Excruciatingly awkward misunderstandings

[kpnutts]

So It’s late at night when your brain reminds you of those awkward moments from your past...

Back at my first year at university it was a girl in my halls birthday and she was having a gathering of about 30ish people in one of the communal kitchens and I knew say about 5 of them. I arrived and had a few drinks, the music is playing loud and at some point noticed a girl on her own in the corner who happened to wearing a jacket I also owned.

So to make conversation I said something along the lines of “nice jacket, I have the same one”. I realise now she must have completely misheard me and she gave me a very odd look and said “err yes it’s mine”. A bit confused by the response I said “oh I just meant I have the same one, it’s from Zara right?”. Backing away slightly she laughed nervously and replied “haha no no it’s definitely mine, I don’t know Zara”. It’s pretty awkward now so I try to explain I meant Zara ‘the shop’, it doesn’t matter, let’s talk about something else, but she’s only getting more confused.

Suddenly her tone changes, she smiles at me sweetly and slowly says “ohhh I don’t know ‘Zara de-shop’ she must be your friend, is she looking after you tonight?”. In my awkward 18 year old way of trying not to embarrass her and the ridiculousness of the situation I stupidly grin as I think of a way to extract myself from the conversation. She takes this as a yes and continues “Isn’t it great you have such inclusive friends, are you living here by yourself?”. Arghh, feeling too far down the line to correct her and fearing someone I know may overhear, I quickly excuse myself to the bathroom and scuttle back to my room. None of my hall friends ever mentioned it and I never saw the girl again!

It plays over in my mind every now and again how a simple mishearing resulted in someone thinking I had a learning disability and talking to me like a child! She was (admittedly inadvertently) incredibly patronising even so, although I’m sure her intentions were good.

I do wonder if at some point in the next few years she walked past Zara and the penny dropped! I do giggle at the thought of her in a shopping centre having a complete Oh. My. God. moment.

Tell me mumsnet, have you ever had similar awkward miss understanding, or maybe you had a weird conversation about Zara many years ago.

@LivingThatLockdownLife oh no! She was a grade A bitch, academic gatherings can be really awful for this kind of status thing.

@Fanthorpe that means a lot. It's haunted me for years. I can laugh about it now of course.

Some things just aren't meant to be is a cliche but true of my planned career. My accidental one ain't bad now

@KaTetof19 she was 16. A lot of things are funny when you’re 16

I'm a shop in Spain in summer trying to decide wether to buy a pandora ring or not . I'm getting flustered because it's boiling and the shop assistant is hovering like a vulture, I said something about being hot and she starts shouting at me that the ring isn't stolen!

Another one, stood in Topman waiting for my ex and this woman walks in who I presume was the area manager and starts talking to me obviously thinking I was a member of staff. I have no idea why . I haven't shopped in Topshop since I was 16

And another , a few years ago DH answers a knock at the door and the fella asks hid his parents were gone , he must have been about 28

*asks him if his parents are home

@Feelthethunder your 16 year old sister was dating someone who earned £50k I'm leaving you under the bridge to conjour up other tall tales of rude behaviour!

@Feelthethunder. Your DSis was 16 and her partner was on 53k a year?

@livingthatlockdownlife That's just nasty. There was no need for her to be a bitch

Her partner is on 53k now, today, 2020. Not when she was 16! She’s 30 now

I did mention on my post that it was many years ago. And made reference to his salary as in what he is earning now.

I’m not being funny but I find the tone on here to be quite bullying. It’s easy to be rude through a computer/phone. I wasn’t nasty on my post or tried to hurt anyone’s feelings. I was simply repeating something about a misunderstanding.

I never said I laughed, I said my sister did when she was 16 in 2006.

I agree about the bullying tone, no need for the pile-on.

The kettle lead thing, if they'd sold a TV and were setting it up for the buyer then surely the TV came with its own "kettle lead"?

LivingThatLockdownLife

At my Masters post-graduation gathering I earnestly congratulated two women whom I thought were new PhD graduates on 'all their hard work'. They were lovely about it and explained that they were, indeed, professors and just wearing their robes for the occasion.

No pile on @feelthethunder

What relevance has a 53k salary now to something that happened years ago?

@chrislilleyswig hey.

The reference to my bil salary was due to the lady that insinuated that my sister and her partner was stupid. So I retaliated with the mention of his wage as a “well he can’t be that stupid to earn that”

No one insinuated that your sister was stupid. Your original post mocked someone for not knowing a fairly obscure term for a power cord, which is unkind and judgemental as it implies not having the same knowledge base as everyone makes a person laughable and mock-worthy.

Someone pointed out that that it’s not cool to mock someone for having a gap in their vocabulary, because everyone has gaps in their vocabularies.

You responded to that by bragging that your sister was dating a man with a medium (not especially high) income so clearly he did know loads and loads of words, which is honestly just bizarre.

No one has 100% perfect knowledge of every single word on the planet, so can we just lay off being judgy when people don’t know what a word means? It’s so elitist.

My sister at 16 probably didn’t have the same understanding she does now. I don’t think she saw it that by laughing she was implying they were Stupid and worthy of being judged. It probably didn’t cross her mind that by laughing, she was judging them. You think and act a lot differently as a teen.

It’s something that happened a lot of years ago.

Also, I wasn’t there. it was just something mentioned to me.

@Shuttup yup. This has been thrown completely off course. Also, your name really fits.

Sorry to OP for the derailing of the post. I also apologise if my post offended anyone.

I’m not offended but I think posting the kettle lead story was a misjudgement of the tone of the thread. The stories (in the main) have been about people’s own errors and laughing at ourselves, not really about laughing at other people.

The 53k a year post was just daft.

@MuthaClucker I agree.

And I never meant to cause offence to anyone.

@AtaMarie

@Joodleoodle I must be really tired because I have read the donkey joke 6 times but I don't get it

@GreenPop21
I'm dying here! 🤣🤣🤣