We all stumble into or are overtaken by horribly awkward moments. Sometimes we're directly involved and sometimes we're just unwilling spectators.
It's great if we can get up and leave, but sometimes we're trapped and forced to watch the entire train wreck.
Reddit user jamshin asked:
"What’s the most uncomfortable situation you’ve ever had to sit through?"
Cubicle Cad
"A new boss was hired for my department at work, and a high level woman from corporate was brought in to show him the ropes."
"My new boss was a sleazy little weirdo. He sort of looked like Beans from Even Stevens crossed with Mads Mikkelsen. He kept awkwardly trying to flirt with this incredibly professional and visibly uninterested woman who was just trying to do her job by teaching him how to do his."
"Things reached peak weirdness on her last day."
"There we stood, my new boss on one side of the room, our guest on the other side, me in the middle doing some work."
"New Boss: 'Well, are you ready to go to lunch?'."
"Corporate Woman: 'Yes, just let me run to the restroom first'."
"New Boss: 'Oh, why, you gotta POO-POO?'."
"I have never in my entire life wished that I could turn into a puddle of liquid and slide out of that room than I did at that moment."
"Fun Fact: He was fired a few months later, but that’s another story for another day."
~ flannelfrankenstein
Cheers!
"I was at a wedding and the best man went off the rails during his speech at the reception. It was your stereotypical drunken rambling, but it was the groom’s second marriage so he was talking about his first wife and how he’s good at most things except relationships, etc..."
"People were audibly groaning and booing the guy and telling him to sit down. It was a truly Michael Scott moment."
"So awkward."
~ Sea_Drink7287
Take This Job And...
"We had a farewell party for a colleague who was leaving our workplace."
"During her goodbye speech in front of everyone including our bosses, she started talking about how stressful the job was, didn't get much support, wasn't able to take proper breaks and that no job is worth the mental stress."
"Needless to say, the room fell in awkward silence and our boss's face looked uncomfortable."
~ Moon_Jewel90
Bullet Dodged
"My brother had a fairly large, but tight knit group of friends in high school. So as it turns out his wife used to be the girlfriend of one of his best friends."
"So at my brother's wedding, an unfortunate number of people decided it would be funny to sh*t talk the friend about how he 'lost out on such a catch' as my brother's wife. It was a backyard wedding and he had to stand their taking their sh*t over and over again, just smiling and nodding like the jokes were funny."
"However, I can safely say that the best friend is the one that dodged a bullet. My sister-in-law is an absolute train wreck."
~ aussydog
Truth Time
"We were having a goodbye retirement party for one of our best sales ladies."
"She sat there (everyone in the same conference room) while the boss/owner gave her a cake. Then she said, 'I don't want cake, I'm not retiring, you are forcing me out, this is bullsh*t, and you know it.'"
"Two months later, she started working for another company and took 80% of our clients with her."
~ Depart_Into_Eternity
Served
"A friend who worked in tech support had a client complain that whenever the phone on her desk rings, weird character strings appear on her screen. He goes over there, she uses a basic landline and a word processor, no connection between the two."
"Then, while he is there, her phone rings."
"She reaches over to it, leaning her huge bosom over the keyboard and of course, a string of characters begins to populate the word processor window."
"He had to explain it to her."
~ iroze
Does It Still Count?
"I was playing ping pong with friends. I was new to it and wasn't good at it at all."
"FINALLY, I made a clean shot...but all my friends were doubled over with laughter? I was very confused."
"Why would they laugh at me for finally making a shot?"
"Turns out, I completely missed with the paddle and hit the ball over with my boobs."
~ ATGF
Airport Tragedy
"Years ago my editor assigned me to do a story: an old civilian air command guy had died and his kids were going to spread his ashes from a plane over the lake where he helped find a downed aircraft decades ago."
"Nice local human interest piece. Two kids: son and daughter, both adults. The whole flight aspect was organized by a local, well-meaning family friend, let’s call him Jeff."
"I drive to the tiny regional airport, walk to the tarmac and the son is there already. We shoot the sh*t with the pilot and the son and Jeff when the daughter arrives."
"She’s extremely obese. The pilot and I realize we have a major problem. The pilot and Jeff and the son talk, then the son goes over to talk to his sister."
"The wailing that came out of this woman, when told she couldn’t scatter her dad’s ashes because, is burned into my brain. It was biblical."
"This woman was shrieking and sobbing and we could do nothing but watch as she collapsed on the runway and had a complete meltdown. I blame Jeff for not thinking ahead."
~ proxproxy
He Kept Using That Word
"A few years ago, I went on a weekend girls trip with a friend. Her marriage was rocky and she needed to get away."
"Her husband dropped us off at the airport and picked us up after the trip, and we chatted casually in the car on the way back to their house. Everything seemed normal."
"Unbeknownst to me, he had specifically told her that if she went on this trip, he would leave her. Midway through the drive he told her he had a group of people at their house for her 'intervention' and that her car was already packed with her belongings and to get out."
"I don't think he knew what an intervention is, but whatevs. So now I'm stuck in the backseat watching their marriage dissolve."
"We get to their house and people are standing on the front porch observing. The couple starts arguing in the driveway and I just wanted to leave so badly, but I needed my suitcase from the trunk."
"I had to interrupt them to ask him to open the trunk. And then my car was blocked in by the vehicles from the 'intervention team', so I had to interrupt again to ask how I could get out."
"It was so, so awkward."
~ Cute-as-Duck21
Photo Fight
"When my grandmother passed away, her three stepdaughters cornered me that day, demanding I turn over all the family photographs to them. Most of what she had was after they had grown up and gotten married and the pictures were her kids—my dad and his brother—and the ranch and cattle and whatnot."
"Middle stepaunt was convinced there were missing pictures of her son who had died young mixed in there. Really, though, being the kids of my grandfather, they were mean, nasty, self-absorbed and wanted what was 'theirs'."
"They thought when my grandmother died, they would all become fabulously wealthy, but there never was that much and they had trouble grasping that they were only entitled to the principal of my grandfather's estate while grandma lived off the income."
"What was a wealthy business owner's investment in 1980—without growth, because grandma lived off the income from it—wasn't very much in 2004."
"They were mad at the world, all three elderly women at that point themselves, and decided that was the hill they were going to die on in that moment and they let me have it...about how grandma never loved them like she should and what was theirs was stolen from them, but they just want those f*cking pictures."
"And I had to take it because my dad and my brother saw what was happening and slipped out the back of the room."
"So I had to sit through 3 elderly relatives crying and yelling about how life was so unfair and they wanted those pictures just so they could feel like they 'got something'...oof."
~ Thunderhorse74
Sh*t Show
"Family friends of mine had the messiest marriage of all time. Husband cheated on his wife and then left her for his mistress. They had 2 kids."
"She's a bit of a mess. So, he dies suddenly and his brothers come to town to organize the funeral. When I tell you this funeral was the most awkward thing I've ever attended..."
"The brothers made the entire funeral a dig on the wife. They gave these speeches about how she ruined his life and was ungrateful to him. Then the mistress gave a speech."
"Turned out that he never even told the rest of his family he left his wife so everyone there was like who is this? She starts calling him pookie bear and talking about how she saved him from a loveless marriage.. took a couple digs at the kids too for not appreciating him enough."
"The wife ran out crying. Brothers also refused to ask wife for any photos of the deceased so the entire slideshow was college pics of him taking jello shots.
"Every single face in the room was like 😳 through the whole thing."
~ thatbtchshay
Not Dead Yet
"When my stepmother passed away, her children—adults in their 50's—somehow thought it appropriate to begin negotiating what furniture, paintings, photos, etc... that they each wanted to take."
"My father—who had been married to their mother for over 40 years and was the sole income for the household—had to remind them that he was not dead yet and this was all his sh*t."
~ BaconReceptacle
What's your most awkward moment?
