Pardon Me Madam, But Do You Have A Man?

The earliest memory I have of wanting to crawl under a rock and disappear because of embarrassment is June 1984.  We were screaming toward the end of year dance.  For almost a year I had sat across the science room from Allison Reading, and I was bound and determined to ask that girl out.  Instead of waiting for a quiet moment, like all the suave guys did, I decided that the end of class, when everybody else was busy cleaning up would be the perfect time to put it out there.

It could have been so beautiful.  But alas....

I had absolutely no indication that Allison would be open to a date with me, and I had no wing-man to check it out in advance.  So, during the chaotic clean-up period, I mustered up all my courage, and because it was really noisy in the room, I turned up the volume, and said, quite loudly, “Allison, will you go to the dance with me?”   Somewhere between the first and second syllables in Allison, the entire room went silent, and they went from my classmates to my audience, and let’s just say the show didn’t go well.

I was a complete laughing stock.  Sorry, Allison.

She was shocked and embarrassed, the teacher was dumbfounded, and I wanted to melt into a puddle.  Thank God the bell rang and everyone took off.  Including Allison.  She never spoke to me again, and I never again asked anyone to a dance.  I changed schools (for other reasons) at the beginning of grade 10, so at least I didn’t have to deal with four more years of embarrassment over that one.  And hopefully, neither did Allison.

I mention this because when I joined world of work, I sadly didn’t leave behind the world of embarrassing moments.  I’ve had my share at work, too, and like at school, embarrassing moments at work tend to stick.  Except at work, we refer to them as CLM’s, or Career Limiting Moves.

Kanye knows about CLMs-Just ask Miss Taylor Swift

Early in my working life, I was doing my best to become bilingual.  I lived in Ottawa, and worked for a car rental company, occasionally on the Quebec side of the river, at an office located inside a federal government complex.  Most of our customers were federal civil servants, and of course, they were slightly militant about doing business in French. 

Most of the time, I was pretty OK, en français, but on one day, it all went to hell.   A regular customer came in, but because I wasn’t a regular employee at that location, I didn’t recognize her.  She was a snooty Assistant Deputy Minister of whatever, and she was accustomed to being recognized.  I was already at a disadvantage because I didn’t know her, and when she walked in, every French word and phrase I knew just completely exited my head.  It was like my first day with the language. 

Leona Helmsley...neither french, nor an ADM, but you get the gist

“I have a reservation,” she said, en français.  Do you think in my wildest dreams I could think of what to say?  I couldn’t even remember how to ask her name.  Instead of a very simple, “Votre nom, madame?” I thought I’d go with something less formal and much more stupid, “Avez-vous un nom?”  Do you have a name?  Being the big Frenchy that I am, it never occurred to me that I had just completely offended this snooty federal employee by asking what sounded to her like, “Avez-vous un homme?”  Do you have a man?  She reported me for my stellar French skills to the manager of the location, and I wasn’t allowed to work in Hull again for a long time.

She came to rent a car, not find her perfect mate...

Still with the car rental company, I was working at the Ottawa Airport location, as the daytime shift supervisor.  Since I typically opened the location in the morning, I was always the one to pick up the shift notes from the evening shift the night before.   Normally there would be notes about a challenging customer, or directions about some cars the following morning, or a computer problem etc, but the woman that worked the evening shift a few nights a week used the opportunity to write her manifesto.

She liked to leave a note for the morning shift

The notes would be about overfull garbage cans, and the mess left by the day shift, and how nobody cared about her, and how she was all alone, and how could we rent all the cars and leave her with nothing.  Day after day, week after week, I read these notes.  It got to the point where just the sight of her handwriting would send me into a rage.  It’s a good thing I never saw this woman.

Like the Unibomber's manifesto, her handwriting could send people into a rage

One day, I was working a later shift.  Her notes were the same as they always were, and at the beginning of my shift, I had my rage filled moment, and moved on.  As it turned out, our shifts overlapped that day, and I got the pleasure of seeing her.   She walked in to start her shift, and opened her mouth.  All I heard was “lazy day shift, overflowing garbage cans, take responsibility,” and I lost it.  I was at the end of my rope with her.  In front of customers, I let her have it.

I don't think my rant was as bad as Ole' Charlie's, since I still had my job when it was over

I went on a rant of my own:  “I’m so tired of your complaining, You never have anything nice to say, Can’t you just start with hello, Why do you always have to nag?”  I totally went off on her, in front of some pretty stunned customers.  As soon as I finished up with my customer, I stormed off, into the airport to put some distance between me and the nagging freak.  I was sitting on a bench when Mr. Pinder, one of my regular customers who had been in line and witnessed this meltdown sat down beside me…he wanted to know if I was OK, and we just sat their quietly until he had to board his plane.

 

I went back to the desk, and as I walked in, she asked if I was OK, and I apologized to her for going off on her, but asked her in future to not be such a nag, and especially not to start bitching about stuff when customers were there, and she said, and I’ll never forget it, “What the hell are you talking about?  All I said was hello, and how are you?”   Talk about embarrassed.  Crap.  All I heard was some imaginary crazy nagging.   She, my co-workers, and some of the customers looked at me a little sideways after that one.

Many years later, at a different job, we had a handyman in our office that worked for the building landlord.  Whenever we needed lightbulbs changed or that kind of thing, we called him.  He was a great guy, but he stunk.  I’m not just talking about run of the mill body odour, I’m talking about eye-watering, nostril burning B-O.  It was terrible, and even though people had made complaints about him, his unique smell never changed.

 

I found myself in an elevator with him one day, and instead of going up, which I wanted, we went down, to the parking level.  I was just about dying, being stuck in the elevator with this guy, and couldn’t wait for him to get off.  We got down to the parking level, the doors opened, and he got out, but his stench remained, hanging in the air like mustard gas.  I had to go back up to the 5^th floor, and just as the doors were closing, a hand reached in and the doors re-opened.  Who else?  Our CEO.

Riding 6 floors alone with our CEO could be awkward at the best of times. Now that the elevator was filled with the nostril-burning stench of body-odour, that he could only believe to be coming off of me, it was the most awkward 34-seconds-that-really-felt-like-five-hours of my life.  What are you supposed to say?  “Really, Jim, that stench isn’t mine?” or “Wow Jim, have you considered showering before coming to work?”  Instead, you say nothing and you stare at the floor.  Then when the doors open, you bolt to your desk as fast as you can, call your boss, tell him the story, and beg him to relay it to the CEO so he doesn’t think you’re smelly.  Or at least that’s what I did.

It's great when the president of your company thinks you stink

I’ve had many embarrassing moments in my working career… grabbing and hugging somebody I thought was someone else at a trade show; falling asleep at meetings and at other inappropriate times during the work-day; slamming my office door so hard that everyone in the office thought my glass walls were going to shatter; and offering a customer a nice putain (a hooker) instead of a poutine (a Quebecois cheesy french fry treat).  I’ve found that when you make an embarrassing or career limiting move that the very best thing you can do is hold your head up high and find a job somewhere else.