I went to the grocery store this morning to buy provisions for the week. At the checkout counter, the woman rings up my total and I pull out my wallet. My wallet has gotten cluttered lately, and a few old receipts spill out as I’m producing cash. I say “sorry” and pick them up, then hand a few bills to the woman - but she’s just staring at the counter with a slight look of disgust.
“I think that’s yours too!” she says, in a definitely disdainful manner.
I look down at the counter - there is a condom lying there. (I normally keep a condom in my wallet, just in case I need it.) “Uh, yeah that’s mine.” I pick it up and put it back. The woman’s eyes narrow. I hear a sharp cluck of disgust from the woman in line behind me.
As I hand over my cash, I impulsively decide to make a joke of it and say “Damn, so that’s where it went! I sure could’ve used it last night,” thinking it might get a chuckle out of the cashier.
She was not amused. She thrust my change back at her, made a quick sign of the cross (No I am not making that up!) and barks “Next, please!”
As I pick up my groceries, I notice the stockboy who’d bagged them up snickering, trying hard not to laugh. I left the store a little red-faced, and making a mental note to start shopping at the supermarket on 5th Avenue more often.
So, what awkward things happened to you today?
Given the way your story ran to this point, the chances of this smoothing the situation would have to be rated low.
Guy ran into me with his bicycle, on the sidewalk just outside a grocery store (low speed, knocked me down, minimal damage). It was awkward for me; I think it should have been just a bit more embarrassing for him than he seemed to feel it was.
One time I was at the religious goods store (I’m a church geek) and I reached into my jacket pocket to get out my wallet and out popped an unused tampon. I didn’t notice it until the man ringing me up asked if I had dropped it. Luckily, it was an o.b. applicator free tampon, so there’s a chance that he didn’t recognize it for what it was. To this day, I tell myself that he probably just thought it was a tube of lipbalm.
I went to church. Almost as soon as I got there the stomach cramps started. I missed most of the service, and when I went back in I had to leave within about two minutes. But I didn’t feel like I could just leave, because I work in the children’s classes for the last two hours, and there are usually 4 of us, but 2 were gone today. So I felt bad about flaking out. I went in and did the most pressing jobs, but had to abruptly leave a couple of times, and then apologized and left. Barely made it home and spent a while in bed. Feeling better now.
Another week would have been better–I could have just gone home and stayed there instead of going in and out all the time.
Many years ago Hub owned a gas station and had a crew of 4 or so 20-somethings running the register and pumping gas. I came out of the bathroom with a long dangly toilet paper strand hanging off the waist of my pants. For the life of me I still can’t figure out how it got there but I was mortified. Of course, none of the employees said anything to me so I paraded around like that for a several minutes until Hub noticed. Ugh. I could have died.
If it makes you feel any better, if I was that stockboy I’d be snickering too - but not at you - at the cashier’s reaction to you. From a neutral observer’s POV, that’s definitely the funny part of the story.
This happened not to me but my father when he and my mother were dating, they are both 83 now.
It seems that two of my father’s brother, my uncles, had cut up some pictures of women in bras and panties from a catalog of that era and interleaved said pictures between the bills in my father’s wallet.
Of course, my father went to get some money out of his wallet, spotted the pictures and quickly tried to hide them, but he was not fast enough and my mother saw them.
She apparently had a good laught at my fathers’ expense, and she was still finding it funny as she was telling the story to me and my siblings, years later.
This reminds me of when I was visiting my family in Montana, when I was 12. My aunt had received some pornographic ads in the mail – full frontal naked men. After laughing about it with us, she cut the pictures out of the brochure and slipped them into my grandmother’s purse. When my grandmother went to Dairy Queen for ice cream, she pulled out her wallet, looked in, and went white.
Ah yes. Reminds me of an old event that happened to me…
I had just been transferred back from Okinawa (USMC) and, after a quick visit to my girlfriend, found that I was in dire need of condoms. I stopped in a local pharmacy chain store, grabbed a box, and went to the register.
The lady behind the register (maybe mid-50’s) looked the box over. Now, this being the days before UPC codes, she was looking for a price sticker. Well, there wasn’t any on that box. She pulled the interstore microphone towards her and announced throughout the store…
“I need a price-check on a box of…uh…a box…ummm…the…the…12-pack of…um…uh…”
Over the store loudspeaker, from someone in the back came, “Prophylactics?”
“YES!” she exclaimed.
I was not in the least embarrassed, but that poor tally-clerk was giving blush a whole new meaning. I was actually able to maintain a stoic expression all the way out to my car. Then, for the next five minutes, guffawed into my windshield with complete abandon. It was definitely one of those you-had-to-be-there moments.
We have a “stealth elevator” in my building on my floor. The bell that is supposed to ring when the elevator arrives doesn’t work, and the elevator is quiet enough that you don’t hear it opening, and more than once I’ve been waiting for an elevator, looking elsewhere, and only heard the soft kerchunk of the doors closing, never realizing until it’s gone that it got there.
So just today I’m riding the elevator up to my floor, and it does its usual stealth arrival, and as the doors slide noiselessly open I see a young woman on her cell phone, talking intently to someone. So I offer this in vicarious embarrassment for her, because as the door opens I hear her saying beseechingly, “Come on, it was just a blowjob!”
Then she turns and sees me exiting the elevator and goes bright pink, destroying any speculation that she was discussing former President Clinton.
Sorry!