Almighty gaffes you have made

[LuisSuarezTeeth]

I work with the elderly and people with various disabilities. This week I have surpassed myself and made things so much worse by apologising profusely.

To the gentleman without legs: Would you like to go for a walk?

To the partially sighted lady: Yes I see

To the gentleman who has dementia: Do you remember..?

I feel just terrible, wretched and awful. I am normally so tactful, but have had a rotten week. They were all so nice about it and the gentleman with no legs kept cracking his own jokes.

But really, I am so embarrassed.

Please tell me I am not the only one

could out myself here

i run a cleaning business and a landlord rang and booked me to do an end of tenancy clean.

we arranged to meet at her house and she stayed there, bagging up rubbish and pottering about in the garden while i cleaned. and my god. shit hole was not the word. kim and aggie had nothing on this place. it was utterly filthy. i honestly felt sad for the landlord that some filthy bugger had left her house such a bad state, it took me HOURS to get it even halfway decent.

at the end of the job i was chatting to her, saying how disgusting that people could create such mess and filth, and how i hoped she managed to find a less skanky tenant next time

well. it turned out they were NOT the landlord. they were the TENANT.

i literally mumbled something and just could not get out of there fast enough

I was once working from home. Being super efficient and all that, I emailed DH to brag that despite the fact it was only 8am, I had finished working for the day and was about to sit on my arse on the sofa until 5pm.

For some fucking unknown reason I clicked print instead of delete when he replied saying what a lazy bitch I was. This would be fine if I'd printed to my home printer, but it defaulted to our office printer.

Cue frantic call to boss' PA to race to the printer and rescue the offending document...

OMG, that's the sort of thing I'd do

Years ago when I worked on a city centre I used to buy my daily newspaper from a man with a stall. He set up each day outside my office.

Everyday he parked in a disabled space and left his vehicle there all day. One day I said to him. 'You park in a disabled space everyday and there's nothing wrong with you'.
I used a scolding voice.

He then removed his false arm and gave it to me.

I was mortified and was too embarrassed to ever buy a paper from him again!

My mum has managed a couple of impressive ones.
Asks at the shop "do you have lesbian bread ?" She meant lebanese
Tells random person she got chatting to that her daughter has a "genital heart disease" that would be congenital.

We were told at medical school many years ago at a social meeting that " you could get condoms from some public health place on a certain road....I don't know I wasn't really listening. A friend said to me as we walked past said building ...That's the place you just get free condoms from the basket inside...... Lets get some and give them out at next social meeting ! Oh ok I said...she said you go, I said fine lets go in.
In we went, me in front straight up to the counter , several people sitting around but noone waiting and said in a loud voice..." Have you got the free condoms please we are medical students ...? To which the lady replied, oh I think you want Family Planning next door, this is THE DENTIST SURGERY..... Waiting room full

No idea what possessed me, I'm quite shy and didn't even want the blasted things.....it was hilarious though we just collapsed and died right there of ridiculousness

I was drunk in a restaurant when a very shy ex patient of mine came in & said "Hi, how are you? I didn't know if it was ok to say hello to you in public" I was very drunk & showy offy & replied at the top of my voice across the room "OH HI, I DIDN'T RECOGNISE YOU WITH YOUR CLOTHES ON!"

She went bright red, put her head in her hands & basically stayed head bowed for the rest of her meal.
I'm normally really sensitive & kind - honest!!!

A colleague and I were sat waiting for people to arrive for a meeting, and discussing that we fancied some chocolate. Just as the IT Director arrived - a very serious American guy - she said "yes I could just do some minstrels right now." he looked a bit confused and it transpired the only minstrels he knew of were the black and white, or medieval lie playing types. We tittered politely.

Then suddenly colleague bursts out "Oh that adds a new dimension to they melt in your mouth, not in your hand!" She then turned scarlet and we both burst in to hysterical laughter - and literally could not stop for about 10 minutes.

I was mesmerised by one of my friends cousins ultra blonde moustache (woman), it was all white, long and glittering in the sun. This lady is quite a quiet and shy soul, cue me stating loudly to our full table and neighbouring tables that I was jealous of her naturally bleached moustache as I have to 'nair' my black hair. I am such a foot-in-mouth person and immediately realised that I hadn't just doled out a compliment, but rather told the universe about her hairy lip. oh the shame.

After my in uncle's funeral all everyone came back to my parents house. There was an ice bucket on the floor next to the sofa and as I walked back into the dining room one of my aunts called out, "mind you don't kick the bucket!" Fortunately my recently widowed aunt didn't notice.

DH was demonstrating a simple procedure to a student at work. As he finished he said, "there you go! Easy peasy, Chinesey!". Student was Chinese

I remember my mother getting increasingly irate when we told her that her friend didn't get pregnant with the help of HIV. We were out shopping and my mum was yelling "she DID have HIV!" Could barely stop laughing long enough to suggest the friend may have had ivf

Most recently, when I thought I was past all this type of stuff:
Someone with a cast sitting in my office, and I say , that thing gets bigger every time I look at it.. Instead of moving swiftly onwards, I then shout to the office : "his ARM". And then collapse in hysterics. I'm forty fucking two.
Anyway, it's not like I don't have form for this.
In my first job, on site in the legal department of British Gas ( long time ago, no fear of outing ), I'm asked by senior manager what I thought of person I had been working with that day.
I say "oh Brian, he's a lovely black" "fuck, I meant bloke, shit, sorry"

The absolute worst, and to this day, this still seems like I made it up...
7 or 8 of us were walking from our digs to the pub, past the cathedral. I'm at the back of the group talking student bollox.. Oh what was the name of that guy in the book about notre dame... You know.... The hunchback... We think and think, and as the crowd parts in front of us to let someone through, I shout out Quasimodo.... To the absolute horror of my friends who have just let a hmmmm person of extremely small stature through.
We restrain ourselves til out of earshot, then flip out and continue to have hysterics as we walk down the street, finally coming to a standstill just past the cathedral where we all stop to get it out of our systems, just as a funeral party exits onto the street.

Oh maybe this was the worst.... and there was the time someone said her gran had just died and I ( thinking this was a strange joke, and trying to "cleverly" catch her out ) said, oh really, you don't seem upset.
Me and " clever" have an on-off relationship.

Where I come from, crap means vomit and pants mean trousers, so when I say I was so drunk I got crap on my pants.... Well, you can see how that went down.

What's scary is only half of these are drink related.

At a job I once had, talking with a group of colleagues while we were all on a break. One guy, who I got on particularly well with, had a jokey, light-hearted friendship with him. I asked what his daughter was called. He said 'Davina'. His name was David. I said 'don't be silly, only a twat would call their daughter a female version of their own name!'

Turns out, of course, that he wasn't joking. And I kept on and on insisting. I thought he was winding me up

(No offence, of course, to anyone that has named their offspring after themselves!)

To my friend with mouth cancer who has to get her tongue removed - "would you like to talk about it?"

Thought of another.

My sister was at the movies with a friend of hers. They were sitting right at the back and a man in a wheelchair sat at the end of the aisle next to them. My sister didn't really take any notice of him and watched the movie with her friend. At the end of the movie when they went to stand up to leave, my sister's friend stood up to leave and hadn't realised that her leg had fallen asleep. My sister burst out laughing and said, very loudly "oh my god, you can't walk!!" as soon as the words left her mouth she remembered about the man in the wheelchair. She was mortified

I got a dream job. It wasn't particularly senior, but it was at an organisation I had admired since childhood. Finally, after a number of failed applications, something came up that was suitable for me and I lept at it.

Two weeks in, there was a concert put on by the staff, for other staff. If you had a talent, you could offer to perform. It was a free bar and a lot of fun and it was a nice family atmosphere. I have no talents, but was pleased to be going on to watch.

I didn't know the area or people well, so one of the people in the office offered to walk there with me. First, however, she wanted to swing by a launch party for a book the organisation was publishing. 'Of course!' I replied. I'd never been to a book launch and I was drunk on novelty and excitement and happy dreams.

Unfortunately, then I was just plain drunk.

I was young(ish) and stupid and ridiculously lightweight, and despite knowing I hadn't eaten since lunch, I thought a glass of wine at the event was simply what was done. I drank it. I didn't know anyone and was too embarrassed to talk to the famous author or his famous friends, so I had another wine simply to occupy my mouth so that nobody felt obliged to make conversation with me.

We walked on to the theatre where the other thing was happening. At no point did I have the brains to suggest I stopped for a bite to eat first. I just followed blindly.

Seats had been reserved at a table for us, at which there was quite a quantity of wine. I drank some wine.

It was a really wonderful evening. I vaguely remembered weeping at all the amazing talent that was on show. Then one of the senior people sang and played guitar with his rock band. I'd only seen this person in passing. I knew he was senior, was therefore terrified of him, and seeing him in casual get-up, wailing with all his heart into a mike blew my very drunk mind.

I recall we needed to finish the bottle of wine at the evening's end. I thought it would be rude not to help out there.

Finally, as people were gently suggesting we should leave, and that they'd put me in a cab, I came out with 'No! I must first tell Mr Senior that I love him!' And charged off.

You know how drink sometimes dulls your memory? Not this time. Oh no. I remember with hideous, horrific clarity, marching up to him, and puling him into a hug.

'I love you!' I said, tears of passion flooding over me. 'I love you, but I can't marry you, because I have to have someone else's babies!'

Oh God, I'm going red just remembering.

He said 'I'm so pleased you enjoyed it. Have you met my wife?' A highly amused woman shook my hand and asked how I was. I failed to answer.

I later found out that she was a Labour MP, which just cemented my awful humiliation. Mr Senior was absolutely lovely about the whole thing, but mentioned how I was 'a fan' every now and again until I left the organisation 3 years later.

I haven't had more than half a glass of wine at a time since.

Two terrible terrible things that even now I can barely bring myself to think about, for and at myself....

I worked in a hospice for many years & one time, when I hadn't been there long, I knew a patient was close to death & the family had been called. We knew the family quite well as the dad had been in for a while. The son turned up and I said 'go on through' but what I didn't know was that the dad had died in the interim, so this poor poor man pulled back the curtain round the bed and was met by the sight of his dead dad. I cried for weeks over that.

And one time I was going out with a bloke and his dad, known as Jack, had recently died. We were organising the funeral & talking about coffins and I, for some utterly unfathomable reason, made a comment about 'Jack-in-the-box'. Ye gods. I never knew what possessed me to say something so utterly crass and tactless.

Quite a funny one, which will out me but I don't think my colleagues will be on here, being men in their late teens & early 20s...

Our area manager was in work one day, & I had been out. Coming back in, I opened the door, but he was just inside with his back to me, talking to some of the other staff, so I stood and waited, as he was blocking the way. He hadn't realised I was there and began backing towards the door, still talking, feeling behind him for the door handle. The inside of our shop is higher than the outside so I was a fair bit lower than him, and he continued to come backwards, still groping behind him for the door (this happened much faster than I'm writing it, hence me still stood there) until he grabbed a full handful of one of my boobs! Bless him, he's quite a quiet & shy bloke at the best of times, but he was utterly mortified! I and the other staff absolutely fell about laughing, because it was just such a comic moment, but he spent the rest of the night apologising and blushing ferociously! Bless!

These are all so good but

I ACTUALLY say "I'm so lonely".

has me crying!

It turned out that he was a man who had never grown and was also important in the council.