I’m generally pretty thoughtful about what I say around people I don’t know that well. I also work in HR, which makes that doubly necessary, for obvious reasons. But last night, I didn’t sleep very well and am coasting through today in a sort of caffeine- and insomnia-induced euphoria, and just heard myself say to someone that the person I’d just spoken to on the phone “Couldn’t have been [traditionally Hindi name], if I had to guess I’d say it was a middle-aged white guy. Bit posh.”
I realised what I’d said as soon as the awful words had tumbled out of my mouth, and everyone is kindly pretending that I haven’t dropped a bit of casual, low-key racism, but I will be embarrassed for the rest of the day.
I also once said to a room full of people, about a mutual (absent) friend, that he’d “That’s not saying much, he’ll shag absolutely anyone”. Realised mid-way through the word “absolutely” that the previous week, he’d slept with the girl sitting right next to me.
What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever said, and realised immediately afterwards?
Posted this before but… When I was 13 I thought yid was just a nickname for Spurs fans. We went on holiday with a jewish family to their villa. On the wall was a picture of one of their relatives in a Spurs shirt. I asked if he was a yid. The man turned round to me and said “yes he is jewish”. It then dawned on me.
Shared this before but I need to repeat it as often as possible in penance.
My ex’s colleague at the zoo used to be a police officer. She stopped being a police officer after an incident where she was held hostage at gunpoint for 12 hours and the resulting PTSD. I had been made aware of this in advance.
She (and her police officer boyfriend) came round to our house for dinner. At some point in the conversation, I was talking about some unpleasant situation or something. To accompany this, I made the classic “finger gun to temple, pulls trigger” motion. I don’t think I had ever done that motion in at least a decade before then. I’ve definitely never done it since.
It happened in slow motion. I could see the bf’s eyes go wide, the shake of the head, the mouthing of “noooooooo”.
She pretended she hadn’t seen it. I have felt like a prize cunt ever since.
Also the time I was speaking to my downstairs neighbour, and she mentioned my upstairs neighbour and that he lived alone. I said, aha, no, I think it’s a couple, because it says so on the doorbell and also because I can, ahem, hear them most nights. Or rather, I can hear her.
She said, no, it used to be a couple (the names on the doorbell) but they moved out. It’s just him now.
I think we both realised at the same moment that I’d basically just said “I’ve heard you cumming”.
