Your Most Embarrassing Moment/Experience

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I too, have more than one, but this’ll do…

Shortly after college, while still living with the parents, before I embarked on my career, I took a job with a security company in Fort Lee, NJ. My first assignment seemed like it would be really cool. I was to go into NYC the next day and work at a conference for NBC Sports broadcasters. I was issued a company blazer to wear. My girth at the time was out of proportion to my height, so the sleeves were a little too long. The next morning. I woke up early, as I had a good hour commute into NYC. I decided to try and fix the sleeves of the blazer by cuffing them under and ironing the cuffs as flat as possible. Well, it turns out that running a hot iron over a polyester jacket is not a good idea. The sleeve basically melted to the bottom of the iron and I was left with a ragged-armed garment worthy of a zombie movie. In a panic now, being my first day on the job, I went up to my parents’ room and looked in my father’s closet. Sure enough, he had a blue blazer that would be a fine substitute. If it fit me, which it did not. The sleeve length was fine, but my father was properly proportioned, so I could not even come close to buttoning the jacket. I was out of time, so off I went with the too-tight blazer. I get to the hotel and find my position, outside of a conference room. My job was to prevent hotel guests from wandering in and pestering the broadcasters for autographs. This was a who’s who of famous ex-athletes and TV personalities. Terry Bradshaw, Joe Namath, Bill Parcells, Bob Costas and many others. Many of them ex-football players, which was even funnier as they towered over me, the supposed guard. So, there I am in the un-closeable jacket when a supervisor from my company comes by. “You need to button your jacket,” he says. “Company rules.” “Umm, ok,” I replied and thankfully, he walked away. I spent the rest of the day gripping my lapels and trying to keep the jacket as closed as possible. Oh yeah, I quit the next day. And had to buy my mom a new iron.

22

Oh gosh. What was the reaction of the audience? Stunned silence? Nervous laughter? Applause?

23

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then the laughter began.

If it had been a comedy… great. But a dramatic murder mystery… not so much.

24

Oh! Oh! I’m dyyyyyyyyyyyin! :smiley:

25

This is not my most embarrassing experience, but it is the most recent. In my job I deal with many technology vendors, and as a consequence I get invited to many vendor sponsored events, which if they happen to include lunch I’m happy to attend. Recently I was invited to a network security event, lunch at the Capitol Grill in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, so I registered, amde plans and showed up. When I walked up to the hostess I was both typing on my blackberry and talking on a cell phone, so I was more than a little distracted. Consequently I told the hostess I was there for the technology event, and did not pay too much attention to what she said.

I know you see it coming.

I sat down at one of the tables and started talking technology with the other attendees and all was fine. The lunch was great, but halfway through the sirloin I was starting to wonder when the network security talk would start. The only speakers were going on and on about sales numbers and so on. I slowly realized that I was at the wrong group. I stayed through the dessert, but managed to slip out before having to get up and introduce myself to the group.

26

If I may, a couple poop-related stories for your reading pleasure.

First, the short but sweet story.

I played soccer in junior high school, and during warm-ups before one game, I really had to poop. The practice field is situated rather far from the field house, which housed the closest bathroom for about half a mile. It really wasn’t the distance that was problematic, it was more urgency for which I had to poop. The feeling was sudden and powerful. I had to go, and NOW. Making my way to a clump of tall grass behind a few trees, I plopped down and began to let fly a most glorious deuce. There was a strange calm in the air as I wiped with a few leaves and whatever else I could find that was relatively sturdy and painless.

Here’s where things get messy. As I was pulling up my shorts, I stumbled a bit on the uneven ground and ended up stepping in my own shit. I was wearing cleats, so this stuff was definitely caked in there. After most, but not all of it was out (people were starting to wonder where I was), I made my way back down to the practice field.

Players were doing a drill where if they screwed up, they had to do push-ups. I walked right through there, and I guess some poop wiped off into the grass where this was going on. A friend of mine (at the time) ended up miss playing a ball and was forced to do ten push ups. I’ll never forget his face as he proclaimed succinctly, “It smells like shit!” Everyone started to check their cleats to see if they had stepped in dog poop or something. I purposely checked my one clean cleat in plain sight of everyone maintain my presumed innocence. Oh man, those were good times.

I’ll post the second poop related story in a bit.

27

I see your poop and raise you a snot.

I was quite the little thespian in my younger days. In high school I was in a play in which I played a wizard who would cast spells on himself when he was bored. During dress rehearsal I was sitting at a table at center stage, facing the audience full on. The only people in the audience were the director, stage manager, assistant stage manager, some tech crew, and a couple of other people. A few other characters were on stage with me.

As we ran through it, I started silently chuckling at the thought of a goofy wizard who would perform spells on himself to pass the time. At that point I delivered a line- forget what it was- but it increased the humor in my mind and I gave a little snort of laughter, but in an effort not to audibly laugh, I sort of laughed through my nose, expelling a burst of air and, surprisingly for me and for everyone who unfortunately happened to have their eyes on me at that moment, a large green goopy load of snot from one nostril.

It was a dress rehearsal, so I was in costume, and was afraid to stain it with the snotwad, so I sort of leaned forward, hoping it would just fall to the floor. It didn’t. I also didn’t want to wipe it with my hands, as I had to handle props in the scene as well as use my hands to contact other actors, so I wanted to avoid that. It had become somewhat stuck to the skin under my nose, so here I am, leaning forward with a dangling green boogerball hanging about a foot under my nose. All dialogue stopped, and everyone tried to politely pretend they were looking in a different direction. I ran offstage, hunched over so it wouldn’t get on anything, where I grabbed a roll of papertowels and cleaned myself up.

I got back onstage and rehearsal resumed. Nothing was ever said about it. It was mortifying.

28

I used to run a pizza place in the Bay Area. One Friday night, about eight years ago, I arrived at work to find that two employees had called in sick, leaving me with one driver and one counter person. Ordinarily I could make it if short one person, but missing two was too much.

I called all my employees (and could even read their minds - “Friday Night. Are you kidding me?”), and I called around to the other stores, but couldn’t get any help. I finally had to call my boss, the owner of the company. “No problem, on my way.” At that moment it was slow inside, but deliveries were picking up, so I grabbed a stack and hit the road.

I got back half an hour later, and things had picked up inside, but the boss was there. Cool. As I walked in the door, I saw that his wife was there as well. She was seven months pregnant at the time, and had her 18 month old son in one arm, while she was bent over a table wiping it down.

Oh, yeah - she also happened to be a news anchor on our local ABC affiliate at the time.

As I was taking this in, a customer walked up to her and asked “aren’t you on Channel 11?”

I wanted to crawl under a booth and hide there for the rest of the night.

29

Why is that embarrassing…? :confused:

30

I wish I had been at Bricker’s play.

I like to keep this story around for when people ask about embarrassing stories. That way, I don’t have to think of any really embarrassing ones.

When I was in high school, I worked at a small pharmacy. One of the elderly pharmacists often drove me and the other girl who worked their home at the end of an evening. One night, close to Christmas, the other girl asked me to carry a box for her out to the car. I did, handing it to her in the backseat, and went around the back of the car to the other side. I looked down and thought that the sidewalk looked very icy, so I’d have to step carefully. I stepped down, and went right through the ice - it wasn’t the sidewalk, it was a frozen-over ditch. I went in right up to my hips in freezing, muddy water. When I started to scream, the other two got out of the car and pulled me out. I was absolutely covered in mud, but the poor pharmacist had no choice but to drive me home. I think if it had been warmer out he would have told me to call my parents, and left me standing there. :wink: When I got to work the next morning, it turned out he had spent two hours cleaning his car.

They all called me Jacques Cousteau forever after that. “Going deep-sea diving tonight, Jacques Cousteau?”

I also nearly announced to our local MP over the phone that my friend, who was volunteering for her, was watching porn, but that crisis was narrowly averted.

In actuality, my most embarrassing moment was probably having a panic attack and being unable to give a class presentation in front of my MA supervisor and a bunch of undergrads, but the frozen ditch story makes better telling. I recommend everyone keep a story like that around.

31

Ok, poop story number two.

My friend was celebrating htis 20th birthday and decided to round up a group of friends for a camping trip. This was a two night ordeal, but I could not make it up the first night.

A couple guys came back home following the first night to pick up more supplies and to give me a lift. When we got back to the general area, they didn’t remember exactly how to get back to the campsite. Luckily, there was park ranger nearby who knew where our friends were.

He told us that he would give us a ride, so we hopped in the back of his pickup truck. On the way there, the ranger informed us that there had been bears spotted in the area so we should keep our food tightly packaged away as to not attract them. This kind of freaked us out, but we weren’t too worried.

When we finally got to the campsite, we told our friends there about the bear situation. No one really took it to heart… yet.

We started drinking heavily, and eventually everyone passed out around 2:00 am. Perhaps an hour or two later, I realized that I had to throw up. I stumbled out of the tent and made it to a tree and puked my brains out. Following that mess, I got the sudden urge to poop. In my drunken state, I just plopped down and pooped right then and there. Afterward, I just meandered back to the tent and resumed my drunken sleep.

In the morning, I had to leave early to get home for work. It was later that evening when my friend told me:

Friend: “Dude, last night when we were sleeping, a bear came into our campsite.”
Me: “Oh man, that’s nuts. How do you know? Did it raid our food? Did you find claw marks?”
Friend: “No, but this morning when we were cleaning up, we found a huge pile of bear shit right outside one of the tents.”
Me: “Really?” Then it hit me. “Oh yea… bear shit… definitely bear shit. Fucking bears shitting in our campsite. They have some nerve!”

Heh heh

32

7th Grade.
While I was reciting a poem in front of my English class, my underwear (which had earlier in the day, burst at the seams) slid down my pants leg, landing around my shoe.

I continued with my poem, to the hoots and guffaws of the classmates who saw it happen, casually reached down, scooped it up, and returned to my desk.

33

Well, it was bad enough that I had to go crying to my boss to bail me out of a sticky situation, then to have his highly recognizable, pregnant wife doing such menial work, so obviously beneath her…

If you were sitting in a restaurant, and saw someone you knew from television walking around with a rag wiping down tables, pregnant and holding a kid, wouldn’t you wonder just what in the world was going on? Or think “maybe someone else should be doing that?”

I guess it made me feel incompetent, and I didn’t look forward to having to explain it to my regular customers later on.

34

This one probably embarrassed the kid behind the counter more than it did me. Years ago I was coming home late one night and stopped to get 3 unrelated things at 7-11. I needed garbage bags, motor oil and condoms. When I got to the counter the kid took one look at the stuff and almost burst a blood vessel trying not to look me in the eye or laugh.

I would never use motor oil. That’s disgusting.

35

I was in the spelling bee in 5th grade. My very first word was “acorn.”

As I began to talk into the mic, I was so freaked out at the fact that I could hear my voice through the speakers that I had a complete brain fart. So yea, I misspelled “acorn,” heard that damned little bell, and had to sit through the entire spelling be on the stage, trying not to be hysterical.

For awhile afterward, I was known as “Acron [sic] Boy.”

EDIT: More details. Worst part is, my dad took a few hours from work to come watch the bee with my mom. After screwing up my first word, they also had to sit there and endure the rest of it along with me. They were nice enough not to walk out immediately following my blunder.

36

Does Hi, Neighbor! shit in the woods?

37

It’s been years, but I’d do it again if I had to. It’s not something I particularly enjoy, but when duty calls…

38

I was visiting a client in the states and on the drive from the airport I saw some raccoons getting into some garbage cans. When the client asked me how I liked the city I responded that the coons were very brazen. They looked at me like I just shat in their lobby. It was only later that I clued in that coon was a derogatory term.

Yeah, I was a little clueless back then.

39

I’m sure I have more, since a little grey rain cloud follows me around everywhere I go, but I’ll begin with this one:

The year was 2000. I was a freshman at my college and, at the time, a marine biology student. I felt it prudent to become certified in SCUBA, so I joined the SCUBA club and started my classes. Not only was I the only black person in my school’s SCUBA club (shocker), I was also the only woman. Kill two quota birds with one stone, right?

Now, I don’t know if any of you remember those bathing suits called “tankinis.” (<—yeah, mine was totally that sexy, too :rolleyes:).

So, we had to do a test where we do a “giant stride” off of the high dive into the pool, surface, give the okay sign, swim to the side and pull ourselves out.

So me, being all cute in my tankini, stepped off the high dive, hit the water. Tankini flipped, bunched, whatever to the point that boob A was out, floating around in the water. Boob B manages to stay in its home. The tankini was so skin tight and sexy, that the direct pool water to boob contact was undetectable.

So I give my okay (not noticing the stunned gawking - I thought they’d found my entry to be textbook SCUBA brilliance), side stroke to the side and as I’m pulling myself out I see boob. So, my quick thinking led me to pretend that I just wanted to rewet my hair, and while under the water, I fix my garment.

What sucks the most is that I was hoping to come out of the club with a boyfriend, but, alas, my boob was old news. And, ya know…the whole grey cloud thing.

40

I had a situation similar to the OP happen to me once. I was at work one day talking to a co-worker, and I was wearing a shirt that was sort of a hybrid sweatshirt / rugby shirt that had pockets in the sides. While talking to my co-worker I had my hands in the pockets and felt something odd under the sweatshirt. So I reached up underneath to see what it was (I’ve had dryer sheets get stuck in my clothing before) and pulled out a pair of my wife’s undies. Apparently they had static-clung themselves to the inside of my shirt in the dryer, and I didn’t notice when I put it on that morning. I’m not sure who was more surprised to see me pull a pair of underwear out of my shirt, me or my co-worker.