Awkward Offline: Tales of Real World Blushing

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Re: Awkward Offline: Tales of Real World Blushing

Postby Grimstone » Wed Aug 10, 2016 7:05 am

Aquila89 wrote:So I managed to look exactly like someone who stole the card. But the weird thing is that I didn't realize it, and the cashier didn't seem to care. She didn't ask me why don't I know the PIN of the card I'm using. She put the card into the right reader and I could pay without entering the PIN. Only when I arrived home did I realize what impression I must have given.


Don't worry about it. Their main concern is probably getting through their shift. Accusing someone of stealing a credit card is probably neither something they want to do nor something they get paid to do.
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Re: Awkward Offline: Tales of Real World Blushing

Postby cmsellers » Sat Jul 14, 2018 11:44 pm

I shared the story of most of my flight back to Austin here, but the bit with the hiccups is more suitable for this thread. It is a lot less painful, but far more embarrassing.

See, I have discovered that for me sugar is the most effective hiccup remedy (water works too, but I need a lot of it very quickly in a way way that is hard to replicate in most places), and I try to always have chocolate on me when I will be traveling any distance in order to handle unexpected hiccups. (At home I use honey, which is quicker but does not travel well.)

In this case, the first bout of hiccups started just as I approached one of the more crowded bathrooms in the Baltimore airport. It was also the last bathroom I was sure I would pass before my gate (there was another one, but I was not sure), so I went in with the idea of secret-eating chocolate in the stalls. But the stalls were full, and the hiccups were accelerating, and I am not quite immune enough from social pressure to eat chocolate in public in the bathroom.

I rush back out, lean against the wall, and have a hard time finding the chocolate among all the other stuff I have in my bag, and the hiccups are getting worse. Finally I find it. There is a family coming my way, but at this point I do not care. I stand there: a fatass gnawing on chocolate in front of the bathroom like I will never be able to eat chocolate again, and realize just how ridiculous I must look. I hate myself even more than usual, but hiccups really suck, so I keep eating chocolate looking like a fat person with no control over their appetite until the hiccups are gone.
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Re: Awkward Offline: Tales of Real World Blushing

Postby IamNotCreepy » Mon Jul 16, 2018 5:07 pm

So do you have to eat it in a certain way that's embarrassing? Or is it just that you feel self-conscious eating it at all in public because of your weight?
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Re: Awkward Offline: Tales of Real World Blushing

Postby cmsellers » Mon Jul 16, 2018 7:56 pm

Well, in this case I was gnawing a square like a chipmunk, but it was the combination of being fat, being right outside a bathroom, being hunched over, and eating.
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Re: Awkward Offline: Tales of Real World Blushing

Postby cmsellers » Fri May 22, 2020 9:25 pm

So, I finally made it to the butcher at a time when it wasn't completely insane in there. The line to get meat wasn't bad, but the checkout combined both the butcher shop and a little restaurant, and I was there at lunch hour, so the line to checkout was long and getting longer. After I bought about ninety bucks worth of meat, the butcher stood in line with me with the large quantity of meat I'd bought and then carried it to my car.

Which was awkward, but he seemed to have a very hard time understanding me, between the noise and my mask, (when I gave my order I had to pull my mask out, but I wasn't going to do that standing so close to him), so I finally gave up on trying to tell him "really it's fine, I can carry it myself." I wondered if I should tip him but decided that since this isn't normally something butchers do, it would probably be offensive.

What made it a lot more awkward is, as far as I could tell, I was the only person the butcher did this for, and also the only white person there. Everyone else, customers and butchers and cashier alike, were black. (In Austin, even at the blackest businesses you always see at least a few Hispanics and local white hipsters; Houston seems much more segregated.) Which, if you know anything about the history of race in America ... the optics of the butcher carrying meat for the one white customer did not feel great to me.
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