Embarrassing moments

Well, I have a couple of doozies and one belonging to my friend…

My friend and I were country bumpkins when we were younger – not sophisticated at all and very inexperienced in the ways of the world. I once drank the water in my finger bowl at a restaurant. But her most embarrassing moment was worse….

She went on her first business trip with her boss and it was her first time in a plane and in a hotel. On the plane she was fascinated by the little free bottles of alcohol that were given out. She saw her boss ask for a coke and a whiskey, drink the Coke and put the little bottle of whiskey in his pocket. He did this a couple of times. She was a bit shy to follow suit. But…

When they got to the hotel she discovered the mini bar. Every night she would empty the entire fridge of all the little bottles and every day it would be refilled. So after a week her suitcase was full of free booze, macadamia nuts – you name it. Luckily she didn’t take the toweling robe.

When they checked out, her boss was presented with this enormous bill. It was literally enormous because the till roll actually rolled over the counter and down to the floor as they totted up her total. It was probably an entire year’s salary. With a beetroot red face she explained what happened. And then, in front of everyone, she had to unpack her suitcase on the floor of reception and give back all her loot…

My grandmother told me one but I am not sure if this one is true as I was not there. She was waiting at the bus stop in Wimbledon in London with a huge suitcase. It was hot and she was tired. But then a car rolled up, the driver leaned over and said ‘would you like a lift?’ Boy did she ever! She climbed into the car and tried to get her suitcase in. It would not fit so she pulled and heaved and finally had it wedged between the back and front seats. She looked up to tell the driver where to go when she noticed that someone had climbed into the passenger seat. It was the person who had been standing beside her in the queue for the bus. The driver turned to the passenger and said to her ‘Doris, do you know this person?’. Well needless to say Doris didn’t so my gran had to get out of the car. Naturally her suitcase was stuck so she had to huff and puff for some minutes before getting it out.

My smaller one happened when I used to work with computers for a living. This was in the days of DOS 3.1 when nothing was plug and play. Users used to accidentally format their hard drives when trying to format a floppy disk. Or think THEY had a computer virus because they got a headache after looking at orange text on the screen all day. This was in the days before computer mouses and CDs – which people used to attempt to use as remote controls/foot pedals or cupholders respectively. Most days I had a rather short fuse. To this day I have huge sympathy for anyone who works in computer support….

Anyhoo, I was trying to help a really infuriating user. She had called me out about four times in an hour for problems of her own making. The final straw was when she put an already printed page upside down in her laser printer and could not figure out why the paper was printed already – and upside down. With the wrong text. I tried to explain but she started shouting at me that it was the computer’s fault so I stormed off in a huff. Right into the walk-in safe. The worst part was that I was too embarrassed to walk out immediately so I stayed in there for about five minutes. When I walked out the entire department was standing there staring at me…. I slunk out with my tail between my legs and had to apologize to the user later.

But my biggest one happened when I was about 12 years old. We had some relatives called the Wiggals. Of course I found the name hysterically funny and always used to collapse laughing whenever I heard or said it. On the way to visit them one day my mother said to me ‘don’t you dare laugh at their name. Don’t even SAY their name’. I was so good right through the meal and managed to keep a straight face. When I was helping clear the table I kept thinking ‘Don’t say his name. Don’t laugh’. What did I say? ‘Please Mr Plate pass me your Wiggal’ What is even worse is that I held my hysterical giggles in so hard that I farted really loudly and then ran out of the room laughing like a mad thing and farting like I was jet-propelled. I am not sure my mother was ever invited back. To this day the word wiggle makes me giggle!