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

The most recent one - someone asked me how to buy a ticket from a rather complicated machine. While he was asking me I was idly thinking 'he's attractive, but he looks gay', so I said 'oh yes, this machine's really queer'. A word I never ever use or even think!

'just as we were kneeling to pray for nan, the song about meatballs all covered in cheese started playing.'

I turned to the military attaché and said 'Oh you have just trafficked her in for sex then?'

'Penis Danish'

This thread is making me cry.

These are hilarious

I?ve banished most of my gaffes to the back of my brain but these three regularly push themselves to the forefront of my mind.

1. A meal out with clients. I was 19 and tipsy. They mentioned paying for the meal and I, rather loudly, replied ?Oh, I?d rather if you?d just clear off the £700 invoice you haven?t paid for 2 months.? Silence across the table. I got in some serious shit for that one.

1. I sent a text to a friend which I ended with ?By the way, you are SO fab!? except for some reason I sent ?By the way, you are SO fat!? Unfortunately the text I was replying to was her telling me about her first meeting at Slimming World.

1. Then there?s the time I was caught on an internal line to colleague A bitching about colleague B. I was caught by colleague B. (To be fair she shouldn?t have been listening into my calls but even so, the things I said were unforgiveable really)

Oh I just recalled one that DH did. We went to a party a few weeks ago and on the way out we saw someone coming in who greeted my DH. DH just gaped and went white.

When we got home I said 'what on earth was that?' and he said 'I thought he was dead!'. Then silence and a few minutes later 'And I sent a card'.

I fell about laughing.

Work with the elderly for the NHS, I had only been working there a couple of month when sadly we lost one of the gents we were looking after quite suddenly, a couple of hours after his body had been taken to the morgue his family showed up to collect his belongings. I answered the door "Oh Hi I'm afraid he's not here at the moment!"

As if he was going to make some miraculous recovery and come back to the ward. I still cringe like mad over it. Not my finest moment when dealing with the deceased.

Another time a relative asked if I thought her husband knew who she was. I shook my head and said "doubt it". May I stress I had misheard her question. I to this day can not for the life of me remember what I thought she had said. I was too busy trying to console her...

'Penis Danish' = Can't stop laughing at that one!

God these are giving me a much needed laugh today. Keep em coming!

I once gave a colleague a lift to work and she waved enthusiastically to the security guard as he we pulled in to the staff car park.

I said: 'Oh do you know him? I can't stand him. He's a right pervert, always looking down my top and making suggestive comments.'

She said: 'he's my dad.'

I have told this before on here but I gaily told my neighbour how my clitoris had been eaten by slugs (then pulled the remains of the clematis out the garden the next day)
He still won't quite catch my eye :o

Well, this one will probably out me to my SIL and at least one friend who I think is on here.
Much like my other anecdote, it was a moment when some roulette randomiser part of the brain kicks in and overrides the perfectly sensible thing which you expected yourself to say. And like the other anecdote I worryingly cannot account for the brain fart which led to this exchange.
Rather a fancy industry do, lots of important people there, I work freelance so all being well it could be an opportunity for future work.
Friend introduces me to rather important chap then heads off to talk to someone else. Small talk flagging between important chap and I, he kindly compliments my jacket.
To which I reply "thanks, this is my wanking jacket". Cue stunned silence and us both sort of sidling off while I blushed furiously and died a bit inside.

Arf at smarties wanking jacket- who knew there were such things?! :o

I don't think there are. Unless I technically hold some copyright on the basis of my brain having made it up unsanctioned by conscious process of thought?
Perhaps I could be rich beyond my wildest dreams.

Nancy66 What did your friend say????!!!!

And what was 'wanking jacket' originally supposed to be?

Me and my sister got the giggles at our mums funeral. Our other sister was crying and did a really loud snort, we caught each others eye and burst out laughing. People started looking so i put my head down and pretended the shoulder shaking laughter was me crying.

Lol Smarties wanking jacket, what were you trying to say?

I once asked a very unwell patient if she wanted me to bring her son back into the room, she burst into tears and said "he's not my son, he's my husband and he's older than me!" I have never been able to think about that without burning in shame I learned my lesson and always said "who is it that's with you today?" After that. The poor woman, as if the fact that she was feeling so ill and potentially dying wasn't enough. Arrggh, just thinking about it

This is what I mean Drink, this is the worrying element of it - I seriously have no sense of what I meant to say. Apart from obviously not that. There's just a whistling void of intention then my own total horror as I heard myself jauntily declare it to be my wanking jacket.
It was sort of like I was so freaked out by him being really a huge deal in my industry that my brain just farted up the stupidest thing in it at the time.

I was working as a volunteer for a charity and went to visit a family of asylum seekers who had come from a largely Muslim country where there is a small Christian population. I genuinely can't remember which country it was. Anyway, I asked "are you observing Ramadan at the moment?".

Tumbleweed moment as it turned out the reason they had left their country was that they were Christians who were persecuted by the Muslims Luckily they were very nice about it.

When I worked at a supermarket we had this regular customer, one day he was struggling to separate the containers for the salad. I said 'would you like a hand' only to remember he only had one hand I was but he was fine about it and laughed phew.

Getting my dd's first fancy dress day at school mixed up.

She goes to strictly C of E school, but were not religious. It was the end of October and the newsletter said "seasonal fancy dress" I assumed they meant halloween costumes, or something autumnal for the practicing christian kiddies.

I sent her in a red devils costume, only to be informed rather pityingly by a fellow mum on arrival that they had changed it to "help for heroes day" I never got the note.
Every child was a, police, fireman, soldier, nurse, doctor or historical figure. My dd stood out in assembly in her bright red costume with devils horns, flamey wings and a tail! The head master then commented "that he hoped she didn't think satan was her hero" while giving the assembly. I really really really wanted a hole in the ground to open up.

I was a student, it was comic relief and I was going round, in fancy dress, collecting.
I came across a group of people in the street and I skipped up to them, shaking my bucket and I trilled
Cheer up you miserable buggers, give to comic relief.

They all gave generously and I went across the road to the students union, where there was a row of faces like this

They pointed out the hearse

There have been many but I think that ones the worst.

Not me, but the MN'er who found her daughter's boyfriend buying condoms and asked what he had planned for that night while trying to make conversation always makes me howl.

*Hec]

I am feeling so embarrassed for you all.

Glad I'm not the only one with a supermarket-related gaffe!

I got a part time job at a supermarket when I was a student, and on my first day a customer asked me if I could tell her where the femme fresh was. Knowing that my managers were watching to see how I was getting on, I smiled politely and led her across the store, telling her that she'd find them by the sanitary towels.
She looked confused and then explained that she'd actually said creme fraiche (which, in hindsight, made sense since we were stood in the yoghurt aisle to begin with...)

hecsy my keyboard took a serious coffee shower at yours.

Fish eeeeeeh I am howling, tears rolling down my face here at satan the hero.

This thread is fab! Glad we can all laugh at ourselves and each other on here ha ha ha