embarassing yourself

So, does anyone else share my intense dislike of watching some one embarass themselves?

I was forced, yestreday, to watch a woman in my composition class humiliate herself. We all had to do presentations, and most people got into little groups and came up with little performances (ie videotaping each other getting progressively drunker and then doing a serious psycho analysis of the videotape in class). It's the cumulative project of the year, we've been together in this class for eight months, and everyone knows each other and it's a pretty chilled out class and we meet for beers occasionally.

I'll back up here.

This girl, we call her "band camp" girl, and if you've seen American Pie you'll understand. We'll be having some class discussion about, I don't know, the rhetoric of citation, and she'll put up her hand and say something way out there. Nobody can track her thoughts. I remember once we were having this discussion, and she puts her hand up, looks right at me, and says "Why do you think feminists are better than other women?" And the whole class is confused and starts shooting looks at each other, because no one can figure out where the hell she got this from. A few weeks later she accuses the prof of making up sources when he's telling us his expectations for our midterm. Essentially, she's easily confused, and when she gets confused she gets hostile, and when she gets hostile she gets VOCAL, and that's where she makes people hate her.

So. So we're doing these presentations, and she's been a nightmare, interrupting people during their performance and arguing weird little abstract points for no reason. And it's finally her turn.

She gets up, alone, wearing a denim skirt and a lace top with a blue tank top underneath, and starts reading off of this single sheet of paper where you can see blue ink scribbled on the other side. She announces her presentation is about "our perceptions of ourselves" and says "'cause I mean, I dunno, but um, maybe you thought something different when you saw I was wearing this skirt, like I've never worn it before, maybe you think I'm trying to impress you, and maybe that tells you something about you - like maybe you judge people on their appearance, and um, that should make you think about your perception of yourself, 'cause it's like..." and so goes on in this vein, talking about her frikkin skirt for five minutes and repeating herself and basically accusing us all of being assholes, and I'm cringing because we're all exchanging Looks and the only reason we're not tearing her to shreds is because we all like our prof and we don't want to make him defend her when we bring the knives out.

It was awful. But we all get to do audience response, and I'm sure she'll be crucified.

Anyone else have these stories?

Holy Christ, Jadi, that was TOO much. LOL

A couple weeks ago I had my mid-term exam for my music appreciation class. (Got a perfect A on that one, thank you. [img]smile.gif[/img] ) The week before, the instructor tells us to bring a pencil and a Scantron sheet to mark our answers, and they can be bought at the campus bookstore. Also, we were to turn in our papers on a composer the same night of the mid-term. This was Wednesday night.

Thursday morning, I drop the kids off at school, drive about 45 minutes to the campus, go in to the bookstore and buy 2 Scantron sheets. I'm in and out in under 5 minutes.

Next Wednesday rolls around. Although no one actually asks ME, this is what I hear from about 5 different people:

"Does anyone have an extra Scantron sheet?"
"I don't have a sheet and I forgot my paper."
"Does anyone have an extra pencil?"
"I didn't know the bookstore closed at 5, I thought it stayed open later."
"Does anyone have an extra Scantron sheet?"

Every time I heard that one question, I started to laugh.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ April 04, 2003 01:35 PM: Message edited by: crazy a ]</font>

I heard those same questions for every single class where a Scantron was required. Amazing how disorganized people can be for such simple yet important things.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of self-centered, self-impressed people make complete fools out of themselves in the corporate setting.

At best, it's insecurity manifesting as arrogance. Sometimes they wake up, settle in, what have you, and avoid implosion. At worst, they're just fuckwits, plain and simple. In that case, it's kind of satisfying to watch them dig themselves deeper. (Uncharitable, I know...)

You know, even without the drunken idiots, I'll bet I get to see more people making idiots of themselves by working third shift in a hotel than any 6 of you combined. [img]wink.gif[/img] And I want bonus points for the years I worked third in the convenience store, too.

This morning, I had a fairly large (for me) group of middle aged white males checking out. One of them cut in front of another one, explaining that the other guy was first, but that he was in a hurry, and was going to get his car, so would I mind just printing up the paperwork for his room, 613, while he went to go get it.

I finished checking the two men that were at the desk, and then one of the guys mentioned that we were out of coffee. So I grabbed the coffee airpot, went to the kitchen, and got the coffee. (The guests all promised to let anyone coming to the desk that I'd be right back, only fair as they were the reason I was leaving in the first place).

When I got back, the gentleman was waiting for me. I asked him his name (because I *do* like to check that I'm giving the right bill to the right person, and sometimes people forget their room numbers).

He snapped at me, saying "I already TOLD you I was in room 613."

I laid his bill in front of him and smiled at him. I declined to point out to him that he was at least the 10th middle aged white male I'd seen this morning, and that the previous 10 seconds of contact had not been enough to burn his visage into my mind.

I know he was just mad at me for leaving the desk when I just *knew* he was coming back, but hell... he jumped the line to begin with, and then left the line entirely. First come, first serve. [img]biggrin.gif[/img]

A friend sent this to me today, she's doing her honours thesis in Greek and Roman studies, and these are her thesis supervisors. This is tops the funniest academic story I've ever heard, although I'm sure she was and is very embarassed.

*

"OK, so Leslie Shumka is a really nice lady who is super smart and she's adjunct faculty in the dept.? When she heard I was basing research on her MA thesis, she invited me out to her office and we chatted for a full hour and she offered to her email and to view my essay before I hand it in and everything, she's so nice!

Dr Rowe is the new professor in the dept. who can (in my opinion) do no wrong.? He was excited about my projects.? He's also Jewish and he speaks yiddish (this is important in? moment).

So, I decided that rather than waste all that... I don't know, electricity, to send off two emails of my first draft bibliography, I'd send them together.? Like a good girl I enclosed a little note and whipped the thing through the spell-checker.

I sent it,

then I got it back with the reply

and discovered...

the spell check had noticed "Shumka" is not a word and helpfully offered up "Schmuck" as an alternative.? I must have hit "OK" because my heading was "To Dr Rowe and Dr Schmuck"

Jesus S Murphy.

I have to go beg forgiveness today."

I love making people look stupid. The other day a lady came in and returned a pair of windpants and a windjacket. I rang them up and announced how much would be put back on her card. And she looked at me with a wild look in her eyes and pointed at the old receipt. "No, why did I pay 47.01 and not getting it all back?" I seriously thought she was kidding at first and then realized she was hardpressed to get all her money back. I picked up the receipt and pointed to it. "Well, ma'am it shows here that you originally purchased three items and you are only returning two." I successfully made her look stupid, but she still acted like I was in the wrong. "Oh, Ok, I see what you mean." What the hell kind of answer is that? *rolls eyes* Customers are NEVER right.

So at 2am this morning, we changed the clocks. I love this. It's a real opportunity in the hostility business to let people embarrass themselves. Today I was disappointed, I only got one person who wanted to know why her 6am wakeup came at 5am (because you forgot to change your clock, but we remember to change OURS)... but six months ago, when we set the clocks back...

This one guy called me, and he started out yelling. His wakeup call had never come, and now he was late, and was going to miss his plane, and didn't we understand how important wakeup calls were, and how could we treat him like this, and he was going to write to the general manager about this and on and on and on. I did attempt at one point to break into the rant to remind him about the time change, but he insisted that he knew about it, and had changed his watch.

Finally, he wound down. I asked him what time his wakeup call was for. He said six. I told him it was 5:30.

Dead silence.

"Oh," he says. "Sorry to bother you," he says. Then he hung up the phone just in time for me to avoid laughing in his ear.

[img]wink.gif[/img]

I do have a one of those stories where is was exceedingly painful to watch... Not so much the fuckwit situation, more of well, if you really want to learn the hard way...

Last week we were at our twice-yearly national sales conference. We (the sales forecasting & analysis group) had brought several of our younger analysts, their first time.

Okay. Sales people. Schmooze. Drink. Banter. Drink. Tell stories. Drink more. It's all business, really it is. (And eris and Jax, I don't know how you keep yourself from slapping us all upside the head.)

So, before we even get there, we tell all of them (a) it's okay to drink, just be damn sure you know how much you can hold, (b) by all means, socialize at the evening events, because inherent sales-schmooze factor aside, these are good people, and (c) for God's sake you do not want to become a subject of one of those aforementioned stories that will be re-told at every event for the next ten years and beyond.

I think you can guess where this is going.

Somehow, Jane did not understand when Mary told her than "business cocktail" attire is not the same as a "clubbing with friends" outfit. She doesn't understand that the kind of practiced back-and-forth I can get away with after knowing these people for seven years sounds different coming from a person they've just met. She's actually too drunk to know what she's saying. She's giggling incessantly. She's more than a little wobbly.

There was a point where I was reaching out every 30 seconds to hold her wine glass/cocktail glass upright. Not always quickly enough, either. Finally I took it away from her. She pouted loudly.

"Bad" attention: you do not want people to appreciatively watch you as you shake your groove thang, moreso when no one else is dancing and there isn't even a dance floor. We put a stop to it pretty quick. Imagine me on one side, taking every new glass away from her, and Mary on the other, casually draping an arm around her to keep her from dancing, and on her feet. And John casually steering any too-interested salesmen into other conversations.

And surprisingly, it turned out there wasn't much damage done, in terms of the next-morning conversation. (And believe me, I've heard it when there is real damage.) But there was talk, it will follow her (and we know this, because Mary herself wasn't always as discreet, and we still hear about it, seven years later, no matter how perfect a balance she's kept since), and it sure shouldn't have taken the constant attention of three managers to keep it -barely- on this side of the line.

Scene: Von's deli (Von's is a supermarket), 9:45pm (the deli closes at 9, I'm cleaning up)

Him: You're out of coffee.
Me: I'm sorry, sir, we're closed and I have to wash the pots.
Him: I need coffee.
Me: There's a Sta--
Him: Cheap coffee.
Me: Instant is on aisle --
Him: I hate instant.
Me: We have the insta-brew packets, like tea bags, but with co--
Him: Where do I get coffee here?
Me: I'm sorry, sir, I need to wash the pots.
Him: Get me coffee.
Me: I'm sorry, sir, we're closed and I need to wash the pots.
Him: How do I get coffee here?
Me: Sir, if Starbucks, instant and coffee bags don't work for you I don't know what to say. The pots need to be washed before I leave.

He wanders off. Five minutes later Eden, a box-boy, sorry, courtesy clerk, comes over.

Eden: Hey, Terry, you have any coffee?
Me: I NEED TO WASH THE POTS!
Eden: Sorry, sir, we're out of coffee.

I turn around and, yes, it's the same guy.

"So, does anyone else share my intense dislike of watching some one embarass themselves?"

Clearly, we enjoy it.

OK, so the other night, this woman calls me on the phone. She's angry and upset, and has apparently been driving in circles for hours, trying to find the hotel. I ask her where she is, and find her on the campus map. Eventually, we get her on the (right) road to the hotel, and end the conversation.

Ten minutes later, she shows up. I check her in. She asks about parking, I tell her she can use the parking garage next to the hotel. I start to explain where it is, and she interupts to say "I hope it's easier to find than this hotel is!"

I pause, and then ask her if she had called the hotel and had been given bad directions. Oh, no, she hadn't called the hotel, she had just set off on her own with no idea where she was going or how to get there.

But clearly, it's the hotel's fault that she's easily confused. I was tempted to tell her that I would contact the East Lansing city planner in the morning and tell them that they had to change the layout of all the roads because she found them confusing.

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