Do you have a random kind of niche joke that you share only with you partner/best friend and then one day it is accidentally triggered into action with other people and you end up looking like a massively weird twat?

[ChypreNovice]

Oh god.
please PLEASE can like 300 posters come and say that they’ve done this and it’s completely fine and no one even noticed or will even remember and I don’t have to immediately resign and change my name and move to New Zealand to start a new life with a new family.

I am a senior serious person and today I agreed to be filmed for the Trust’s website using a hoist and there was a big group of my colleagues watching and then after filming started someone said “look normal” and oh god I then proceeded to make a series of incredibly weird poses with my body WITH A HOIST.

I completely lost control, and all because of that sketch. Occasionally my husband or I will say “look normal” to the other and then we do some sort of weird awkward weird pose. That’s the background but little did I know he’d been training my like some sort of hypnotic spy auto-reflex response shit.

shit

And today it was NOT my husband who said it and people were watching and it was being filmed and oh god.

Oh god

The look on their faces.

shit

2319

Sorry! Not done the same (but very capable of it). Your post did give me and DH a good chuckle though. And made me think we should re watch IT Crowd.

Whenever offering each other food in its raw form we channel Miriam Margolyes in Blackadder, “would you like your turnip as God intended?”

when someone is giving completely useless or incomprehensible instructions, “rotate your main finger topwise” (the Simpsons yelling instructions at each about how to solve a Rubik’s cube)

when one of us has done a stupid thing and wants it to be passed over, “ignore me doing this” in an attention-seeking Austen Powers way

We say, “That’ll do Donkey, that’ll do.”

Shrek.

Brooklyn 99 reference:

"Title of your sex tape..."

This too.

My horrible boss was having a tantrum one day about a colleague and I being friends - I without thinking, said “friends” a la the Inbetweeners. She didn’t get it and was not amused.

I remember thinking that Ronnie Corbett show was cringey at the time, can't imagine how badly it's aged!!
I have had to cover for a couple of absent colleagues recently, and to explain to another colleague that i was standing in for one of them the other day, I said "tonight, Matthew, I will be....". Not a flicker!
I also do ferris bueller anyone, anyone when I'm teaching.
Also lots of advert references from the 80s that no one else gets 😂

If someone is talking about taking drugs I can’t stop myself from saying (in a crap American accent)

‘there’s a time and a place to do drugs and that time and place is college’ (Southpark)

Other Southpark ones

respect my authoritah!

On leaving a night out early: Screw you guys, I’m going home!

We do the League of Gentlemen ones too:
This is a local shop, for local people.
We didn’t kill him!
You’re my wife now!
I also say Language Timothy.

Sorry OP, but

I promise you, if you do end up having to move to NZ - you can come and work at my work. We will definitely laugh with you, not at you

I have so many of these,and the first time DS had his girlfriend stay the night I said 'dreamy sleepy nighty snoozey snooze' like I do every night. I'm amazed she didn't call her parents to pick her up right there & then.

The one that trips me up constantly is that when DD was a toddler she used to say ' You're Malcolm' (welcome) when I thanked her for something. So now the three of of us say 'thank you' 'you're Malcolm' instinctively. I don't want to think how many shop assistants I've called Malcolm over the years.

Aw OP I can't believe nobody laughed, I'd have loved it if my senior colleague did this. 😂😂

Whoever mentioned friends quotes - whenever someone says 'I fell asleep' I think in my head (or if DH is present say out loud) "you fell ASLEEEP" Rachel style with that weird pitch. Also "you complete me kitchen mate-y" is another one DH and I use a lot..

www.google.co.uk/search?q=you+fell+alseep+friends+rachel&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:61de6dc4,vid:jYFnoaYoAOY

In our house there is a lot of - You look nice Jacky, Shalom & hello Bambino’s - and many other FND refs- you can basically say anything in a “Jim” voice. We are not even slightly Jewish

We have a few of these - "That'll do, Pig" is a classic.

When waving the kids off in a morning, we have the Barbie from the end of Toy Story "Bye bye, bye bye now..."

When one of us is adamant we're not doing something, we'll say 'Lynn, I'm not driving a Mini Metro' (Alan Partridge) We do occasionally say it in front of people. Some get it. Others think we're a bit deranged.

Another one, when one of us is trying to remind the other about something and the memory just isn't working, we'll say 'Don't you remember? You were wearing your blue jumper.' (Father Ted)

Also quite a few from the Tony Hancock film 'The Rebel'

Husband and I are massive fans of the American version of The Office and rewatch the whole series at least once a year. One day at work, while we were around about season 4, I was talking with my boss about how much a property had sold for, which was slightly lower than we expected. He said he was trying to get him to go up a bit more but he just couldn’t do it. I responded with ‘that’s what she said’. Boss has never seen The Office, didn’t get the reference and my explanation of why I said ‘that’s what she said’ didn’t help.

That scene 😂

Thankfully never been in a position quite like yours, but my friend and I have a lot of in jokes from TV shows/movies that then morph into something else that doesn't even make sense, and I at times use it with other people without thinking.

Classic eg is this clip form Parks&Rec at the 1:15 mark where Leslie says 'your mother's butt'. I don't remember how it started, but once my friend and I said this line at exactly the same time.

And now, every time we say the same thing, instead of saying 'jinx' like absolute children anyway we say 'your mum's butt'. Except sometimes I say it to other people.

My most frequent one is "I CANT SEE WHAT TO DO" in the panicked tone of a certain Crystal Maze contestant when I or someone else is publicly failing to do something simple like make a projector work in a hurry while the others present look on and provide only useless advice. This goes down particularly poorly with highly paid strangers.

All through the “I’ve had a fall” thread I was hearing…

“I’ve fallen & I can’t get up” 🤣

Anytime somebody says “question” before they ask an actual question, it must be responded to with “yes Beyoncé?” Immediately.

My eldest DD discovered at university that lots of things we say regularly at home are niche quotes when no one else understand what she was talking about.

I think it's normal within families to have frequently quoted catchphrases from comedy shows.

What is potentially more embarrassing is that DH and I (happily married for a quarter of a century) have a long-standing joke of using the most vulgar / anatomical nicknames we can think of as terms of endearment for each other. About twenty years ago it developed into a game to out-shock / out-gross each other. We're now well past four letter words and have reached the stage where none of it is remotely repeatable. It's almost inevitable that one of these days we'll do this within hearing range of some poor innocent unsuspecting person.

I also work with small children and they say the cutest things, so I refer to them that way forever more. May family is aware of the meanings and mum regularly uses them as well 😂 favourite phrase is 'my scary' (I'm scared) and all squirrels are forever skirrels, I will never say it correctly again.