and trying to hold them up from falling down past my waist. I’m usually unsuccessful at this, so the pants then end up stuck on my hips, with my stomach uncovered, and it’s really … well. Unprofessional, to say the least. I look like I’m crazy, tugging DOWN DOWN DOWN on my shirt and UP UP UP on my pants.

I decide to brave the possible chance of anyone noticing, since we’re a small staff and I am not going to be running any marathons. Quick jaunts back and forth between desks shouldn’t make it noticeable.

I forget all about it until after lunch. I sit down a little too hard on my chair, which pulls on the split seam.

It splits again, twice as far as before.

:eek: :eek: :eek:

By this time it’s the busiest part of the shift, and my coworker has left to go home for lunch, and won’t be back for another hour. I am stuck with no coverage and no way to fix my pants. I decide to grit my teeth and ride it out. Pleasepleaseplease no more ripping.

My kingdom for some safety pins. Even though I’d probably wind up sticking myself somehow.

It’s now 5 AM. I’ve avoided further ripping and I can leave in two hours… but I’ve started taking the bus home instead of a cab, because the price of cab fare has skyrocketed in the last two months, and the whole trying to use less fuel thing is a good idea anyway. Taking the bus means changing buses three times and walking two or three blocks in between.

I am crossing my fingers that some entity takes pity on me and waits until I get home to show the world my underwear. Until then, I am being EXTREMELY careful.

I’m not so much mortified anymore as laughing at myself. Thank goodness I work in the lab, and not directly with the patients, traipsing around the floors all night.

Feel free to point, laugh, sympathize, or share your own story. :smiley:

2

I suggest investing in either a tiny sewing kit, or a package of safety pins. Probably both.

3

I actually have a sewing kit.

Alas, it is … at home. :smack: I do believe I shall have to transfer it to my work locker, just in case.

4

Since you have a work locker, I’d suggest keeping a change of clothing in there.

5

It’s extremely tiny, but I would be able to squeeze in a pair of pants. My only concern is that people have been breaking into the lockers and stealing anything/everything lately. I might not really care about a sewing kit being taken, but a pair of my pants being stolen would upset me.

6

I was leaving work one day when my pantyhose decided they could no longer cling to my hips and waist, and they shimmied their way down. I had already left the building and I was making my way across the parking lot. It wouldn’t have been that big a deal, except at the time, I worked at the Pentagon. And I was lower than the lowest peons, so I was parked about as far out as one could park and still be within sight of the building. And being quitting time, there were many bodies in the parking lot.

I just stopped between cars and yanked them suckers off. I don’t know if anyone knew what I was doing, but better one person witnessing that rather than hundreds watching me shuffle to my car.

I now wear pants exclusively to work. Plus I no longer work at the Pentagon - the walk to my car is now much shorter.

7

That happened to me once. Fortunately, our secretary had a few safetypins in her desk. I’ve kept a few safety pins in my own purse ever since. In fact, the Secret Compartment of my purse contains:

  • one swiss army knife
  • one tiny USB stick
  • four painkiller tablets, the kind that can be swallowed without water;
  • 2 small and 2 large safety pins
  • a few bobby pins and hair clips to get my hair out of my face
  • 4 band-aids, to cover up those blisters you always forget the first day of wearing your summer sandals gives you.
  • a tiny plastic fold-fork that once came with a packet of sushi. No wait, I threw that last one out, as it punctured the painkillers and I hadn’t used it for a year anyway.
8

What else?

-6 cotton swabs.
-A can of bear spray.
-A small pack of mints.
-One inflatable raft.
-2 Rubber bands.
-One roll of duck tape.
-An “Inverted Jenny” stamp.
-1 Earl Grey teabag, used.
-A worn, undefined amount of toilet paper.
-One Malay dagger.

-…

:smiley:

9

An apron was standard issue back when I worked at a grocery store. One day, after a big lunch, I was feeling bloated and just unbuttoned and unbleted my pants. No big deal because the apron covered it all. So when my shift ended I did a little shopping of my own. I had the apron off and it was quite a while before I realized that I was walking all over the store with my pants wide open.

10

My husband calls my purse The Portal … as in, when I reach inside it opens a magic portal back to the house, where I can withdraw Anything That Is Needed, be it band-aid, pin, candy, toy, medicine, kleenex, gum, Wet One, hand sanitizer or kitchen sink.

Good thing it’s a big purse! (Also very spiffy, if not in some cases, designer :eek: :wink:

11

I once spent lord knows how long at work, answering patron questions, running back and forth in the stacks, before a coworker told me my skirt was tucked into the back of my underwear.

12

So, Leah M, you’re suggesting that the display of your panties is a BAD thing?

d&r

13

Not me, but my boss, who is a very dignified 68 year old woman.

Recently I took a day off and, when I returned, my boss said to me “You can’t ever take a day off again!” Now she often says this to me because I am pretty good at my job, can deflect things before they become an emergency and have a great memory for names. So, I said, “Okay, who ended up in the hospital?” which is typically our worst case scenario here.

“Oh, it was nothing like that,” says boss. “Around 1:00 those three girls came in to talk about their roommate. They were sitting in your office waiting and, when I came out to greet them a father and his daughter stopped in looking for directions to admissions. So I marked up a map for them, you know, with my back to them. Then I answered your phone. And then I went down to the other therapist’s office to tell him something and then, and only then did I discover I had **toilet paper **hanging out of the top of my pants.”

Now, let me tell you, she might not have been showing her back to as many people if I was there, but I’m not sure what I would have said to her to let her know about her little problem. She likes to believe we’ve worked together long enough that I would just tell her, but I don’t know if there’s ever long enough.

14

Come on Leah M, we need photos.

15

I had a similar experience. It was during my summer study program in Scotland. I was wearing these jeans that I’d had forever, and we were exploring this castle in the middle of nowhere when one of my friends found this crevice in some dark and dusty corner.

“I bet HazelNut could fit in there!”

So to please the crowd, I gingerly started to wedge myself into said space, half-expecting a tentacle to reach out and pull me into the bowels of the earth, never to be heard from again. Unfortunately, what happened instead was that my jeans decided to protest - by ripping right where my right ass and thigh meet.

“Nice panties,” my friends observed from behind.

:eek:

I really liked those jeans too.

16

Just for future reference, the ER should have lots of safety pins.

17

I had a pair of short that I just adored. They were lightweight, just the right size and length and had plenty of handy pockets. At some point they developed a small hole in the front about halfway down the leg, but I kept wearing them anyway, because I didn’t want to give them up.

Fast forward to moving day, when I am buzzing around trying to keep up with the 4 movers who are there carrying out furniture and packing stuff up. I’m helping with packing and carrying out bags of trash and things we decided not to take and not paying much attention to my appearance. At some point I feel a draft and look down to find that the small hole has become a rip about 8 inches across. Fortunately not too much was exposed and even more fortunately they hadn’t taken the rest of my clothes yet, so I was able to change into some other pants. It really pained me to have to add those shorts to the trash pile though.

18

Ah… I remember well the fumblings of young love.

19

I had a similar incident - walking across the dance floor at a wedding on my way back from the restroom. Got my hem tucked into my pantyhose.

Damn, I have major pantyhose issues. And I was intending to wear some to my daughter’s wedding on Sunday. Perhaps I should rethink…

20

Didn’t happen to me thank OG. I was in San Luis Obispo walking downtown and shopping. (SLO still has a old fashioned downtown with individual stores w00t!)
Anyway there was a mid-block crosswalk with a light to stop traffic. A lady was waiting there with her black lab on a leash. The walk signal came on and they started across. In the middle of the lane, the lab has to go. so he squats and proceeds to beam down a Shatner fight in the middle of the street. Of course this takes longer than the walk light is on, so this dog is keeping his mistress in the middle of the street while he finishes his business, and the block long line of cars can just wait. The lady looked mortified.
Anyway the dog finishes and she goes back to the curb. She gets out a bag to pick it up on the next light cycle, but a car ran over it, and so it was smeared all over the crosswalk.
She looked like she wished the ground would just open up and swallow her.