Innocuous things that make you irrationally embarrassed

Plus long corridors create embarrassments of their own; at what point do you start your acknowledgement?

this can be so unbearably tense. often a quick distant acknowledgement, followed by the realisation that some strange etiquette will dictate another, proximate acknowledgement, which often makes both parties feel forced and insincere. it's a tricky balance between maintaining just enough eye contact to be courteous, but not so much as to make the other person uncomfortable/skeeved out, all the while acting as if the awkward steps until follow-up acknowledgement are occupied by something other than the painful endurance of having to fulfil an obligation. It can give rise to such hollow feelings, especially when you're given a perfunctory acknowledgement for what you're trying hard not to project as a self-conscious, automatic gesture. It's as if you're being confronted with a kind of diluted unspontaneity, and you're in a Tati scene, and you feel as if you're stretching a moment out far longer than any human being should ever have to endure.

People only run in corridors when they think nobody's looking though; the rest of the time they do an embarrassing fast-walk thing, with occasional trot for a few steps until someone else homes into view.

A wild-haired professor at uni is the only person I can recall who would run around openly.

When I was younger, I used to get so embarassed for people on television shows who were about to get in trouble. I can't think of any concrete examples, but like, if the Fresh Prince was doing something he wasn't supposed to, like snooping in someone else's stuff or something, and we in the audience were clued in to the fact that he was about to get busted for it. I would get beet-red flushed to the point where I'd have to turn off the TV or leave the room.

tbh I still repeat to myself "it's only a show, it's only a show"

90% of sketch comedy that involves singing, especially SNL monologues and the Whose Line is it Anyway songs

I rarely get to do it, but running fast down a corridor is an excellent thing to do. I dunno why, maybe the air currents and echoes are all different, but it's so different to doing it in an open space.

― Ismael Klata, Monday, 10 December 2012 12:27 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah totally - sometimes I feel like I could jump and just float down the corridor.

Josie Lawrence: "I know what you mean, about those songs, they seem very obvious and not very long..."

- when people point out a joke after someone else has told it.

I end up never even going into these places since I know that if I go in and start browsing I will feel obligated to buy something because I feel bad about their business not doing well.

I don't really feel embarrassed or anything though, this is just expensive sympathy.

― silverfish, Wednesday, December 5, 2012 1:48 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah I'm totally like this and what's worse is that gf is not at all and always just wants to look around places so we'll have mini-arguments where I'm like "no we can't go in that place! we aren't gonna buy anything, it's not polite, that person inside is gonna get their hopes up" and she's like "wtf nobody cares"

Oh yeah, I totally get like that.

i occasionally get lunch at one of these

http://www.flamersgrill.com/images/fl_logo.gif

in the mall by where i work and one of the dudes there knows my order. the first time he greeted me by saying my order i just wanted to quantum leap the hell out of there

also the dude at the ben and jerrys in the same foodcourt started chatting to me one time and told me about his improv group and now i can't go back if he is there

And then like, I'll want to buy something, but something small, but it's gotta be more than like 10 bucks because I never carry cash and I want to do a transaction that will make the Visa service fees worth it for them, but then I totally don't want to spend 10 bucks, so I end up making an excuse to wait out in the street.

xp: LOL

seeing nuns or priests in public places

it's like they can spot my unclean aura or something

When I was younger, I used to get so embarassed for people on television shows who were about to get in trouble.

still basically can't watch television because of this

what i could never deal with was movies where the protagonist is blamed for/suspected of doing something wrong/evil/criminal/morally indefensible, but you, the viewer, are the only one who knows they are innocent/being framed/mistaken for someone else.

yeah I can relate to that one too. curb your enthusiasm is 100% constructed to fuck w/ this response, also. xp

what i hate though is when someone is being blamed for something they didn't do, and yet for some reason they don't do anything to explain their innocence.

xp My wife was the first person I met who had this reaction to television, specifically to George Costanza. I never understood it; "c'mon, it can't be that bad," etc. Then Curb Your Enthusiasm showed up and it suddenly made sense to me.

one of the cashiers at the local tesco has seemingly conflated me and another regular customer in her head, to the extent that i get anxious going there at the thought of having another awkward embarrassing conversation where i have to follow up on whatever she last discussed with him.

corollary to that embarrassment - having people recognise me from tesco. three times now THREE TIMES i've met people at parties etc and they've said "hey do i see you around the lower clapton tesco?" and i just have to grimly accept that yes i'm the tesco guy.

The waistcoat I'm wearing today is slightly too short and the very end of my tie pokes out the bottom. It's a pink tie, and it's making me a little embarrassed.

Tuck the tie back under itself imo. Did this for a wedding on sat, I'm rubbish at tie knots and the fat end always ends up being too long.

Good idea. I had it tucked into my trousers, but it keeps springing loose and you can just imagine that at some point hilarious consequences will ensue.

At my work no fucker acknowledges a held-open door; have occasionally even been glowered at as recipient passes through.

I get the glower from female co-workers occasionally. Also on several occasions have held the door for couples at e.g. a restaurant, to have the woman thank me while the man follows behind her, glowering.

one of the cashiers at the local tesco has seemingly conflated me and another regular customer in her head

The lady who used to cut my hair years ago had me conflated with someone else, too, and on one occasion asked "You like your hair like Christian Slater's, right?"

ha. did you truly appreciate the embarrassing nature of the situation and go along with it?

(i'm now feeling slight embarrassment seeing the pointless 'in her head' in that sentence.)

I wish I did! I get too nervous in situations like that; I pretty much just stammered "No, that's not me" or something like that. Also, she was pretty bad at cutting hair so I'm not sure that I would have wanted her to make me look like Christian Slater.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City speaking Spanish

spiralli otm -- I kind of wanted to die when the Wendy's drive-thru cashier said 'Hi!' in a manner that signified that she now recognized me

shame spiral in 3 2 1

Someone on my fb recently posted about running into an acquaintance over and over again on different aisles at the grocery store. Or there's also when you run into an acquaintance you don't really like talking to over and over at the same place and you have to do the whole "yep. we're both here again" thing.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City speaking Spanish

― Josefa, Monday, December 10, 2012 12:07 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM

Kraftwerk's Technopop

When I was a kid, the only reason I started referring to my step dad as ” dad” was because I couldn't bring myself to say his name (lex). For whatever reason, I just found the idea of saying it aloud utterly mortifying.

I spent about 2 years calling him ” you”, before I realized ” dad” was a little less awkward.

Kraftwerk's Technopop

― ledge, Thursday, 13 December 2012 15:41 (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Why? It's like the others..

except for lack of catchy tunes, high quotient of dated samples, Ralf singing about his sex life.

I dunno, the kids were going "boom -TCHACK!!" for weeks afterwards...

It's an embarrassing album for sure but it's embarrassing in all the best ways

When I was younger, I used to get so embarassed for people on television shows who were about to get in trouble. I can't think of any concrete examples, but like, if the Fresh Prince was doing something he wasn't supposed to, like snooping in someone else's stuff or something, and we in the audience were clued in to the fact that he was about to get busted for it. I would get beet-red flushed to the point where I'd have to turn off the TV or leave the room.

I know the feeling and to be honest this is why I really find it difficult to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm sometimes, it's one of those shows that makes me physically uncomfortable, I can't stop thinking "just drop it, Larry!" over and over again. Which sucks because I know how damn funny it is.

Yeah I can't do it either. It's just not funny for me, I start blushing and having hot flushes of embarrassment, like my scalp prickles and it's physically uncomfortable! Oh cringing.

on the other hand I'm not sure why Louie doesn't invoke the same feeling

i was in C0st Plu$ last night, as always during the holidays there was a long line for the cashiers. An employee was standing at the head of the line with a plate of samples (white cheddar cheese puffs), telling people when the next cashier was available. But she was kinda in that panic mode where she's pretending to be super-friendly but her voice is kinda shrill and panicky like she's moments away from throwing the sample tray to the floor and storming out.

I'd never EVER seen them handing out samples so that was kinda weird and secondhand embarrassing to begin with, because I think most of the other people in line were all, 'why are you here'. Like we can all see the next available cashier, it's fine.

But on top of smiling in a rictus of panick and saying 'go ahead, the cashier's open now!' she insisted on greeting everyone who walked in the door as well. Which again, never happens in this store. it's just a walk in and shop place, employees say hello if they see you but they don't usually greet you when you walk in. The door was a good 20 feet away from where she was standing at the cashier line. So she'd randomly, panic-ily shout a 'HELLO HOW ARE YOU!!!' - and they'd kinda look around like startled deer becuase they couldn't even *see* her from where they were standing. God it was awkward to watch.

I wanted to simultaneously hug her and die of embarrassment for her.

that's not irrational embarrassment -- that's old fashioned empathy!

Greeting people is a commonly used loss prevention technique. They probably had been getting knocked over and LP told them that they had to greet "every single person who comes in the door" or face getting written up or something. In my experience, the greeter comes off as totally awkward and robotic and real shoplifters don't give a shit.

well it didn't really make me IA so I figured this was as good a place as any :)

xpost but I got the feeling she had just came up with the greeting people thing on the fly to fill in the awkwardness of her role to begin with. OR the store just went completely bonkers over Christmas and gave her this stupid new policy to follow which is just as embarrassing for her

it's like the time our vp of sales came back from Seattle after visiting Pike's Market and decided that every time someone took a phone order they should yell 'order up'. I died of embarrassment for everyone who yelled it. It lasted maybe a week before everyone just quietly stopped doing it.

i'm not trying to censor you -- just noticing. pretty much nothing makes me IA, but i would only use this thread for things i am embarrassed about for a completely irrational reason
otherwise i would just post post post post post about moments of empathy all day
and that would be tedious for everyone

Greeting people is a commonly used loss prevention technique. They probably had been getting knocked over and LP told them that they had to greet "every single person who comes in the door" or face getting written up or something. In my experience, the greeter comes off as totally awkward and robotic and real shoplifters don't give a shit.

Yeah this is the worst. The obv. "we don't trust our customers" meshed with fake friendliness makes me IA.

Also being asked "Can I help you find something today?" 5x or more within a couple of minutes of hsving set foot in the place