That thing where you think you're being polite but really it's just a bit mad

[Nabootique]

I am in the office just thinking about going to the canteen to get breakfast. I can't order what I want as the very nice young man who works the counter prides himself on getting my "usual" on the go as soon as he sees me approach the door. As a result, I have the same thing every day and don't have the heart to tell him I'd like to order something different.

I feel like this mad level of politeness is probably very common. Any funny stories?

Just thought of another one! Some years ago in the late 1980's when I was about 11 I answered the phone one day after school. I can't quite remember how the conversation began but basically I wasn't paying attention, it was one of my mother's colleagues & she thought I was in fact my mother & started talking & didn't stop. I didn't know what to do, it seemed rude to interrupt her so I impersonated my mother pretending to be her. The friend asked if I was OK, if I had a cold as I sounded odd so I had to turn into my mother with a bad cold! It went on for at least a minute before I panicked, blurted out 'its Midnight hold on & I'll get my mum', dropped the phone & ran off.

Said colleague was a teacher who taught at my primary & gave us lifts home, plenty of time to see her & to recall the conversation each time....

When I was a postgrad, I lived in a small shared house with two other people who were rarely around, owned by a landlord who was a pig farmer. It was a furnished house and he'd left a few pig-related nick-nacks around the hall/kitchen - a couple of pictures on the wall, cute pig tea-towels, that sort of thing - and as I was starting a new course and making an entirely new batch of friends, everyone who came round assumed that all the piggy things were mine and therefore that I must really like pigs. I have nothing against pigs - I think they're lovely - but they're not really my thing and a collector of piggy stuff I most certainly am not. Nonetheless, for the entire three years of that course, all my new friends bought me nothing but pig-related Christmas and birthday presents, and I didn't have the heart to stop them - I accumulated goodness knows how many pottery pigs and books about pigs and cute pictures of pigs, which I had to have out on display in my room whenever the people who'd bought them came round, and the more piggy stuff there was, the more people thought 'Oh, spiderlight loves pigs!', and the more random piggy stuff I got given.

DH and I were on a rare night out, and he ordered mushroom risotto. He LOVES mushroom risotto, and can eat anything, but could not eat this..... it was clearly microwaved and was both gluggy, tasteless and somehow the mushrooms had been nuked enough that they were actually crispy.

We were too embarrassed to send it back, so stuffed it into a number of baby wipes that we secreted into my handbag. It was like that Mr Bean episode with the Steak Tartare.

I used my middle name for something ages ago, someone contacted me and asked me to write something - but now I have written a few book chapters using my middle name because I didn't have the nerve to explain the first time around

My mum had a friend called Heidi. They saw each other several times a week.

After a year "Heidi" told mum that she's actually called Jane.

No idea how mum managed to get that name so wrong, but I've always wondered what it was that made Jane think enough was enough!!!

I don't know my next door neighbours name. She has lived there for nearly 20 years. I regularly give her lifts if I see her coming back from the shops. I am too embarrassed to ask her now

The posts about the phone calls remind me of the time I rang my BIL to ask after my DSis, who'd just had an operation. He mistook my voice for hers, and my question about how my sister was with concern for their DD.
He went into a long story about her day, number of poos, what she'd eaten and how many naps she'd had. It took me a good thirty seconds to figure out he was talking about a toddler rather than his wife.
I was so mortified I couldn't bring myself to admit to not being who he expected, and went along with it, only cutting off the conversation with fake sleepiness when I needed not to hear him being affectionate. DH's face watching my end of this conversation was

I left the country in the end

pepperrabbit that is hilarious!
Love this thread!

My DGrandad called DH Hamilton from the day they met to the day he died. He was very deaf and misheard first time. It is nothing like his real name but we never corrected him.

Hold the toast!

Brilliant I actually saw him at lunch time. He asked if I'd been in for breakfast and I said I'd had eggs. EGGS STEVE!! He then asked if I'd be changing it up now and I said (in a firm voice) yes I would!

Lying

Love your "just tired" story! Read it before, but PMSL again, never stop re-telling it!!!!

Not sure if this is along the same lines as this thread but it has reminded of a time when dp called his dm.

It's not unusual for one of his siblings to answer the phone, he has 3 younger sisters so when he asked if his dm was there, and she said no he asked where she was etc...

Eventually she said it was a wrong number and it was an important call so he got a bit wound up and had a go in that sibling way that turns you back into a child. For about 5 minutes he was moaning to stop dicking around and put his mum on the phone, he didn't have time for this etc. She hung up. He checked the call history...it was a wrong number. I laughed for ages but some poor woman had been verbally abused because he dialled wrong!

There's a lovely lady who owns a little gift shop type thing that I visit regularly and she makes huge effort to interact with her customers but she always gets it wrong. And I don't correct her because that would be worse.

I've been in shopping with my dm, looking at something and my dm said no don't buy that, I've got you it for your birthday. The lady nods along going "yes she has, she came in last week saying I'm buying this for my daughters birthday" my dm also nodded along and later told me she'd bought the gift on amazon.

Another time, shop lady asked me if I was feeling better after my chesty cough. I hadn't had a cough. She's referred to my ds as a girl multiple times, switching between he/she him/her in the same conversations so I don't even know how to correct her. And once she showed me some products, telling me these were the ones I'd enquired about on the fb page. She told me all about them and of course I hadn't even joined the fb page.

She's sooo friendly but just sooo mixed up!

manifestdestiny your post reminded me of a thread on here. The OP had somehow got into a situation where someone thought she had a dog but she didn't. She didn't feel she could confess that she'd misheard or misunderstood, so was having to come up with different excuses to get out of doggy play dates.

We were at a birthday party for friends' dc. My friends mum, who I have seen at other birthday parties, started talking to me. At first it was just general chat, then it became more specific and I started thinking she must be confusing me with someone else. When she asked me how my love life was I had to tell her I've been happily married for 5 years... she looked at me with a very aggrieved expression and asked why I hadn't told her I wasn't X earlier in the conversation!

Loving these! I had the problem of not knowing the name of neighbours I had been chatting to for years, but then when we had the first child we solved it! We sent Xmas cards to the whole street, addressed to 'All at number x' and then signed it with all our names and house number. Most neighhours reciprocated and we kept a list! We did the same when we moved house and again most people replied, so we have an ongoing list.

You did the tunnel thing??? But I assume it was a landline brilliant

Nah, it was a mobile, Stealth - my very first, a huge clunky Philips one that I'd had for about 3 months (this was 1999). But I was very obviously at home when she called

Queenbean that's quite a story! I can just imagine it. That and Lying's have made my day.

Years ago I was with a good friend in a pub and some other mates of hers came in and we all started chatting. She seemed to really be hitting it off with one guy, and later in the loo she asked me what I thought of him.

I said he seemed really nice, assuming she was just about to go in for the kill with him. To my utter horror, she grabbed my arm and pulled me over to where he was sitting saying "he likes you too, he's been asking about you all night."

And instead of trying to tell everyone about what a mixup it all was and that i wasn't even remotely interested in the bloke, I went out with him for six weeks!

I never told anyone it was all a misunderstanding - I just let it run its course. What a twat I was. Too polite to not go out with a man??!!!

I have snogged people out of sheer politeness. You're not alone!

It's like when you get a wrong number on your landline. I've had people insist that John is on this number. Then I get them to repeat the number they've rung and it's my number and they won't believe John or whoever doesn't live here.

I would like Lying's story printed on to a fridge magnet so I could read it every day!

Brecon that's brilliant :o
Phew cell. She clearly knew but you cold both maintain the pretence to yourselves

When my two boys were small and we were having lunch in a local cafe, my DS2 had just been out of nappies. Of course he had an accident and was sitting in a puddle of pee and immediately after it happened the waitress asked had he spilled his drink. In stead of telling her the truth I just agreed with her so then she started to clean it up with her dish cloth

My own Grandad calls me by the wrong name, instead he uses a rhyming name with a bit added on. Think Robbie-joe if your name is Bobby... I'm 26 and still answer to it but don't correct him. He now calls my daughter "Bobby" although her name is nothing like Bobby or Robby-joe. He isn't at all senile, I'm not sure why nobody else in my family correct him either.

Love this thread. Makes me feel normal!

My gran used to be a dressmaker and a few years ago she gave me her sewing machine. I signed up for a thankfully not very local sewing class. On the first night we had to say a bit about ourselves. I am massively introverted and get so nervous at these things. Anyway, in my intro I used the phrase 'inherited from my gran' and at the end the tutor said, very sympathetically, 'Aw, did your gran pass away'? I, noting the sad faces and tilted heads, just panicked said, 'Yes. Yes, she did'.

As soon as I got in the car I phoned her to apologise for saying she was dead!!

Op but is his name definitely Steve?