Weekend Musings | Recent Embarrassments

Sometimes you make a fool of yourself. For me, this seems to happen quite a lot. Over the past few months, I’ve had a few moments that made me cringe quite heavily when they happened. And, let’s be honest, cringe for about a week afterwards every time I thought about it. Landing in a new city, finding my way around, connecting and meeting people, putting myself out there - lots of opportunities for acting foolish. But, the beauty of these moments is how fleeting and non-permanent they are. After a week of cringing and post-incident embarrassment, I now find them either hilarious and relish telling the story, or they’re pretty much forgotten until I delved deep into my memory for the purpose of this post.

Read on for a list of my most embarrassing moments since moving to London:

5. Going for a job interview at a cool agency

For the first 4 weeks I lived in London, I was hitting up at least 3 job interviews a week. Some of them were boring and I knew immediately I wouldn’t want to work there. Some of them were interesting and I kept my fingers crossed. And a select few were so cool that I immediately felt out of my depth and didn’t know how I would ever get hired there – though I really wanted to be! And of course it had to be one of these cool agencies where I profoundly embarrassed myself. At this point, I should mention how common it was to enter an agency and there be no reception desk or person to greet me. This happened at least 4 times, and seems surprisingly normal. Anyway, I had rocked up and told someone who I was there to see. I was led to a random, circular couch right next to peoples’ workspaces, because there was no reception area to speak of. I was sitting there, trying to avoid eye contact with the 3 people who were within arms’ reach (really hard!), and failing horribly at perfecting the balance between nonchalant and eager. Then this woman breezes around the corner and says ‘Amye?’ so I call out (a little loudly) “Hello!” and go to stand up. But then, as I’m crouched mid-stand, the woman looks behind her and says ‘Ah, come one now, meeting is this way’ and another woman enters my vision. The other Amy(e). Everyone heard me, my face went bright red, no one acknowledged me, and I squirmed in embarrassment for another 5 minutes before my actual interviewer showed up.

4. Picking the music at a house party

So much pressure, you’re building the atmosphere of the entire party! With a group of strangers that you don’t really know that well and who all seem way cooler than you! But, a couple drinks in, I wasn’t having the tunes and there was some debate and back and forth, songs kept skipping immediately, and I decided (in my alcohol-induced confidence) that I knew the right music to put on. And, that music you might ask? Turned out to be Iggy Azalea ‘Fancy’. Please don’t judge me! This is a guilty pleasure, one I would prefer to keep buried deep in my gym playlist. But, nope, it sub-consciously bubbled right to the top. I don’t think people liked it, and I’m pretty sure I was judged immediately. Hopefully everyone else that night was also enjoying an alcohol-induced stupor and that more interesting things happened to them that night, so they don’t recall that musical misstep when my name comes up.

3. Going to a client meeting at my new job

A few weeks ago, I started a new role and I’m really enjoying it! Within 3 days of starting, I was fully immersed in a pretty cool project and had a client meeting scheduled for that afternoon. This client was described as more business professional, and conservative, so I wore heels. Side note: I never wear heels. This should already tell you where this story is going… So, here we are, heading off to the client meeting, myself and 2 colleagues. I’m a bit flustered after a last minute print job and scrambling to get the papers organized. I’m wearing heels. We’re walking down stairs. And then I take my biggest tumble down stairs in a decade. Fully fell down the stairs, on my butt, papers in hand, giant laptop bag swinging, until I broke my fall on the landing by crashing into my colleague. They were really cool so we laughed about it, and it was the running joke during our journey out to the clients’. I had a couple bruises to show for it, but actually wasn’t all that mortified. Next step is to purchase a pair of chunky heels, not stilettos…

2. Commenting on a LinkedIn post

There I am, scrolling through LinkedIn, speed-reading through updates and shared articles, when I see one from my friend. It’s an NY Times link to an interesting story (I judge interesting by the headline and quick blurb underneath). I immediately like it, because whenever a friend posts something I’m using the ‘like’ button to communicate, “hey, cool, I acknowledge your post, I think you’re awesome.” And then I thought, heck, I’ll go one step further and even comment on this glorious post. I clicked the link to the article and it opened in another tab. In the spirit of decisiveness, before looking at the article, I immediately replied, ‘great read!’. Then I switched over to the article. Except it wasn’t an article, it was a video. Oh, the horror! I legitimately spent about 10 minutes Googling how to edit a common on LinkedIn and, from my limited and frantic research, apparently the answer is you can not. I then debated private messaging my friend, or replying to my comment, but LinkedIn is so weird and eventually I just accepted my awkwardness for what it was. And promptly forgot about it.

1. I'm at a bit of a loss for my top most embarrassing moment. You know how much I love the number 5, and organising my lists as such. But as I was writing out these examples, 4 really stood out and I can't for the life of me, decide which one could complete this list. Don't get me wrong, there have been many an embarrassing moment here, but lots of them are quite insignificant and once time has come between the incident and myself, I see it for what it really is - unremarkable, forgettable, and completely impermanent.