Awkward moments caused entirely due to that British politeness embarrassment thing

Backstreet Spanish tapas bar. 15 year old waiter. No English spoken.

After we'd ordered our 12 plates of 'tapas' to share amongst 4 by pointing at pictures, you can imagine our horror when the first couple of dishes arrived on full size dinner plates. Being English - say nothing. We're a bit traumatised by plate number 4. Hysterical by plate 6 and I think we actually died eating plate 7, at which point DS who was 11 and had done one year of Spanish, thought he'd go inside and try and stop them sending out any more food.

He waved his arms around and thinks he might have said 'no more'. Thankfully, the next thing they brought was the humongous bill along with several doggy bags of the rest of the food. You live and learn.

A woman at work used to call me Jane. That is my colleague's name but not mine. I corrected her the first few times then gave up. My other colleague used to piss himself in our joint meetings (which she had invited me to, by my correct name) and even started calling me it I obviously had to move jobs.

mrs I think your idea of "winning" and mine are different

Re: the hairdresser answering the phone and pretending to be someone else

I think maybe she was only answering the phone for the receptionist, and then by the time she realised it was me that she was too far into the conversation to admit it was her.

Based on nothing but casual stereotyping, I think Canadians and Dutch win at this sort of thing.

Not the Dutch, surely. If you ask someone to lunch, say, and they don't want to go, the Dutch person will say "No, thank you" without needing to pretend he's in Outer Mongolia that day but otherwise he'd simply LOVE to.

I went to a job interview some distance away for a small charity. I was invited to have lunch in the staffroom which was a proper meal (as opposed to the sandwiches I was anticipating) with the person in charge of the organisation at head of table and putting the food on the plates. There were butterbeans as a veg. I'd never had them before and was valiantly eating them horrible things that were rather hard too embarassed to leave them. At the end of the meal I realised that they were presumably undercooked and everyone else had left theirs....
(I got the job...hated it)

user1457213512

I presume the friend pretended to be someone else as she didn't like to refuse to cut OP's daughter's hair. It was easier to pretend to be someone else rather than have an embarrassing conversation with the OP.

Colleague went for an interview once.

She was asked if she'd like coffee or tea.

Tea, she said.

Milk or lemon, she was asked. This was back in the day.

Both, she said.

She drank it and got the job.

I don't think I'm British at all...
I never do any of these things, quite the opposite which also leads to me feeling very embarrassed anyway.
Last year in Portugal on holiday I was queuing up at the checkout and this Portuguese woman came and stood at the front of the queue when it was my turn next. I looked at her and said excuse me I'm next, do you mind not pushing in!
It turned out she wasn't pushing in at all but just wanted to look at something behind the counter
I very sheepishly said sorry as I was leaving

3luckystars probably just me being dim but I don't understand? Why did your friend pretend to be someone else? How strange.

KERALA1 you are raising your DDs brilliantly

When i lived in Canada we rented a basement apartment from a family who lived in the house above. We were chatting in the garden one day and the lady said they were off on hols the following week. I said (being British and all about the weather) 'oh sounds lovely, what's the forecast?' She then explained in length how much each individual part of the holiday had cost. I was squirming. Every part of my insides felt hot and itchy. I of course nodded politely. Then she when she had told me down to the last dollar she said 'So that's the 'full cost' i think'. And I then realised she had misheard forecast as full cost

I said 'oh, i hope you have nice weather, cheerio', ran inside, packed my bags, moved back to the UK and had major facial reconstructive surgery. I still cringe thinking about it.

When I was in primary school I'd been asked to go to deliver a message to another teacher in a different class room. I had drawn a picture that day which I was carrying around in a notebook and was really proud of. I was going to give it to another teacher in the school. The teacher i had to pass the message to saw the picture and exclaimed "oh goodness is that for me, how lovely". I didn't want her to have it but rather than make her feel bad that she wasnt having a picture I panicked and said "no, but this one is" and ripped her out a page of scribbles". She actually put it on the wall next to her desk and when my mum came in for my brother's parents evening she showed it to her. I remember my mum asking me why on earth I'd given her a page of scribbles instead of an proper picture!

bluegloves that really made me laugh!

Based on nothing but casual stereotyping, I think Canadians and Dutch win at this sort of thing.

Yes, Canadians would very politely and patiently correct you. Every single time you got it wrong.

Anyone English witnessing this would be turned inside out with vicarious mortification.

Canadians are polite, but not crippled by social embarrassment/etiquette. So i can't imagine them worrying about correcting someone if they got their name wrong.

Our next door neighbour calls my husband Shaun. He's not called Shaun or anything remotely like it. It's happened too many times now to correct him!

I'm Irish but definitely have experienced this too. I'm laughing so so much at all your stories!

My good friend (Julie) works in a lovely hair salon, they don't cut children's hair but she often asked my daughter in to get her hair cut so one day we went in and she made a huge fuss of my daughter, and even got her nails painted. She was only about 4.
Anyway, the next time she needed a cut, I thought I would do the same again so rang to make an appointment. My friend Julie answered the phone but I wasn't sure it was her because they have a receptionist.
So I asked to make an appointment with 'Julie' and she obviously didn't recognise me, and I said oh it's for my daughter, and my friend said 'oh Julie does not cut children's hair!'
So I said 'oh but she knows us, I am her friend Lucky' thinking that she would admit it was herself but no!!!
To my horror, she actually changed her voice a bit and continued pretending to be someone else to take the booking and I had to continue pretending I didn't know it was her!!! For the whole phonecall!!!

Oh my good God, I have never mentioned it since but by the end, her voice was nearly American and she knew I knew and we were both cringing!

Then I had still had to go in for the haircut....

I was chatting to a colleague behind me that I've known for a while and he isn't the most politically correct. A new man who was sitting next to this colleague joined in the conversation and at some point I mentioned something about small man syndrome. New guy looked average height, thought I was on safe ground. Politically incorrect colleague is now giving me the looks I normally have to give to him. New guy turns on his seat and goes over to get a coffee and he has really really short legs but a normal sized back. There wasn't anything wrong with him btw, that was just his build.

Obviously I can't speak to either of them anymore and I've requested a desk move. :)

Does any other nation do theses things I think was the question?

Canadians - Politeness on acid.

I don't

When I arrived in the French city I was going to study in, with a year's worth of luggage I stood in the queue at the bus stop outside the station. After a while a bus pulled up and its doors opened, so i hung back to let the crowd that had been there before me get on. But no one moved forward and before i could do anything the doors closed and the bus pulled away. I subsequently realised that although they were waiting at a public bus stop, the others were all kids waiting for a specific private school bus.

Actually, my husband is French (I met him during that year abroad so long ago) and I really recognise myself in all these tales of "not wanting to bother or interrupt" someone..... it's how I am with him, and sometimes I get really fed up because he doesn't seem to respect me in that he interrupts when I'm in the middle of something - demanding an immediate response, whereas I always check he's not "busy" before asking him anything. I thought it was just a self centred man thing, but I'm wondering now if it's a nationality difference.

Years ago I worked for a charity and I was looking for a venue for a monthly event. Someone reccomended the local church hall so I popped in to see the vicar, all good he was happy to let us use it and introduced me to his office manager Donna who would organise everything we needed.

Venue was perfect and we used it for 2 years until I needed to chat to Donna about something and I couldn't get hold of her so popped into the church on my way home. Vicar was there so explained my problem and asked him to get Donna to give me a call. He explained that DEBORAH was on holiday but would no doubt contact me when she returned

I went to see her and apologise when she was back. It had been 2 years of phone calls and emails and she had never corrected me! I am not sure who was most embarrassed her or me. I still cringe now at that meeting . I soon handed that project on to a colleague to save us both any further awkwardness.

My daughter's English teacher calls her Olivia. Her name's nothing like Olivia, and start with an 'M'. She just answers to Olivia now, in that one class, and no one corrects her. At parent teacher night, we discussed 'Olivia's' progress....

My mother is Australian but I was born & grew up in the UK. When I was young and mentioned to some of the other kids at school that I was half-Australian, one of them pointed out that I didn't sound half Australian. From that day on, I tried speaking in half an Australian accent, which was not easy to do!