Cue bizarro hospital scene with hysterical pregnant woman on the table.
“Cut me open! Lift them out at the same time! I’ll be damned if one of them is going to be born first! My cousin was a twin who was born second, and it scarred him for life. FOR LIFE!!! I’m not doing that to my babies!”
The wife of one of my co-workers gets offended easily.
She’s a really tofu-hugger type woman and their daughter is also adopted. Once the daughter, who was 7 at the time, got invited to a classmate’s party held at Build-A-Bear workshop. After the party she came home with her new teddy bear and the “adoption” certificate that everyone gets at Build-A-Bear.
My friend’s wife was not just offended by this, she was completely ballistic and spent several days going off at the parent that arranged the party, her daughter’s school ( not sure of the reasoning there) and the entire Build-A-Bear franchise. I’m sure her poor daughter hasn’t been bothered with many of those pesky party invites lately, though…especially since somewhere in her tantrum she contacted the other parents in the class about the great outrage she and her daughter suffered.
Once I offered the same woman some organic cheese puffs that I thought were extremely tasty and she informed me that her and her family “didn’t eat food that came in packages”
OK…
You don’t seem to have learned your lesson. When you repeat this behavior you will insult more people! So cut it out. You’re like my dad who is still asking women what their title is: “So, does that make you a doctorette or a doctoress?”
??? How am I like your dad? He is making comment that are offensive. I wasn’t. At least I dont’ think they were offensive to normal folks.
This only tangentially involves me, but it was somewhat bizarre.
I was in line at the grocery store and this older guy (say, mid-60s) finishes paying. The cashier asks if he would like a help out.
He stiffens and looks her in the eye and says, “Pardon me?”
Slightly taken aback, she replies, “would you like a hand out? With your groceries.”
He looks back at me with this exasperated look and says, “Help? Do I look like I need help?”
I shake my head and he grabs the bags, “No. I most certainly don’t need help,” and takes off.
They ask that of everybody.
Was the “dad” comment tongue in cheek?
No idea. But there is a coffee shop in town called “F’Coffee” playing on the fact that if you say “go for coffee” quickly, it kind of sounds like: “Go f**k off, eh.”
So perhaps there was something misheard that sounded like “get me off” or something.
Do you see what happened there? You got offended by the weirdest thing.
Your questions should not have offended anyone. They were perfectly reasonable questions that should have been deflected in a calm, friendly manner should they not wish to talk about them.
“Oh, I don’t really want the twins to know who was born first. It’s such a small matter, and I wouldn’t want either of them to worry about it, or be negatively affected by it.”
“Ivan was living in Russia when we adopted him. We don’t know if he was named after anyone.”
As internet msg boards prove time after time, ppl will choose to be angry about whatever they want to be angry about, without regard to rationality.*
We had some neighbors move in many years ago when I was a kid and my mom did the neighborly thing and made some muffins and took them over. The guy tells my mom “We don’t need your charity, we can feed ourselves just fine thanks.”
My mom was pretty shaken by it. The guy must have told his wife about it and she must have whacked him upside the head a few times cause they both came over later and apologized profusely.
It’s probably because when you said “lid”, you were pointing at her crotch, and when you said “coffee”, you pointed at your own.
Happens to me all the time.
I used to check out books at this library and, from the frequent visits, I became acquainted with the guy behind the counter. You know, the “what’s up” and “hey how’s it going” type deal. One day, I was checking out some books and I had my hands fool so I placed my library card on the table instead of handing it to him. Holy. Fucking. Shit. If you saw his reaction, you’d think I killed his parents and just handed him their fingers or something… He went off on how he’s always been nice to me and that I shouldn’t throw my library card at him. That was some crazy shit. I couldn’t even respond. I was speechless. Anyway, I never went back there after that day.
And yet I was automatically placed in the “Hopelessly Slobby and Forever Banned From My Home” category by a friend’s grandmother who was deeply upset that we left two teacups in her sink during a brief visit rather than washing them up ourselves.
Another one: Back in my airline reservation days, I took a call from a well-spoken woman who requested a bulkhead seat “for the extra legroom.” I told her that I understood, privately thinking of trips made with my then-husband, who was 6’6". I could hear her bristle over the phone. “Unless you’ve been in a serious accident caused by a drunk driver and suffered serious leg injuries you can’t possibly understand,” she snarled.
I handled the call as trained, but inwardly I thought her reaction was inappropriate. I mean, sorry it happened to you, but dang, dial down the vitriol!
But didn’t a snarky little part of you want to say: “Why yes, exactly! My pelvis was shattered and I can’t bend my knee! That’s was nine years ago. When was your accident?”
A very early job I had as a kid was as a stockboy at a retail store. Early one work day, I was putting some stuff on a shelf near the entrance and a woman walked in. I said: “Hello.”
She yelled: “I just got here!!!” in a ferocious voice and stormed off, back out the doors, and stomped through the mall to the exterior doors (our store was third from the mall entrance). My manager was sitting on a bench in front of our store drinking coffee, she and I both looked at each other like: “What the hell was that?!?” And then she made jokes all week about me chasing little old ladies out of the mall.
I can only assume from the woman’s tone that she hated being badgered by sales staff. But c’mon, I was doing my own thing, piling boxes on a shelf, and all I did was say “Hello.”
I don’t actually consider that a scenario that really fits the OP. I think it just ranks as: “crazy lady having a bad day.”
Example 2: I don’t think that question is interesting enough for me to ask, but I don’t think it’s offensive. She should have said, “Oh, actually we never don’t keep track of who was born first!” No need to get huffy.
My stepdaughter (who is admittedly one of those people who is perpetually pissed off because the universe doesn’t operate according to her rules) was annoyed that, because of a necessary caesarean, her twin brother was born first, and is thus the elder by two whole minutes. Had it been a natural birth, she was positioned to be born first. And no her brother didn’t pick on her or hold it over her head; he is as quiet and easygoing as she is assertive and touchy.
As a matter of fact, that’s almost exactly what flitted through my mind in the few seconds following her outburst. Made me wonder how often she launched tirades of that nature and whether anyone played the one-upmanship game with her.
That reminds me of something that happened years ago.
I work at a pretty large hospital and it can be daunting to find anything. Asking for directions is pretty commonplace. So one day I was walking down the hall and was stopped by an elderly (but hardly frail) woman.
Her: Excuse me.
Me: Yes?
Her: I was wondering if you could help me.
Me: Sure.
Her: I need directions to somewhere.
Me: OK.
I waited with an expectant look on my face. And waited. And waited.
Me: Where do you need to go?
Her: (yelling) I was just about to tell you that!
I’d have told her I was decapitated and they had to keep my head in a bucket of ice so they could be sewn it back on at the hospital. I’d win that game of one-upmanship! Oh yes, I would!
[quote=“autz, post:1, topic:507866”]
I’ve inadvertently offended people in ways I’ve never imagined would.
Example 1: There is a boy going to the same preschool as my son, and that boy’s name was Ivan. One day I was chatting with his father and I said, “Ivan is an unusual name, is he named after a relative?” The man looked at me with such anger in his eyes I was shocked. He said, in a very nasty voice, “Maybe from his ORIGINAL family it is, I wouldn’t know!” I later found out that he and his wife had adopted the boy from Russia and were very ‘touchy’ about the issue. I just don’t think of adoption as something to be embarrassed about, and I’m still not sure why he got offended.QUOTE]
I would have been tempted to say, “Well, at least nobody has to guess which one of you was infertile.”