Merry Generic Winter Day-Off With No Religious Content

[notcasesensitive]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
not to distract from the hilarity, but basic foot hygiene suggests not wearing the same shoes two days in a row. letting the shoes "rest" and air out on the off day is important to the long life of the shoes, but more importantly to the health of feet. You should have packed at least another pair of shoes for this weekend. This is especially troubling since 2 others apparently were forced to share a long car ride with someone wearing the same pair of shoes for what, 3 days in a row?

They were strappy sandals, if you have any better context (I probably didn't wear them on the car ride because I was wearing flip flops, I'm sure, but I had to wear them for all the formal stuff because they were the only dressy shoes I had with me). Plus it is entirely possible that the gross male foot hygeine issues of which you speak don't really have any applicability to women's feet/shoes in the first place. But thank you for your concern, Stinkfoot.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
What is the most uncomfortable situation you've ever been in at work or outside of work?

At work: The circumstances surrounding the discovery of this were pretty damned uncomfortable. I think that the office manager who investigated the whole thing may have tried to blackmail the firm over it. Huh. I had forgotten how soap operay it was to work there...

Outside of work: Oh, lord. There are so many. Most involving alcohol. One example: My freshman year of college, I was desperately, desperately in love with Miles Dennison, who of course had no interest whatsoever in me. Because of a contraindication of a drug I was on, I couldn't drink for most of that year, but towards the end of the second semester, I went off the drug and could drink again.

On April 18, my dorm had it's annual Playboy listed blow out party, and my best friend and I made jello shots with tequila in preparation for the event. The jello shots never set, so we just drank them. All of them. I'm an 18 year old kid with no tolerance to speak of and not much recent experience with alcohol. It's not pretty. At some point or another towards the end of the night, Miles was set as a guard to make sure that the party goers didn't get into the residential parts of the door, and I literally sat at his feet trying to get close to him. Details are sort of fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure that it was nachos. All over his lap. Ugh.

Generally, most encounters with my ex-'s wife were uncomfortable, especially the first.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally posted by bold_n_brazen
I turned to look. There was his wife, forehead on my picture window, hands up to her face to better see into my apartment.

That is awesome. Was her husband in there? How did she find out? Was there a confrontation? Give us some more details.

TM

[bold_n_brazen]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
That is awesome. Was her husband in there? How did she find out? Was there a confrontation? Give us some more details.

TM

The husband was not there. I don't know how she found out, but I'd known she'd been following me for at least a week at that point.

In the room at the time was a friend of mine who was a defense attorney. I said, to the room in general, "See? This is why I need a gun."

He said "Honey, you're in Georgia. If you get a gun, she's going to wind up dead, and you're going to do life, because you're fucking her husband."

I left Georgia maybe six months later. Under cover of darkness. I swear to God. I packed my car in the middle of the night and left no forwarding address.

(PS- The husband's mother called me, on more than one ocassion, to my face "The Yankee Jew Whore". Charming.)

[robustpuppy]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
At work: The circumstances surrounding the discovery of this were pretty damned uncomfortable. I think that the office manager who investigated the whole thing may have tried to blackmail the firm over it. Huh. I had forgotten how soap operay it was to work there...

Outside of work: Oh, lord. There are so many. Most involving alcohol. One example: My freshman year of college, I was desperately, desperately in love with Miles Dennison, who of course had no interest whatsoever in me. Because of a contraindication of a drug I was on, I couldn't drink for most of that year, but towards the end of the second semester, I went off the drug and could drink again.

On April 18, my dorm had it's annual Playboy listed blow out party, and my best friend and I made jello shots with tequila in preparation for the event. The jello shots never set, so we just drank them. All of them. I'm an 18 year old kid with no tolerance to speak of and not much recent experience with alcohol. It's not pretty. At some point or another towards the end of the night, Miles was set as a guard to make sure that the party goers didn't get into the residential parts of the door, and I literally sat at his feet trying to get close to him. Details are sort of fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure that it was nachos. All over his lap. Ugh.

Generally, most encounters with my ex-'s wife were uncomfortable, especially the first.

Come on, everybody has an "I got so drunk my freshman year I threw up all over my big crush" story. Haven't you done anything embarrassing since then?

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by robustpuppy
Come on, everybody has an "I got so drunk my freshman year I threw up all over my big crush" story. Haven't you done anything embarrassing since then?

My cotton candy outfit last year--pink tutu, white corset, pink wig, maribou boa, pink fishnets--was pretty damned embarrassing. Photos of me in it are part of the reason I dropped 50 pounds last summer/fall and am running a half marathon in two days.

[robustpuppy]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
My cotton candy outfit last year--pink tutu, white corset, pink wig, maribou boa, pink fishnets--was pretty damned embarrassing. Photos of me in it are part of the reason I dropped 50 pounds last summer/fall and am running a half marathon in two days.

Well, sure, nobody wants to be mistaken for Flower.

You must look and feel fabulous.

[notcasesensitive]

It is hard to pin down the worst uncomfortable situation that a bigoted partner who I used to work for created, but here is an example:

We went to lunch with a couple of banker clients. One of them is best friends with partner's niece's bf/fiance (whatever), who is hispanic and who also works for the bank/client (we'll call the bf/fiance John for ease of description here). So partner says to the guy at lunch (paraphrasing) "Oh, I really like your friend, John. My brother was really opposed to him dating his daughter at first because he's hispanic, but I think he's really good for her anyway. I mean he's a banker. He's really made something of himself."

He always said offensive stuff at client events. And if you ever tried to explain to him why stuff he said was offensive, he really didnt get it. But he was a good Baptist, if that makes it better.

[patentparanyc]

Originally posted by notcasesensitive
It is hard to pin down the worst uncomfortable situation that a bigoted partner who I used to work for created, but here is an example:

We went to lunch with a couple of banker clients. One of them is best friends with partner's niece's bf/fiance (whatever), who is hispanic and who also works for the bank/client (we'll call the bf/fiance John for ease of description here). So partner says to the guy at lunch (paraphrasing) "Oh, I really like your friend, John. My brother was really opposed to him dating his daughter at first because he's hispanic, but I think he's really good for her anyway. I mean he's a banker. He's really made something of himself."

He always said offensive stuff at client events. And if you ever tried to explain to him why stuff he said was offensive, he really didnt get it. But he was a good Baptist, if that makes it better.

I had something like that happen as well.

He was describing how [WASPY WASP] his friend's son had married a black woman and how his friends' were really horrified....then he rushes to say 'but she was really nice' it made me think, okay, are you latently racist as well, then?

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Generally, most encounters with my ex-'s wife were uncomfortable, especially the first.

Because? Geez.

Sort of in this vein, I have changed the station every time they started talking about Ford's god-awful financial performance. It makes me feel uncomfortable (sad and guilty? Guilty probably is not the right word).

The situations in which I feel most uncomfortable (that are coming to mind) are too upsetting to type for public consumption, because they involve family members . . . but, here goes.

I went to a multi-day manager training course that was intended to help people new-ish to managing other people learn how to do it effectively. (It was actually really interesting, but that's not the point.) Some of the stuff we did was role-playing, where one person would be the manager, one would be the employee, and then there was an observer. Everyone was doing these at the same time, so if you were stupid, there were only a couple witnesses. And it was done in sets of three, so everyone got to have each role. But after one session of it, somehow, when they asked if everyone had played each of the roles, one woman hadn't been the manager yet. This was after we'd had like 3 days of training in how to be supportive and take a leadership role and take responsibility etc. etc.

So, they said hey, run through this extra scenario, and you be the manager. The scenario was two peer managers having a discussion to resolve an issue where Manager 1's department was giving bad product to Manager 2's department, which was fucking up Manager 2's department's ability to do their jobs, and made them look bad. The woman was, of course, Manager 1. And her strategy for dealing with the problem? First, deny that there is any issue. Then, when faced with hard evidence of the issue, say, "Oh, that work comes from Joe. Joe is a real problem." (There were actually gasps from the audience at this point.) Manager 2 said (politely, professionally), no, really, we get them from a lot of people; this is just the example that was at hand. Manager 1 goes back into denial mode and does nothing to try to get to the root of the issue.

So, after they finished this run-through, people politely asked what her intent was in the whole "Joe is a problem" part of her explanations. She said, totally seriously, "Well, you have to have a scapegoat!" Jesus. This made me particularly uncomfortable because she, like me, was part of Corporate, and there were only like 5 Corporate people there -- the rest of the people were in a business unit, and business unit people nearly always see Corporate as unnecessary overhead and a drag on their profitability.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by notcasesensitive
It is hard to pin down the worst uncomfortable situation that a bigoted partner who I used to work for created, but here is an example:

We went to lunch with a couple of banker clients. One of them is best friends with partner's niece's bf/fiance (whatever), who is hispanic and who also works for the bank/client (we'll call the bf/fiance John for ease of description here). So partner says to the guy at lunch (paraphrasing) "Oh, I really like your friend, John. My brother was really opposed to him dating his daughter at first because he's hispanic, but I think he's really good for her anyway. I mean he's a banker. He's really made something of himself."

He always said offensive stuff at client events. And if you ever tried to explain to him why stuff he said was offensive, he really didnt get it. But he was a good Baptist, if that makes it better.

Aristocratic Mexicans are ok.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
Because? Geez.

They were separated and simply waiting for whatever waiting period to be over before they could file for divorce. She didn't have a problem with me in theory, nor I with her. But it was still uncomfortable (on my end at least) being around her.

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
What is the most uncomfortable situation you've ever been in at work or outside of work?

I tend to suppress my memories of the most disturbing ones. Which, coincidentally, all seem to involve GA happy hours gone wrong. I am an infallibly smoove operator at all other times.

Except when called on to remember someone's name. I often find myself at the point where, having met someone several times, it is no longer possible to ask to be reminded of their name again. This is the point at which, if I am lucky enough to be with my darling wife, and luckier still that she has not met the person yet, I will stand like a mannequin when it is time to introduce the acquaintance to her. This is our universal signal that I have forgotten the acquaintance's name. Usually, my darling wife catches on quickly, introduces herself and the name is revealed with a minimum of suspicion on the acquaintance's part. Other times, especially when I have done something to anger my darling wife in the immediate (or distant - who can remember?) past, she will introduce herself and then helpfully add that "[ironweed] forgot your name, you know." Then we all laugh. Ha ha ha.

[robustpuppy]

Originally posted by ironweed
I tend to suppress the most disturbing ones. Which, coincidentally, all seem to involve GA happy hours gone wrong. I am an infallibly smoove operator at all other times.

Except when called on to remember someone's name. I often find myself at the point where, having met someone several times, it is no longer possible to ask to be reminded of their name again. This is the point at which, if I am lucky enough to be with my darling wife, and luckier still that she has not met the person yet, I will stand like a mannequin when it is time to introduce the acquaintance to her. This is our universal signal that I have forgotten the acquaintance's name. Usually, my darling wife catches on quickly, introduces herself and the name is revealed with a minimum of suspicion on the acquaintance's part. Other times, especially when I have done something to anger my darling wife in the immediate (or distant - who can remember?) past, she will introduce herself and then helpfully add that "[ironweed] forgot your name, you know." Then we all laugh. Ha ha ha.

Are the repeated references to your darling wife intended to make me uncomfortable?

Originally posted by robustpuppy
Are the repeated references to your darling wife intended to make me uncomfortable?

Check your picture window.