Mortification Week: the mustache party, the hat police, and other stories to cringe over

by Alison Green on July 30, 2024

It’s Mortification Week at Ask a Manager and all week long we’ll be revisiting ways we’ve mortified ourselves at work. Here are 13 more mortifying stories to enjoy.

1. The mustache party

My partner and I were in our 20s and we had just moved across the country for my grad school program. He got a job at one of those hipster tech startups that had an office equipped with Nerf guns and beer taps. True to type, the company culture was all about ironic parties, and two months in, we were invited to an after-hours mustache party at his office.

This was in 2008, when hipster tech startups and Movember still seemed like novel amusements, and I’m a sucker for a good theme. I went all out — but not TOO all out – with a cute cocktail dress, a nice bushy stick-on mustache from the dollar store, an eye patch, and a pirate hook. My partner looked a bit doubtful, but I pointed out that the mustache made no sense without a pirate patch (“like, what’s the narrative?”), applied a kicky red lipstick, and prepared to network.

It … did not go as I had imagined. Remember this was still early 2000s tech: someone had stocked the party with what I can only guess were models hired to make it seem cooler. The path to the front door was lined two deep with very tall, very blond women wearing small black dresses. They did not have mostaches, or eye patches. They smoked their cigarettes and stared at us in dead silence as we walked the gauntlet to the bar. It was too late to turn back — too many people had seen our grand pirate entrance. All I could do was straighten my mustache and work my way through the party, shaking hook-hands with my poor partner’s coworkers as I went along.

My partner worked at that company for ten years and I never saw those tall blond girls again. He has also never again let me win an argument about dress code.

2. The hat

I worked for a school district that decided the hill they wanted to die on was hats. Religious headgear was allowed, and grudgingly the few students who were undergoing cancer treatments that made them lose their hair were permitted to wear a cap of some sort, but those exceptions were a small portion of the student population, and it seems no matter how styles change, teenagers are fervently attached to wearing some sort of hat. Personally, I don’t care about hats and I had to train myself to notice them after I was scolded for not enforcing the rule.

Then for the next 30 years, I was saying some variation of “Hats off!” on at least an hourly basis during the school day. This followed me into non-school settings, and once I was confronted with the shocked and irritated face of a stranger I had sternly told to remove his baseball cap in the public library.

3. The pothole

I was part of a team working late one night on a proposal and we decided to walk across the street to grab dinner before returning to finish the work. It was completely dark out and had rained all day, which is why when I tried to leap across a patch of wet grass to land on a pothole cover, I didn’t see that the pothole was actually NOT covered, but filled to the top with water. I went in feet-first all the way up to my waist. My coworkers looked in every direction but me as I somehow leaped out of the pothole (I have never shown that level of athleticism since) and spent the dinner trying to laugh it off in soaking wet shoes, tights and skirt.

4. The drinks

At the time, I’d worked for 10 years in a community center as a new manager on the member-facing programming team. Every year, there is a two-day regional conference where community centers from the tri-state area get together to share best practices, professional development, and a night out (usually a karaoke bar). This one year, I decided to start a diet the day of the conference, so I did my best to eat very cleanly and very little … then finished the evening by accidentally getting very, very drunk. Our CEO eventually escorted me back to my room where I proceeded to vomit all night long (much to the chagrin of my roommate/colleague).

I was still so drunk the next morning that one of my coworkers had to drive me in my own car from the hotel back to the conference location, where I was unable to keep my eyes open and ended up sleeping (missing half the conference) on an office couch under someone’s coat as a blanket. I was 37 years old at the time. My CEO was incredibly understanding about it, basically telling me to never let it happen again. (It hasn’t. I’m still at the same organization in a middle management role. I also never drank Fireball again.)

5. The presentation

I was on a call with the vendor, who was presenting, when he switched his screen so I could see another aspect of the product. Up pops a document titled “How to Use Your Rabbit Vibrator.” Cue frantic clicking on his side. (He claims it was left over from a previous client presentation.)

6. Not sun

I had an panel interview where one of the interviewers arrived with shockingly red skin all over. I remarked something like, “Wow! You got some sun! I hope you were having fun!” He muttered something like “not really,” and I responded with a “oh, yard work or something?” And I think … I don’t remember … but I think … I … might have … actually called him “Lobster Boy.”

I got the job, amazingly, and discovered a month or so in that his skin condition was the result of a painful ongoing medical treatment. I melted into a puddle under my desk.

7. The ice cream cone

The summer before I turned 17, I worked at McDonald’s to save money for a used car. I worked at the counter, but we did handle food and for some reason they didn’t make us wear gloves. (We were handling money and then serving fries and ice cream with those same bare hands!) One day, two women came in with kids and ordered ice cream. As I was making a cone, I got some ice cream on my hand and I LICKED IT OFF. While holding the ice cream cone. I went to give it to the woman and she said, “I saw you lick your hand. I’d like you to make me a new cone.”

Did I then profusely apologize and immediately make a replacement? Of course not! I stupidly said, “Oh, it’s okay, I only licked my hand, not the cone,” thinking that of course the problem must be that she thought I licked her food. She said, “Yes, I know, I’d still like you to make me a new one.” I did make her a new one and didn’t really give it a second thought until years later, when I realized what a horribly unsanitary thing it is to lick your bare hand while holding a customer’s food.

8. The wrong recipient

I once worked in an office with a secretary who couldn’t stop talking. One of those people who’d even narrate what she was doing if no one was around to listen to her. One day I had a difficult project to finish, my earplugs had gone missing, and Secretary had a captive audience in the form of a new hire she was “training.” I meant to use the interoffice IM to text, “I can’t focus with Secretary chattering on, so if you need me I’ll be in the conference room. God she drives me batty” to my team partner. Sent it right to Secretary.

9. The wrong word

I worked for many years in the customer service department for our local newspaper, and one of our duties was to make calls to customers starting or restarting their subscriptions to make sure there were no issues with delivery. So there I was, making my way through an hour of outbound calls, repeating my script over and over again: “Hi, it’s Scrooge calling from Newspaper to make sure you got your paper okay?”

It was going great until my last call of day, when I instead said: “Hi, it’s Scrooge calling from Newspaper to make sure you got your pooper okay?” This was almost 20 years ago and I still cringe when I think about it.

10. The voicemail

When I was in college, my best friend and I worked for the college’s foundation making cold calls for donations. The system used an autodialer and most people weren’t answering so we were chatting and having a playful argument while we worked. As one of my calls was ringing, she said something and I said, “You know what? Don’t even talk to me” and realized too late that the voicemail had picked up and I had just left that as a message for someone. I panicked, hung up, and called again leaving a normal voicemail.

11. The cocaine

When I was newer to a job as a salesperson, I was on the phone with a colleague. We had a company rule that we could not be on the phone while driving, so I pulled off into a parking lot to go over some updates with him on speakerphone. A man came up to my car, motioned to me to roll down my window, and while my colleague was on the speaker asked me if I “I wanted a bump.” I will admit, I am a bit naïve and had no idea what a bump was but, always the learner, I said in a very polite way, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what a bump is.” To which he replied, “Cocaine, would you like some cocaine?” In the most midwestern polite way possible, I said back to him, “Oh, no thank you, I am good” while my colleague was laughing loudly at me over the speakerphone.

12. The missing word

Back in the 90s, I did improv mystery dinner theater where we sat at guest tables. Wives loved it when we singled out their husband’s and did fake flirting in character. I was at a table with a nice extended family … and in character, flirted with the dad to make him my character’s love interest jealous. He made some comment, to which I replied, “Oh, I’m just using you, but I’m going to blow you off later.” Except … I somehow didn’t say the word “off.” It was a truly mortifying, record scratch moment and I eeked out, “Oh, wow. Um, that is not what I meant!!” The entire table burst out in laughter. It was not that kind of show!

13. The accidental grope

When I was a young salesman, I was selling a woman a phone from a display, I was gesturing at one of them and turned towards her, just as she turned towards me … and I perfectly cupped her breast.

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{ 206 comments }

{ 206 comments… read them below }

    1. Alpaca Bag*

      I went to one where an elementary school student, his friends, and all the parents wore real or fake facial hair above the upper lip. For a while, there was even a section for this sort of theme at our local party supply store.

      1. different seudonym*

        You know, I never quite put it into words before, but I agree! The parties and the imagery were REALLY a thing for a while there. I had mustache-themed wrapping paper one xmas. Just like, normal. For people I wasn’t that close to, but I had to give them a hostess gift or whatever.

        Mustaches.

      2. saskia*

        I don’t think it was a sex thing. The trend arose from a variety of sources — the popularity of hipsterism (anachronistic facial hair; Terry Richardson), Movember and no-shave Nobember, ’70s- and ’80s-related cheese (Anchorman, parts of Napoleon Dynamite, etc.), and the rise of ‘ironic’ masculine ways of being (Ron Swanson, lumberjacks, etc.).

      3. Jules*

        I thought the same thing until I realized I had it mixed up with the term “moustache ride”

        1. Lizzay*

          OOOOHHHH!!! I think that’s what I was thinking of!! Thank you for solving the mystery!!

    4. Testing*

      Yeah, I would have done what the OP did. And I’d still do it today, even after that experience.

        1. Tabihabibi*

          That and if anything holds up less over time, it’s hiring stand in models for a tech party. I do love that this is the most 00s story.

          1. Blue Horizon*

            Nerds were on top of the world and not social outcasts for the first time in forever, and had to work overtime to demonstrate that they could be just as sexist, sleazy and inappropriate as anyone (this was before GamerGate removed all doubt).

            OP sounds cool. The party, not so much.

        2. Ellis Bell*

          Absolutely. If I’d been a fellow guest at that party my recollection would be: “Do you remember the embarrassment of the bosses hiring a load of models as though women are party decorations? They didn’t even wear moustaches! When this awesome guest arrived in a party dress, moustache and pirate accessories she made a refreshing contrast.”

          1. Elizabeth West*

            This makes me think of the little girl who showed up to Princess Week at her dance class dressed as a hotdog while all the other kids were in theme.

    5. Person from the Resume*

      If it was part of Movember (mustache November) the employees who are likely 99% men grow mustaches in November for fun bro-y reasons.

      I think the point is that women at these parties are only supposed to look hot and sexy.

      I gotta agree with the partner. You’re invited to a mustache party, not a pirate party, so the hook and eye patch were off theme. I mean many men who are not pirates have mustaches so there’s no line between a mustache and pirate narrative.

      Really … it’s an “ I misjudged the culture problem.”

      Hiring models to attend seems very icky.

      1. Sharpie*

        Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe it started as a charity thing to raise money for research into prostate or testicular cancer or something of that ilk. And became a whole entire Thing.

        1. Freya*

          My husband tries to organise for ID photos to be taken at the end of Movember, because he grows epic facial hair and then has it neatly trimmed the rest of the year. His firearms licence, for example, has a full on Chopper Read cosplay facial hair, which amuses him every time he sees it.

    6. Anon Attorney*

      If this was in the 2010s, mustaches were just like a popular “ironic” choice of iconography? There was a popular tattoo of a mustache on your finger so when you put your finger under your nose it looks like you have a mustache. There were a lot of mustache-themed party decorations available for some reason. Oh, and mustache necklaces which you of course lift up to your face. You would probably wear one of those to a mustache-themed party. To be honest, I don’t quite get OP’s pirate connection. That definitely would have been weird at the time!

        1. Anon Attorney*

          Captain Hook has a mustache, but I had to look it up to be sure! I wouldn’t have made that connection, either.

      2. MsM*

        See, I remember all that, but it would never have occurred to me you could make a whole party out of it.

        1. Anon Attorney*

          I was in college at the height of mustache-mania and I could totally see it being a themed party, but in a college party people would participate in the theme. I can’t speak to tech startup parties.

        2. Nonanon*

          It was a whole theme for someone’s wedding. The couple did not win the competition show that I saw it on.

      3. Tippy*

        Same. I get the mustache thing because of the time frame, but I don’t get the pirate link. I never would have seen mustache and though pirate/hook hand.

      1. Dark Macadamia*

        Nah, the pirate thing was off. It was supposed to be either “lol everyone wears mustaches to be QuiRkY” or “dudes grow mustaches all month and chicks look hot” – the whole point of that mustache trend was to be RaNdOm so adding more props to “explain” the mustache kind of ruins it

    8. Trout 'Waver*

      Male service members in the military are allowed to grow mustaches in November as a support for men’s health awareness, particularly prostate cancer awareness. This spilled over to non-military groups as well in the late 2000s/early 2010s.

      You have a party when everyone’s mustache is fully grown before they have to shave them off. Yes it is ridiculous.

      1. Person from the Resume*

        That’s not correct. Male service members can have mustaches (with certain restrictions) year round. This is not a new regulation and has been around since well before 2000.

        4. Giant_Kitty*

          I was going to say this doesn’t sound correct. I live in a fairly military heavy area and have noticed for literally decades that members of the Marine Corps tend to favor wearing small mustaches.

    9. Juicebox Hero*

      During the height of the hipster movement, mustaches became A Thing. I mean, there was mustache toilet paper. Smartphone apps that made it look like you had a giant mouth with a giant mustache. Women’s blouses with mustaches on them. Pop culture is just screaming purple banana zonkers sometimes.

      1. Giant_Kitty*

        I have a (female) friend who thought random mustaches were hilarious long before the hipsters came around and when pop culture became engulfed in mustache chic it ended up totally ruining it for her.

    10. WellRed*

      Whatever a mustache party is, it IS NOT a pirate party. Maybe if OP would’ve left off the hook…

    1. Fluffy Orange Menace*

      Right? My assumption was the guy thought she needed a “bump start” which is what we used to do when a car died sometimes… You’d bump it and it’d engage and voila! I was NOT expecting cocaine!

    3. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

      I’ve been offered alcohol and pot and declined with the same, “No, thank you, I’m good!” Midwestern politeness. If someone offered me cocaine, I’d probably do the same.

      1. BlueCanoe*

        I am also a midwesterner and this is probably how I would respond to an offer of alcohol, pot, or.. anything stronger..

        1. Lark*

          I am a midwesterner and this is exactly how I have responded to various offers of drugs, probably stolen goods, etc, because there’s no reason not to be polite! I have, like, cool party friends, so I do know what a bump is.

      2. RLC*

        Not a Midwesterner, but child of a Canadian mom. I’ve declined some very weird/absurd/scary/obscene requests with “oh, no thank you”. It’s ingrained along with “I’m sorry” and “excuse me”. Surprisingly effective deterrent, person making request usually so baffled by my response that they often leave without another word.

        1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

          Yep – I was approached by a flasher in a car as I was walking through a parking lot and when he offered me his goolies, “oh no, I’m good, thanks.”

          1. Sc@rlettNZ*

            The same thing happened to an ex-colleague of mine while she was out jogging. She replied “no thanks, I don’t collect miniatures”

            3. Elizabeth West*

              AHAHAHAHAHAHA

              You could also say, “Oh sorry, I don’t have my magnifying glass with me today.”

        2. Hermione Danger*

          I once responded to a panhandler with a cheery, “No thank you!” Was out of my mouth before I mentally identified the request. He looked as surprised by the response as I felt.

        3. NotJane*

          As a someone who grew up as a Good Southern Girl (TM), I understand this. I once got groped by a young teen boy and my automatic response was “That was very rude! What would your mother think?” And I think I even wagged my finger at him like a scolding teacher, lol.

      3. IngEmma*

        This part strikes me as pretty normal tbh!

        I think the joke is more in completely missing the offer for drugs, not necessarily in being polite about turning them down, no?

        It would certainly strike me as more odd (and maybe a different type of mortification week story!) if you responded with much else :)

      4. Thegs*

        I was actually offered ketamine at a music festival last year. I was really drunk so I loudly and joyously proclaimed, “No thanks, I can’t do that. I’m a fed!” and then wandered off back to my friends apparently leaving this person looking aghast and concerned.

    5. GammaGirl1908*

      I have also once been offered a bump and not known what it was!

      I had gone to a new restaurant with a friend and we sat at the bar and bonded with the bartender. He asked me if I wanted to go do a bump in the bathroom.

      Hilariously, I assumed it was closer in meaning to “bumping uglies.” Either way, it was weird and awkward and I did neither with that dude >D

      Notably, the restaurant was new … and did not last long.

    6. Some People’s Children*

      The bump reminded me of a story I read in the local paper. Years ago they had a column where people could send them stories around different themes. One story was a suburban white woman went to a “ghetto” neighborhood where an ethnic grocery had opened. She wrote the address wrong and circled the block 3 or 4 times before asking two guys chatting on the corner. They told her to go a few blocks “that way”. Then mentioned they were wondering what she was up to because suburban white people looking to buy drugs sometimes circle the block like that but they usually aren’t driving mini vans with toddlers in their car seats!

  3. CommanderBanana*

    The idea of going to a company party where there are hired models gives me the ick.

    1. GovSysadmin*

      Very early in my career, before the recession when tech companies were just throwing money around, I was at a conference and noticed a huge line had formed in the exhibit hall. I walked to see what was causing it, and discovered that one of the vendors had brought in several women from Hooters to hand out buffalo wings, wearing the usual Hooters uniform. The other vendors around that booth were NOT happy. The next year the conference had to clarify their policies that outside food could not be brought in.

      1. Rainbow*

        There was one – just one – company in my field who would still do this while I was a student (I’m a Millennial). They were famous for being ick (and worse – given that I was a student that was the only thing I and anyone else in my position really knew about them). They are still one of the leading vendors, but it took them many years for their reputation to get over that (repeated) bad practice.

        1. Apex Mountain*

          I had assumed this type of thing was no longer done, but a couple of years ago I went to a conference for the gaming industry (betting/wagering not video games), and it was like I was back in 1987 – I guess in some industries it’s still a thing.

          1. Orv*

            I worked for a casino chain for a while and my god, the culture was crazily anachronistic. Still the only place I’ve seen someone drink until they passed out at a work event. One of our managers claimed to have invented the “bikini babe espresso stand” concept, and was extremely proud of this.

          3. Reed Weird (they/them)*

            I went to a conference once for the franchise owners of a hardware store chain, so all the vendors were there to get the owners to carry their products in stores. A fairly new energy drink brand had booth babes giving out their free drinks. This was March of this year.
            It was also the energy drink brand of an infamous YouTube prankster, so I wasn’t actually that surprised.

      2. mreasy*

        I hadn’t heard that term and once at a trade show I was asked if I was the company owner and when I said “no,” the person was like “oh, a booth babe” dismissively. I was the general manager! And told him so.

    3. HailRobonia*

      It makes me think of the birthday party scene from the Nicholas Cage/Pedro Pascal movie “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” that feature a bunch of black-clad women with long hair in pony tails tossing their hair around while dancing.

    4. My oh my*

      Yea, imagine being a woman working there. You’re like, ok, this is what my bosses think a woman’s contribution should be.

      1. Yods*

        Yeah, a couple of years ago I was working at a company in heavy industry. There were a few women in admin and HR etc, but I was the only woman on the tech side of things.
        We had a party for the X year anniversary of the companies existence, which was ‘decorated’ with Rio-carnival style dancing girls.
        When I mentioned that I didn’t find it appropriate I was told that the CEO’s secretary (a formidable woman who basically ran the company) had OKed it, and therefor it was OK.
        I was uncomfortable and left.
        :-(

    5. Weaponized Pumpkin*

      Very recently a company I worked for did this for an office party, and it was so creepy. The party coordinator was going for an artistic nightlife vibe, but that almost made it worse because the models (who were all women and conventionally sexy) were wandering around wearing skintight unitards and lampshades and globes for heads — rather than feeling creatively interesting, it felt weirdly disembodied and objectifying. It was also during the afternoon at the office, not even a night event. The whole thing made zero sense.

    6. Peanut Hamper*

      I’m thinking they were going for a Robert Palmer video kind of vibe, which is okay (I guess?) if you’re actually Robert Palmer and the time is 1983, but I would hope we would have moved on as a species by now, but I guess we haven’t.

      Which possibly explains why the good aliens don’t visit us.

  4. frayedcat*

    There is something about private schools. My kids went to two different small Catholic Schools and the 1st one was fixated on Belts and the 2nd one on Socks. The sock school had Posters with appropriate and inappropriate socks fastened to the cardboard posters, it was all about the Length.

    2. Lizzay*

      OMG, I’m picturing your kid going off to college & having the vapors from all the bare ankles around!

      But seriously, were they worried about socks being too long or too short? Or both?? I can’t even fathom how you’d fixate on that!

          1. Lizzay*

            oh haha, that was supposed to say “facepalm”, but I used some symbols that I guess made it hidden in html code or something…

      2. ferrina*

        My cousin was sent to the principal’s office because she wore one white sock and one grey sock. The rule was white socks only, but she had made a mistake when grabbing her clothes (because, you know, typical adolescent doing laundry), and the school decided she had to be punished.

        1. Le Sigh*

          I’ll say this about my public school. They policed the hell out of my tank top straps but hey, never got pulled aside bc my socks mismatched.

    3. Phony Genius*

      The only other organization that I know of that closely checks sock length is the NFL.

    4. LCH*

      oh, yeah, my catholic school had so many dress code rules including socks. sock color, sock height. type of shoe, color of shoe, material of shoe. make up (none), jewelry rules (no dangling earrings). types of winter wear allowed when it got cold (i think they had to be purchased from the uniform store). possibly the boys had belt rules, but the girls uniform didn’t have belt loops so i don’t know. in my final year (8th grade) i dyed my hair red (a regular red, not a Manic Panic red) and that was a major issue.

      fewer dress code rules in public high school, but still had some. i don’t remember anyone wearing hats so i bet that was one.

    5. Teach*

      I taught (briefly…) at a small Catholic school. One morning duty included greeting the high school aged young men as they entered and also making sure their top shirt button was buttoned under their tie.
      Staff were once shown a Power Point on dress code that included photos of the types of seams and pockets that denoted “dress” vs “casual” khaki pants.
      I did bail out some girls, though. They had been sent to me by a male teacher for wearing forbidden “leggings” under their knee-length plaid pleated uniform skirts. I explained to him that they were actually “footless tights” and therefore were probably allowed, as tights were fine. ;)

      1. anonymous excatholic*

        as someone who graduated from a catholic girls’ high school – you’re an absolute real one for the “footless tights” reasoning.

      2. PhyllisB*

        I’ve told this story before. I went to a Catholic girl’s boarding school in the early 60s and on Sundays of course we were required to go to Mass. Of course dresses were required wear but we were also required to wear hose. The nuns would line us up and and feel our legs to make sure we had them on.

    6. Lark*

      My high school was obsessed with forbidding hats, because of “gang colors”. First off, even in places where there _is_ substantial gang presence and a realistic worry about conflict spilling over into schools, that seems pretty unfair and stupid – it’s not like any reasonably intelligent kid couldn’t find a way to indicate gang affiliation besides a hat.

      Second, this took place in a very, very outer ring suburb of a biggish midwestern city where it was extremely daring to drink an illicit beer or hang out in the park after sunset. There was no gang presence. There was one (1) coffee shop. The downtown was largely unchanged since the sixties/seventies. There were like three fights in my entire four years of high school, and they were only loosely fights – more threats and posturing.

      But it was also a bananas conservative place, and I’m sure that the whole rationale was newspaper fearmongering and racism – at any time, your kids might prove to be corrupted by rap music or college radio or wearing cut-off shorts (all local anxieties) and then they’d join a _gang_.

      1. Orv*

        Hah, my high school was the same way. The town I lived in had 10,000 people in it and was 40 miles from anywhere bigger. There were no gangs. But any time a parent saw ANY kind of graffiti around town it meant the Bloods and Crips were about to fight over this pristine bit of unclaimed territory in the cornfields.

      2. N C Kiddle*

        My basically rural school was obsessed with hair. Having a shaven head was absolutely forbidden. No idea what would happen to someone who turned up already shaved – suspended until it grew back? One boy in my year was a competitive swimmer with enough prestige that he got special dispensation to shave his head to improve his times.

    7. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

      Catholic school in the 80’s to late 90’s and the ONLY thing we were allowed to wear that wasn’t standard uniform was socks. That’s how I ended up as a sock collector and wearer of funny socks. I’m 44 and still only wear fun socks.

    8. Fluffy Fish*

      My absolute favorite thing that some Christian schools do is enforce short male hair length. While displaying the stereotypical images of Jesus…..with long hair.

      1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        There are a lot of Christians who don’t take kindly when you call Jesus a long haired hippie.

        Or so I’ve been told.

    9. IngEmma*

      My religious private elementary school had so many odd rules!

      Girls had to have brown or black hair ties. Boys could NOT have hair that touched their collars or went past half way down their ears. There was, of course, a uniform. The uniform had summer and winter short variations for the youngest boys (England, something about the appropriate age to put boys in long trousers. Except this rule was still in place in the mid 2000s when my youngest sibling was there.)

      Somehow they managed to instil in us that this was important and Said Something about your character. Looking back now it’s genuinely shocking that I didn’t turn out far more annoying / pretty much immediately realized that this was bananas once at my next school.

      1. londonedit*

        Most schools in England (private or not, and both primary and secondary schools) still have uniforms, and there are still summer and winter variations. For state (non-private) schools the uniform is usually based around a particular colour (like green or royal blue or red) and will consist of grey/black trousers/skirts/pinafore dresses, a white or school-colour polo shirt and a school sweatshirt, but then at primary school in the summer the sweatshirts become optional and the girls wear summer school dresses (usually gingham in the school’s colour) and the boys wear shorts (black/grey, whatever the trouser colour is). You’re only allowed to wear summer uniform for the summer term (between the end of May and the end of July). At secondary school we (girls and boys) were allowed to wear shorts for the summer term. Secondary school uniforms can often be more elaborate – skirt/trousers, white shirt, school jumper (sweater) and school tie and blazer. And there won’t usually be a gingham dress for summer – that’s a primary school thing. But jumpers and blazers become optional.

        My secondary school didn’t have such a strict uniform when I was there (it was seen as very rough at the time, and after I left a new headteacher came in who put everyone in formal uniform with blazers and ties in an effort to improve the school’s image) – we wore black/grey trousers/skirt, white polo shirt and a black school sweatshirt. But the teachers were obsessed with the fact that we should tuck our shirts into our trousers/skirts rather than having them hanging out of the bottom of our sweatshirts. So there were constant calls of ‘TUCK YOUR SHIRT IN’ whenever a teacher walked past a group of students.

        1. Liz*

          Oh, the shirt-tucking requirements… Our school also didn’t let you wear t-shirts underneath for warmth (or at least, not visible ones). Did we just wear v-neck shirts instead? No, we defiantly wore white, or occasionally black, t-shirts under our light-colored shirts.

  6. Bow Ties Are Cool*

    #3–That was a manhole, not a pothole, right? I’m trying to picture a pothole waist-deep to an adult *not* being surrounded by barriers with flashing lights!

    1. Delta Delta*

      I grew up in Michigan where the potholes are roughly the size of small lakes. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see someone trying to go fishing in a pothole there.

      1. Peanut Hamper*

        Yep, I’ve actually heard of people breaking axles in some of the potholes around here. They’re really bad in places.

        1. Random Bystander*

          Yes–I (in southern IL) have seen potholes where we joke that to fill them, someone just needs to drive a Smart car (Fortwo) into the hole–that the car would fill the hole and then the road would be usable again without having to change lanes/drive on the wrong side.

        2. Elizabeth West*

          I laugh at the expression “pothole season.” In certain places, every season is pothole season.

      2. Juicebox Hero*

        Same here in Pennsylvania where the pothole is jokingly called our state flower and PennDOT is roundly cursed from Erie to Philadelphia. Some of those suckers are insanely deep, especially after heavy rain or a lot of melting snow. When they’re full of water it’s impossible to tell how deep they really are.

        That said, I’ve been to Michigan and some of the potholes I encountered were on a whole nother level. Especially in the Ann Arbor mall parking lot.

        1. Having a Scrummy Week*

          As someone who has lived in and drived through PA and visited Ann Arbor…yes. Spot-on.

          I am now in Ohio and the roads are surprisingly good in my area.

        2. Alpaca Bag*

          Oh, I’ve been doing it wrong – I thought the traffic cone and barrel were our state flower! (mid-state)

        3. Kit*

          I believe Pennsylvania still has the distinction of having the worst roads in the contiguous 48 – and as Alaska and Hawaii have quite good geological reasons for poor road quality, that’s really an achievement on our part. (Lifelong Pennsylvanian here, too. PennDOT is an institution, but not in a good way…)

          1. Elizabeth West*

            I was actually told NOT to drive through Pennsylvania when I was moving to Mass. By someone who lives in Pennsylvania.

        4. LadyVet*

          Pennsylvania native — my second deployment to Iraq included a few trips outside the wire, and I remember saying the roads seemed better than PA’s.

    2. Phony Genius*

      I think in some parts of the world, “pothole” is the word that means the same as “manhole” (or “personhole”) to Americans.

      1. Pisces*

        Wheee night this be? I’ve never seen it referred to as such, anywhere. Can you clarify?

    3. Fluffy Fish*

      yes it was confusing. it definitely sounds more like a pothole, but so far has i know potholes don’t have covers, manholes do.

      Best guess is she thought in the dark it was a manhole cover she was jumping onto but was really a pothole, and just and a brain glitch while typing out the story.

      1. saskia*

        A waist-deep column of water sounds more like a pothole to you? I hope I never have to drive where you live!

        2. Fluffy Fish*

          If it was a manhole she would have ended up in the sewer a lot farther down than a pothole even waist high.

          1. saskia*

            Buoyancy? You don’t immediately sink to the bottom of any body of water you jump into.

    4. Having a Scrummy Week*

      I am also confused! In the US a pothole is an annoying break in the road usually caused by extreme weather changes. A manhole is a purposeful hole that is (HOPEFULLY) covered by a round metal cover, used for utilities management or drainage.

  7. I guess my entire company was the real work wife the whole time.*

    “Up pops a document titled “How to Use Your Rabbit Vibrator.” Cue frantic clicking on his side. (He claims it was left over from a previous client presentation.)”

    Correct. No one that uses this device has such a document on their computer.

    1. Phony Genius*

      Since I’m baffled as to why anybody would want to vibrate a rabbit, I can only assume that this device is designed “for personal use,” and that “Rabbit” is the brand name. (I’m not googling that at work.)

      1. Seashell*

        I believe Rabbit is the style of that personal item, as there was a Sex and the City episode where Charlotte enjoyed said item a little too much.

      2. Florence Reece*

        It is a personal use item but it’s uhh…I mean maybe I’m the one in the wrong here but it’s…pretty self-explanatory…

      3. Anonymously descriptive*

        It’s a certain style of personal item that is long to reach certain areas and has two small ‘rabbit ears’ to reach another important area. One can use either or both depending on one’s personal taste.

    2. Trout 'Waver*

      There’s got to be a quality department somewhere that provides tech support for them.

    3. Peanut Hamper*

      I mean, other than knowing which way the batteries go in and whether or not it’s waterproof…..I think such a device is pretty much self-explanatory, so I am inclined to agree.

      It really makes me wonder what LW’s company was purchasing from this vendor…….

  8. TooTiredToThink*

    #7 – thank you for validating my experience as a customer! I once was with my (ex) boyfriend at an ice cream place and I saw the guy – no gloves – that was handling the ice cream lean down and wipe his nose on his hand/sleeve. I was immediately grossed out and decided not to get any ice cream. The ex couldn’t understand what the big deal was.

    1. AmuseBouche*

      My husband is kind of a food safety expert and he will not eat if he sees stuff like this. To be honest, I’m more picky than he is. I have terrible GI issues and cannot eat out much.

    3. Skunkpunter*

      I still get angry when I think an incident like this from last summer. The young woman didn’t wash her hands between taking cash and scooping ice cream/touching the cones, and rolled her eyes at us when we politely asked her to wash her hands in between. I left a review online to warn others & I still get occasional messages from Google when the review gets thumbs up.

    4. basically functional*

      I was once served an ice-cream cone with a hair in it. I handed it back to the teenage boy behind the counter and said, “there’s a hair in it.” He pulled out the hair with his ungloved fingers and proudly handed it back to me.

  10. HailRobonia*

    It makes me think of the birthday party scene from the Nicholas Cage/Pedro Pascal movie “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” that feature a bunch of black-clad women with long hair in pony tails tossing their hair around while dancing.

  11. John*

    Wondering where #1 lives that there are so many mustachioed pirates that the idea of someone with a mustache NOT being a pirate doesn’t make sense.

  13. Immortal for a limited time*

    #3 – “pothole” = manhole? I’ve never known a pothole to have a cover

    1. bishbah*

      I have! Around here they’ll sometimes toss a sheet of metal over the potholes until they get around to fixing them.

  14. Juicebox Hero*

    #8 – one of the immutable laws of the universe is that any insulting or raunchy written remark about a person WILL be accidentally sent to that person instead of its intended recipient (or else end up as a “reply all”, group text, or similar).

  15. Moose*

    I am so so so confused about the pirate hook and eye patch at a moustache party. I don’t understand the narrative of the costume. I don’t understand the assumption that the women were hired models instead of partners of the people there. (I’m not saying that’s a sexist assumption but it kinda feels that way? Beautiful women exist and have jobs that are not based around their looks.) I don’t get why LW didn’t take off the hook and eye patch when it was obvious it wasn’t a pirate party, which OP already knew in the first place. It was a moustache party.

    What do pirates have to do with moustaches in the first place?

    I have so so many questions and I assume I am not chronically online enough to have answers.

    1. Expelliarmus*

      I assume the hired models assumption was because the women were dressed uniformly enough that it looked intentional.

      1. Moose*

        Maybe. I guess I would have had to have been there. My partner works for a huge tech start company and one year a dude brought a sex-worker to the Christmas party but I legit would have never known why she was there if she hadn’t told me. Looking at a woman and assuming she’s a hired model because she’s gorgeous and in a black cocktail dress that looks like another woman’s black cocktail dress would never occur to me.

        All my questions about the mustache-pirate outfit still stand.

        1. LunaLena*

          The OP mentioned that they also never saw those particular women again in the ten years that the significant other worked there. Hence their assumption that the women didn’t actually work for the company.

          I too have questions about the correlation of mustaches to pirate outfits though.

    2. Emmy Noether*

      I think you’re being uncharitable to the OP. For one, this was a large group of very tall, beautiful, stylish women, which is remarkable anywhere. Assuming one or a few beautiful woman are models instead of employees would be weird and sexist (and I’d be the first to say so), but this was already statistically unlikely on first glance, especially since they were hanging around as a (large) group, not normally interspersed with the other guests. Then that initial assumption would be confirmed by the boyfriend not knowing any of them, and how they acted at the party (do they know people? do at least some have partners there?) and then the final confirmation of whether any of them ever show up to any other event again.

      I think ONE model or escort at a party would be hard to identify, but a dozen in a group would be obvious.

  16. Anon Attorney*

    8 – In college texting a friend I had a dream I kissed someone (and named that person) and then texted said person :) And I had an actual crush on that person, who was unavailable! I immediately texted again and tried to backtrack like ha ha that’s what someone just said to me or something equally as lame. I can’t remember what the response was (there was a response!) but it was extremely gracious.

  17. Harper the Other One*

    #11 – I would 100% have misheard “bump” as “jump” in that context and reassured the (very confused) dealer that my battery had plenty of charge!

    2. Professional Cat Lady*

      If I offered you cocaine, and you kindly assured me that your battery was fully charged, I would assume it was some kind of slang, congratulate you on your good fortune, and move on XD

  18. I should really pick a name*

    I worked at the counter, but we did handle food and for some reason they didn’t make us wear gloves

    No gloves is a reasonable approach if combined with regular hand washing.

      1. Bee*

        But if you’re wearing the same gloves to handle both money and food, it’s not any better (and in fact worse if it keeps you from washing your hands)!

        1. Carolina*

          Yes! This always bothers me – I would much rather see proper hand washing/sanitising than a pair of gloves you’ve been wearing all day, touching your face etc.

          1. thunderingly*

            During Covid, I went through a drive-through and the worker was wearing plastic gloves with the fingers cut off. I asked her why and she said they were required to wear the gloves, but it’s too hard to hold the cards with them so that’s what they do. We stopped going there.

        2. AmuseBouche*

          You’re supposed to make the food with gloves on, take them off, conduct business, put on fresh gloves to make food. Lord. It’s not asking too much for people to have “clean” hands.

          1. Bee*

            You’re supposed to, yes, but in my experience most people do not in fact change gloves every time they change tasks, because it’s annoying and time consuming. Frankly a much better practice is to have one person handling the money and another handling the food.

            1. AmuseBouche*

              That may be true, but it’s cheaper to use extra gloves instead of employing an entire other person. I watch my food like a hawk.

          2. Having a Scrummy Week*

            That isn’t feasible in most fast-paced food establishments. It is the right thing to do but it would require hand-washing every time you change gloves. At McDs the cashiers often make the ice cream cones and shakes between orders, no gloves required.

          3. fhqwhgads*

            Yeah my understanding is there’s enough data on people doing this wrong that it’s more effective to have a handwashing requirement when switching tasks than glove requirement. Glove requirements are going by the wayside because people get a false sense of cleanliness, and don’t change them when they should and don’t wash hands well enough or frequently enough. The CDC conducted several studies on it. I’ll see if I can find a link.

        3. Festively Dressed Earl*

          ^^^This.^^^ Your bare hands do not create germs, they carry them from one place to another. So do gloves. You wash your hands, put on gloves, or both when you begin a food-handling task. You remove the gloves and/or wash your hands when you switch to another task, including switching from handling raw meat to handling vegetables/fruits, etc. That’s especially true when handling money. Paper money typically has more bacteria on it than a toilet seat, and bacteria can live on it for 2 weeks. Cell phones and smartwatches are even grodier.

          I stopped by a Wendy’s near my old apartment once, paid the glove-wearing employee with cash, and watched in horror as he proceeded to make my sandwich while wearing the same gloves. I cancelled my order, but neither the employee nor the manager that refunded my purchase could understand why on earth I was so skeeved out because “he was wearing gloves, what’s the problem?”

          1. Peanut Hamper*

            This is why I have given up on fast food. It’s just not worth it. I’d rather just have a peanut butter sandwich at this point than risk it.

          2. Michigander*

            When I was a manager in college at the student dining hall a few years after the McDonald’s story I had apparently grown up enough to realise that your hands need to be clean when handling food. I had to tell multiple student employees multiple times that the gloves are there to protect the food, not your hands, and you need to change them when they get dirty or you change tasks.

      2. bishbah*

        I think that a food-grade tissue would work better than gloves, since it would be unreasonable to change gloves or wash hands every time a cashier switches between handling cash and handling food.

    2. Pam Adams*

      In my McDonald’s days, you handled the cones with a paper cover. French fries required you to touch the handle of the scoop and the outside of the paper package. Cooking fries might require you to touch the raw product, but that was before they went into 400 degree oil.

    3. allathian*

      This is why I’m so glad that most fast food places seem to be cashless, or at the very least, there’s an option to use a machine or app to order and pay for your purchases. The cooks in the kitchen wear gloves and make/pack the food and bring it to the counter for the customer to pick up. I don’t object to machines replacing human labor if it improves food hygiene.

    4. Michigander*

      It was not! No one told us to wash our hands before getting food and we were all teenagers who apparently didn’t think of it. This was also the early 2000s and every single transaction was cash. I don’t know if we even took cards because it didn’t come up once the whole summer I worked there. So there was a lot of cash handling!

    1. Ciela*

      A coworker accidentally did that to me, many. many years ago. He threw both hands up in the air as if he had been burnt, and mumbled a frantic, utterly incoherent apology.

  20. Manic Pixie HR Girl*

    As someone who can barely step into the sunlight for more than 10 min without slathering herself in SPF 100, I am having a bit of schadenfreude at #6, because nothing irritates me more than unsolicited “Oh wow, looks like someone got some SUN this weekend!” comments.

    1. But maybe not*

      I turn crimson when I exercise. I came in from a lunchtime run some years ago and a man in the hallway (who I’d only ever seen in passing) started lecturing me on the dangers of sun and how I need to be more careful about wearing sunscreen. I laughed and explained I wasn’t sunburned but it was really truly obnoxious.

      1. Pam Adams*

        My exertion crimson makes people think I’m about to have a heat stroke. It was handy in getting out of PE.

      2. Le Sigh*

        Same! I have, more than once, been handed a free water at a coffee shop bc the clerk was convinced I was about to pass out after my jog. I said it was just my face, it would go back to normal! But I don’t think they wanted to risk it. Hey, free water.

      3. londonedit*

        Yep, same and same. Slathered in SPF50+ all summer, yet can still go pink after 10 minutes in the sun. And then people just love to do the whole ‘Whoooooooa, SOMEONE’S caught the sun!!!!!!’ thing.

        I also go bright red when I exercise – doesn’t matter how fit I am, I can be marathon-ready and still look like a sweaty tomato after a gentle 5k run. I’ve had people say ‘Wow, how many miles have you done?????’ because I look like I must have been running all morning, and I’m like nope, just jogged a couple of miles to get here!

    2. Electric sheep*

      There are multiple medical reasons someone might be red in the face. Hopefully a good lesson for everyone not to comment on that kind of thing.

  21. GreenShoes*

    Ok, not mine but was a first hand witness to the event. This is for #7.

    I was at a restaurant (a local higher end seafood place) with a good friend who was also a server. So she was a little picky about the service she got at other restaurants (not obnoxious but I would hear about any shortcomings). We order the same thing, their special. I ordered mine with french fries and my friend ordered fruit.

    The server comes out with two plates of the special and sets them down. Both plates had fries on them. My friend very nicely said “Oh, I ordered the fruit” and before she could stop herself our server reached into the plate and grabbed a fistful of fries. You could see the moment that she realized what she had done.

    So this was awhile ago, some of you may remember the commercials about bad service where the server scrapes the mayonnaise off of the the diner’s sandwich (I’ll post a link in a comment).

    The server leaves with her fistful of fries and I burst out laughing at the look on my friend’s face. In all of the years I’d known her I’d never seen her speechless before. So when the server comes back I’m still laughing. She does apologize and I said something about the mayo commercial and laughed harder. (I truly was not trying to make her feel bad I just couldn’t help myself. I finally had to get up and leave for a bit to compose myself).

    Anyway, it kind of went downhill from there (and I promise we had let it go… but she was so flustered she ended up making more mistakes). We didn’t complain to management and did leave her a tip. I’m sure she would have shared the same story here if she was a reader!

  22. Blue Spoon*

    I misread #11 and thought that the person at the window was explaining what a bump is in a Midwestern polite way, which is in and of itself hilarious

  23. No hats*

    My (public, rural, 90s) high school had the same fixation on forbidding hats. For example, I was in marching band, and there was a huge debate to get the administration to grudgingly accept us keeping a ball cap in our locker to be worn only outdoors during after school practice in the sun.

    I had a (tenured) English teacher who would occasionally bring a guitar in, and he liked to share the satirical song he wrote about a kid who did increasingly horrible things, but continued to be forgiven because he wasn’t wearing a hat. The chorus went something like: “But he wasn’t wearing a hat; we’re so very proud of that. We were gonna suspend him, but now we’ll defend him because he wasn’t wearing a hat.”

    1. School hats*

      Meanwhile, here in Australua, kids get detention inside if they’re NOT wearing a hat

      1. Freya*

        In the 90s, I had a teacher tell me off because I wasn’t wearing my hat, and my ankles and feet were in the sun (the rest of me was in the shade, I was standing under cover).

        My respect for the intelligence of that teacher made a sudden nosedive – either they were dumb enough to believe that a hat would make a difference to my feet, or their blind adherence to the rules knew no bounds.

    2. ImWithTheBand*

      My kids’ high school has a vendetta against anything on anyone’s head. No hats, no hoodies, ok. But also no headbands, scrunchies, barrettes, bows, nothing. The kids can’t even have a hat with them on campus. I wish I was exaggerating, my oldest got in trouble last year because she had a hat visible on the dashboard of her truck.

      They do allow low ponytails but only with either rubber bands or plain black hair ties.

      Also we live in southeast US where it is hot 90% of the year and last year they outlawed shorts. It’s insane.

      1. Freya*

        Because of the way my hair is, a low ponytail is a recipe for matted dreads – the hair rubs against my shoulders as I turn my head, and the curls tangle. The 11-13 minute drive to work is enough to require me to detangle the start of a dread at the nape of my neck if I’m wearing a low ponytail :-(

    3. Brave Little Roaster*

      “He wasn’t wearing a hat” would have topped the charts at my high school hahaha! Thanks for sharing :)

  24. Just today*

    Can I add my mortification-of-the-day? We were doing a major site visit to a plant and had to wear PPE including protective eyewear. At lunch time, I was talking to a coworker (works on the same office floor as me, but I don’t have that much contact with him) and commented that the PPE glasses had left a deep mark on his nose.
    He answered “Oh, that? It’s actually a scar.”
    I wanted to disappear, he wasn’t mad or anything but I didn’t want to suddenly bring attention to a scar!

  25. AspiringLeslieKnope*

    #4 is so wildly common in parks and recreation. Every conference I’ve been to has multiple stories the next morning like this. I’ve never gotten worse than being a bit tipsy texting a former (retired) director after talking to her son, but this woman is definitely in good company.

  26. CHRISTOPHER FRANKLIN*

    So… In my past jobs, one of my tasks was to be lab phlebotomist. I was also the primary contributor of human blood for experiments; in one job, I was a control for alcoholism experiments and I have some genetic and metabolic traits that made me an “anti-alcoholic” and i had the highest concentration of an attractor lipid in a parasitology lab. I learned very quickly that there are people who are very sensitive to seeing blood drawn so I moved from a very well lit and safer place to draw my own blood to a dark side lab with the lights down low. One day, someone needed blood in a hurry, so I brought my phlebotomy kit to our “farm”, swabbed my arm, and was in the process of inserting the butterfly needle when some workman opened the door and looked at me startled. I calmly told him I was collecting blood for an experiment and I should be done in less than a minute. He continued to look startled.

  27. AmoretteA*

    In the high school where I work, the hats off policy is so cameras can see faces when the miscreants decide to vandalize something or steal something. It’s not just to be mean. We also make exceptions for religious/health reasons but also forbid full full masks at Halloween. Boys like the damage bathrooms. I don’t know why. Girls never seem to do it but boys just love clogging toilets and urinals or ripping sinks off the wall to flood things. The cameras right out side the bathroom door need to see faces, not the bill of a cap.

    1. allathian*

      That makes sense, but in that case, the reason for the rule should be explicitly stated. I can live with rules, even some rules that I consider unreasonable, but arbitrarily unreasonable rules are the worst.

  28. Cedrus Libani*

    I have a Halloween story.

    For context, I’m a data person on a “special projects” team, supporting a product with an extremely complex manufacturing process. When there are “excursions” in product quality, it’s part of our job to figure out why.

    Shortly before I joined, we got a doozy. Long story short, it turned out that due to turnover at a supplier in Singapore, nobody had been changing the ozone filter on a specific piece of equipment, therefore the quality of the final product was inversely proportional to the smog index at the precise time the part in question was in that machine. The “excursion” came and went (with the weather in Singapore), but when it was present, it got worse and worse as the filter slowly gave out.

    Took months to find this one. I joined shortly after. I knew the story, but what I didn’t know was how close our upper management layer had come to getting fired over it.

    I was told the team took Halloween seriously. So, I decided to dress up in a thematically appropriate way…as an expired ozone filter. I wore a tutu with little ozone molecules on it, powdered my hair and shirt to look “dirty”, and stuck on an inspection log with the last entry a few years out of date.

    My team took one look at me and nearly died laughing. Grand-boss shook her head and walked away. Great-grandboss sighed. “Ugh. Too soon!” My boss said it was “brave”. Uh oh.

    Fortunately, the bosses did see the humor…sort of, eventually…and I got out of that one without major damage. I did get a not-quite-deserved reputation as someone who gives not a single crap what the bosses might think, which took some time to shed. I bought a completely inoffensive dragon onesie on post-Halloween clearance, and I’ve worn it to every Halloween party since. Lesson learned!

  29. MAC*

    #7 reminds me of being 16, and my first non-babysitting job was at McDonald’s. Manager tells me to go out to the parking lot and “pick up” various pieces of litter. He does NOT tell me that we have one of those stabby tools like they use in parks and also a broom/tall dustpan set. I’m clueless, so I wander through the parking lot picking up random trash with my bare hands! (And carrying it over to the dumpster piece by piece when I can’t hold any more.) He mentioned the available tools *after* I came back inside.

  30. MasterOfNone*

    My mortification/heartwarming? story – I was at our employee recognition banquet where our whole company and their partners would come, enjoy the “employee of the year” and other equivalent awards, and have dinner and dancing and other evening games. It was in a hotel ballroom with a live band and I was chatting with a coworker’s wife I hadn’t seen in a while, (who I know enough to recognize her if I saw her out of context – but we aren’t close) and she was wearing stunning suede leopard print boots that just stood out and looked so cool. And so – I lean over, and tell her – “I LOVE your boots – they suit you so perfectly!” And she blushes, and gets wide eyed and then just starts gushing and praising my forwardness because she has been feeling self conscious and that it was great to have someone be open about it everything and how great it feels to feel like herself again. I am VERY confused by this outpouring of emotion …. until I remembered that she had recently undergone surgery for cancer – and realized that she had definitely misheard me when I said “I love your BOOTS.” We both turned beet red when we realized what she thought i said – but laugh about it now everytime we see one another.

  31. Spaypets*

    Ah, #4 brought back unfortunate memories of a conference my employer hosted. Turns out when you lose 30 pounds you can’t drink as much as you used to. I also didn’t start drinking wine until I was in my mid 30s and had missed the fact that different wines have different amounts of alcohol and can sneak up on you.

    I spent a good hour barfing in the bar’s bathroom. Couldn’t even make it up to my room.

    I did make it to the next day’s meeting however.

    I did a better job pacing myself at subsequent conferences and my coworkers were very forgiving. I stayed at that job another 20 years.

  32. April*

    These stories make me feel so much better about the time I was researching cosplay items during a slow shift at work (I’m a receptionist) and meant to send a list of links to ugly dark red blazers to my personal email from my work email…and instead sent it to the heads of all the departments.

    I was just really, REALLY glad it was something as harmless as a bunch of links to poshmark sales lol

  33. DrMM*

    I worked at a McDonalds for a few years while I was going through college for the second time (making all the jokes about English majors sadly accurate). I was expecting a phone call from a co-worker so when the phone rang, I answered “House of culinary horror. How can I help you?”

    It was not my co-worker. It was the GM. Somehow I did not get fired.

    1. PhyllisB*

      This reminds me of my dad. He was a real joker (or thought he was) and his two favorite ways to answer the phone were “Joe’s Pool Hall. Eight Ball speaking.” Or, “It’s your dime. ” (This was obviously during pay phone days.) My sister and I were constantly scolding him for this but didn’t matter.
      My sister was in nursing school at the time and Daddy answered in his “unique” way. It was my sister’s nursing supervisor!! The one with no sense of humor. Luckily she didn’t get too upset, but I think my sister got a short sermon on professionalism. (Which I thought was unfair because she’s not the one who answered the phone.)

  34. PDB*

    I was a recording engineer many years ago and was recording an artist for whom the term eccentric might have been invented. We were recording vocals over a previously recorded track, a common practice, and the artist was kinda streaky, great one night, not so much on another and the trick was to manage him through the not so great stuff to the good stuff, which was great.
    We were on a not so great night and the guitar player and I were in the control room trying to discreetly discuss how to end the night when we hear thundering over the speakers, “I know what you guys are saying” and my heart about stopped. The guitar player and I frantically look around for an open mic when we hear “You think that’s the best vocal I’ve ever done.”
    And at that point I was ready to agree.

  35. Wrong website! Wrong website!*

    Re: #5: one time I was with a group of colleagues giving online presentations. One person’s computer stopped working, and my work laptop was occupied, so I lent her my personal laptop. I opened my browser, went to type in “office.com” to open the presentation, but my finger missed and hit “p” first instead of “o”. The browser auto-filled with a URL for a website that rhymes with “morn mub”. I panicked and deleted it and spit out a rapid apology but she seemed to take it in stride.

  36. yike*

    I mean…It doesn’t really make sense in today’s humor but the pirate/mustache connection jives with pop culture in 2008, imo. And unless this was a fashion/Hollywood)/etc. event (basically any industry known for see-and-be-seen), I’d also be weirded out to have a bunch of people with no affiliation to the company show up at a supposed work party, say nothing, and never show up again.

    1. Zeus*

      #3 (the pothole) – did anyone else think of the Vicar of Dibley?

      I can’t post a gif here, but she’s walking along the road with someone else. He jumps into a puddle and splashes a bit, and they both laugh. Then she jumps into a puddle, and goes down right to her waist, like in the story!

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