How have you mistakenly offended people recently?

1. I told the grocery store cashier thanks a lot and she said WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME? and I said I said THANKS A LOT and she said whoah, I thought you said something else. I think I know what she thought I said, but seriously, what kind of person winds up two minutes of chatting about debit cards and poblano peppers by saying THANKS, SLUT?

2. I was eating a grapefruit on the way to work, and since there was no trash bin on one corner I dropped a bit of rind down a storm drain. Some lady tsked me for littering. I know it's not an optimal disposal situation but it's like fruit down a drain, so I don't know that it merits a ton of criticism.

You eat grapefruit on the go? I usually have to stand over the sink.

loool @ 1

Chicago: Grapefruit On The Go

"like fruit down a drain" is what my grandfather always said when i let opportunities pass me by

ha, Jaymc, it was my first time, and it was worth it

I think I was too sharp with some lady at a store in Whitehall last week. People move slowly there, and when my mom "volunteered" me for a shop lady's help (which I didn't need), the lady started dragging me around the store pointing out things I hated and I just cut her off.

She also asked if "mid-century Danish modern" was anything like "shabby chic", so you can maybe see where that was going.

I'm going to start saying "thanks slut" & see if anyone catches on.

adding insult to gratitude is a big look in '09, i can feel it

i sent out a pitch to some journalists a couple weeks ago offering up a few of our clients as experts & got a response back from a writer at a top ten paper looking to speak to a specific talent, who was at that point too busy with his actual job to do interviews. i told her that the guy was busy, and maybe we could set her up with someone else; she SNAPPED at me with a whole "ive never heard of this guy and now youre telling me hes too busy etc etc." i had to backtrack very carefully--she assumed (as most journalists would) that i meant "too busy" as in "too busy w/ media appearances."

she just sounds like a dbag tbh

thought that said "adding insult to grapefruit". xxpost

thanks, dbag

i think most mistaken offenses can be chalked up to the offended party being arbitrary assholes who are just looking to get pissed about something

i wonder if the rind is out to sea yet

dammit I already picked my username for the week

i think most mistaken offenses can be chalked up to the offended party being arbitrary assholes who are just looking to get pissed about something

Yep.

- said excuse me, EXCUSE ME, PARDON ME increasingly loudly to a bunch of tourists who I'm pretty sure didn't speak English and only got out of the way because they were scared by my yelling

- cursed mildly at headset-wearing type on film crew in park because she wouldn't let me walk down the path I wanted even though other people were freely walking down from the other direction. (I took the suggested detour but then walked back up the path from the other direction until I was right behind her, and it took a lot of self-control not to tap her on the shoulder and get all Larry David about it.)

haha this thread is just going to become "fights Nabisco had with people mostly in his head"

that second story sounds more like you being offended than her, nbs

not me but a friend of mine got into the unwinnable 'lets guess ages' game with some people at this bar saturday night. he lowballed this one lady with a '31' and she was 27....... oops.

it's a fail to even enter into one of those games

hahahahaha one of my coworkers did that to an office mate's date at a holiday party a couple of years ago; he told this 21-year-old woman she looked like she was over 30 and it was magical

not me but a friend of mine got into the unwinnable 'lets guess ages' game with some people at this bar saturday night. he lowballed this one lady with a '31' and she was 27....... oops.

This isn't quite the same as that, but I once told a woman in a club who'd started talking to me that "you don't look 30" after she'd told me that that was her age. She looked 40.

not me but a friend of mine got into the unwinnable 'lets guess ages' game with some people at this bar saturday night.

not to mistakenly offend or anything but is your friend really stupid?

xps

Asking a guy to get out of a picture my friend was taking at pride ended with a guy shouting at me for being a homophobe and running away.

i think there's an age where women like to be told they look older and i think it stops around 21

not me but a friend of mine got into the unwinnable

i did that about 6 months ago. Except the girl was 21. So I put ten years on her. Oops.

looool a hoy hoy

I think I downplayed the "mildly cursing" part, Max -- she might not have been full-on "offended" but she definitely thought I was a crazypantsed jerk

not that stupid, just has a hot girlfriend. he dug his own grave but 31 seemed very safe at the time.

Once I met a friend-of-a-friend, who was generally a drunk sour bastard, and managed to take everything I said the wrong way. I just decided to not even hold a conversation, just reply to what he was saying. So he goes on some drunken rant about how he's actually a really nice guy, and some great thing he did. I said, "That's laudable," and he yells, 'SEE EVRYONE, SHE THINK'S THAT'S A LOTTA BULL!"

If you are in a bar playing the age-guessing game with women, the answer is ALWAYS "21", even if they are in a Rascal and are carrying an oxygen tank and a colostomy bag.

I'll remember that the next time I'm in a medical fetish bar...

Nabisco just ate a grapefruit for the first time recently?

once i was at a college bar talking to a girl and she asked me to guess how old i was and i said "21" and she leaned in and said, "17!"

did you show her your license after that?

how old she was rather

I am wondering if there are people who go around saying "THANKS, SLUT!"

this is reminding me that I recently saw what had to be, like, 15-year-old girls drinking in my neighborhood the other night. I don't know how these bars are running their business, but seriously, if a girl's still got braces, maybe try carding her

Hey, my wife had braces at 21 and so did one of her college roommates!

Also the Trapper Keeper was "ironic"

did she also weigh 90 pounds, have a wardrobe mostly from Hot Topic, and do lots of bouncing and giggling?

haha foiled by xpost

she probably didn't bring the Trapper Keeper to a bar, though ...

also, i would be offended by someone tsking me for something silly like accidentally dropping a grapefruit rind down a drain. but then again i don't generally like busybodies.

once some crazed middle-aged woman pursued me in her car down sunset blvd, i think because of an anti-war sticker i had on the bumper. she tried to spit at me but the spit was a little, uh, "thick" and it just kinda flopped out and stuck to her mouth and dribbled down onto her car door.

oh, it wasn't an accident, I tossed that rind on purpose

I may or may not have also shouted TAKE THAT, RIND

THANKS, SLUT

"i've fucking eaten here!"

Isn't part of what people are trying to say when they say "I don't watch TV" that they're explicitly not one of those people who comes home from work and just zones out on the couch with a bag of Cheetos and Two and a Half Men? If they watch shows on DVD instead, it's seen as more purposeful somehow (couples talk about "working our way through The Wire" like it's a project), not just a mind-numbing exercise.

x-post Damn right it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcPUAW6u5ME&feature=channel_page

Yeah, shit like Masterchef is ok, even great, when it happens to be on, but I don't really ever go out of my way to see live TV (Blur at Glastonbury was more or less the first time this year I did). It's a personal thing; I just don't feel much of it enriches me or engages me particularly well, and the good shit you can generally get on DVD. The only thing I reckon I'm really missing out on is good nature documentary (can that be a generic noun?) and there's a fuckload of great natural footage on the internet. I mean, I DID enjoy The Apprentice a coupla years back, and there are other things I'd probably enjoy now, but I'm not really fussed by completely avoiding them. It's a time/priority thing.

That said, my only vocalised problem with TV is with the adverts, and I have absolutely nothing against people who do watch plenty of television. Besides, they're the ones who'll basically tell me what to later see on DVD...

Basically, if a *really* promising new sitcom touches down any time soon, I'll watch it live.

Jaymc is OTM fwiw and The Wire is definitely on my hitlist (having only seen the first 4 eps of series 1)

Isn't part of what people are trying to say when they say "I don't watch TV" that they're explicitly not one of those people who comes home from work and just zones out on the couch with a bag of Cheetos and Two and a Half Men? If they watch shows on DVD instead, it's seen as more purposeful somehow (couples talk about "working our way through The Wire" like it's a project), not just a mind-numbing exercise.

Yeah, I think so but I guess I just don't see how it's really all that different. You can watch TV and still be an intelligent and productive person. It's ok ppl - don't feel guilty etc. You can also not watch TV if that's your thing. Bottom line is who cares? I just don't want to have to hear it from ppl who obv have a *thing* about how awesome they are because they don't watch TV or only watch certain shows on certain formats. They're not move intelligent they're just usually a hell of a lot more pretentious.

btw I am zoning out on the couch in my underwear watching some awesome Two and a Half Men action right now.

w/ cheetos

Isn't part of what people are trying to say when they say "I don't watch TV" that they're explicitly not one of those people who comes home from work and just zones out on the couch with a bag of Cheetos and Two and a Half Men? If they watch shows on DVD instead, it's seen as more purposeful somehow (couples talk about "working our way through The Wire" like it's a project), not just a mind-numbing exercise.

I kind of agree with this except for the mind-numbing part. My problem is less that the consumption of television programmes is passive, mind-numbing and doesn't involve engagement on the viewers part; it's more that it's a very scattershot and haphazard way to consume material, and people generally don't do anything similar with other media. I.e. I don't know anyone who just randomly buys books and reads them without any idea of what they are, nor do I know anyone who goes to the cinema and walks into a screening of a film they've never heard of, yet people will sit for hours randomly flicking through channels and watching anything that looks half-interesting. If it wasn't such a commonplace habit it surely would be thought of as strange.

" I.e. I don't know anyone who just randomly buys books and reads them without any idea of what they are, nor do I know anyone who goes to the cinema and walks into a screening of a film they've never heard of"

public library encourages this behavior w/ books and DVDs with their themed "check these out!" displays, and I think they are successful.

i only watch shows when they air, never on dvd or tivo or whatever. can't think of a snooty line for that other than "i'm lazy"

"yet people will sit for hours randomly flicking through channels and watching anything that looks half-interesting."

Internet. Every day.

yup

i have bookmarks, i very seldom look at websites that i don't use habitually except for of course links from the websites I do read. I don't click links that I don't think look interesting.

Yeah neither do I much I must admit, I only go to about 4 sites regularly apart from things I do for work :/ I'm a bit... stuck in my rut.

I miss having cable/tv channels, which I haven't had on abt 8 months, bcz if you are just fucking brain dead or stressed or whatevs it is the most passive & easy thing possible. I tried having that experience w/hulu the other day – I watched an ep of Fat Albert bcz it was around, why not, and it was boring as fuck. I felt like a dummy bcz I'd actively chosen to watch it, whereas if I had the TV channels & it came on, it wld feel really different.

Why did those kids like 'Legal Eagle'? It's worse than the worst cartoon!

Look I watch the same 237846237 simpsons episodes on DVD ovr and over and over so I cant talk heh.

I've watched the last three seasons of the Wire twice in the past two months, mainly for zoning out purposes.

my tv is on v. frequently even when i'm not really paying attention to it--i mostly chalk this up to living alone and needing hella background noise.

but yeah i def come home from work and zone out with chips and sportscenter, that's pretty much one of my things.

Ha, that first part is how I spent a year and a half of grad school writing with PBS on dimly in the background -- music was distracting, silence was distracting, Lydia Bastianich talking about broccoli rabe over generic mandolin music was perfect

(Although I think I also posted a whole lot in those days about watching Judge Mathis while getting ready to leave the house)

xp I can't have the tv/a movie on without watching raptly, even if it's something totally stupid. That's mainly why I don't watch it - even before the digital conversion when we could have gotten two or three broadcast channels. I just don't have the self-control.

my tv is on v. frequently even when i'm not really paying attention to it--i mostly chalk this up to living alone and needing hella background noise.

When I lived alone I had the tv on all of the time -- silence is too spooky, and the random city noises you hear outside of your apartment sound more sinister if it's otherwise quiet.

nabs, i leave pbs on sometimes to help me fall asleep -- the voices are calm and soothing and there isn't that jarring volume jump when they go to the ads (house ads/interstitials/whatever).

There was a time when I lived alone and did not any cable service due to erm . . . limited finances at the time. The only channel I could get with the rabbit ears was PAX which is basically a Christian family friendly channel. Because of the background noise issue/boredom/loneliness that sometimes accompanies living alone I have probably seen nearly every episode of Highway to Heaven and 7th Heaven.

(anyway, i think i mistakenly offend people when i don't call/e-mail them back right away. it's not that they're low on the priority list; i'm just lazy.)

My best friend lives across the country, does not have a cell phone and is rarely on email. She's also one of those ppl who doesn't call back immediately and is generally really hard to get a hold of. I'm used to it now and just know that it's not a reflection of anything other than the fact that she's pretty flaky. When we do talk it's usually for hours in order to make up for lost time.

I am really bad about doing this, but it is due more to my flakiness and forgetfulness. xp

TBH I'm a bit tired of the expectation to respondez to everything *RIGHT NOW* that email and cellphones has created. If my phone is off leave a message! If I dont reply to your FB event invite maybe I havent looked at FB for a few days. AAAAAAAAAARGH call me an old fuddy but it is so EXHAUSTING. I am not at everyone's beck and call 94/7. Shit, work's bad enough.

you must be really popular.

i didn't have cable when i was in law school b/c i was, you know, a poor law school student. since the reception sucked where i live w/t cable, not to mention that i was busy studying and doing other stuff, it meant that i didn't watch much TV during those years. and then when i had enough money to get cable, i put off subscribing b/c i was working too many long hours and it wasn't worth the cost. i only broke down and got cable to get high-speed internet; i still don't watch much TV even w/ more time on my hands.

i will admit to copping a superior attitude on occasion, but not usually -- and more often i felt like a total dork b/c i would have no idea what friends and family were talking about when they talked about certain TV shows.

Touche, Kerm.

I was at a party a few weeks ago, in the "smoking" room and this girl that looked very very much like Adris Hoyos sat down with us. I told my friend "Omg, she looks like Adris Hoyos!", at which point I turn to the girl, point and and practically yell "You look like you're in Harry Pussy!". Could have been worded much better (blame it on tha...)

this went on for about a minute and I eventually explained what I meant. The girl laughed at the end of it all but was not too happy when I first blurted that out. My friend reports that she rapidly responded back with some male equivalent of "hairy pussy" (she believes it was "wet dick"), but I didn't hear because I was trying to state my case. It was a good night.

Posted in the other thread but:

Saying you "don't watch TV" or "don't own a TV" w/o clarifying is only acceptable if you can honestly say you literally watch NO TV and aren't watching The Wire and Gilmore Girls and shit on your laptop. Otherwise it's OMG FRONTING for sure. imo

with certain past exceptions, i watch only 30 min of tv per week and catch up to favorite shows on dvd

http://www.sfu.ca/~stscott/pictures/dealwithit.gif

"30 min of tv per week" = The Soup

- being a touch too visibly astonished that a normal-sized adult could walk into a McDonald's, ask for "the usual," and be handed a large-size Big Mac meal

http://static.bigstockphoto.com/thumbs/6/8/3/large/386939.jpg

lol

- being a touch too visibly astonished that a normal-sized adult could walk into a McDonald's, ask for "the usual," and be handed a large-size Big Mac meal

This reminds me. The waiter at our local Italian restaurant started laughing when I ordered the same thing yet again. :-(

Witnessed this in local Starbutts coffee shop last week. They have a daily trivia question and you get a free shot or whatever if you answer correctly. Question was 'How much did a hamburger cost at the very first McDonalds in 1940'...and there were like 4 options.
SB employee asks me if I want to guess when I place my order. I guessed wrongly. So she asks the next person in line, who is an older woman, maybe in her 50's. SB girl says, and I quote: "Do you want to have a guess? I'm sure you know the answer." And the woman was all, "Excuse me? How old do you think I am?"...and the SB girl did the craziest amount of backpedalling I've ever seen. I laughed and told the SB girl she better give the woman her free shot regardless, to make up for that. LOL!

xpost I stopped going to a place I really liked when they made too much of a deal about my regular order (which through very complicated, Seinfeldian circumstances, they consistently got wrong).

here is the thing: a LOT of people work at a full-scale urban McDonald's. and there's a lot of turnover. and they serve a whole lot of people. per hour. it's almost unimaginable, the number of Big Macs you'd have to eat to just walk up to anyone and ask for the usual. the only way I can wrap my head around this is to imagine that something memorable happened between this guy and the staff that turned him into the Big Mac guy.

Maybe they gave the special sauce.

My husband recently went to the bakery for a roll. An hour or so later he goes back cause he wants to buy another roll.
The woman:"Are you coming to complain or WHAT?" in a rrrrreally aggressive tone.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I mean, WTF what is she on? All the women working there are really unfriendly but this one just tops it. When my husband asked for a sandwich with ham, she replied she didn't have it "Do you want one with cheese?" This isn't so strange except they usually make the sandwich on the spot. She was too lazy to do it. hahaahah

nabs I worked at fast food on & off over and you do recognize the regulars. There is a lot of turnover but the manager or person who's worked there years for whatever reason'll tell you on the first day, 'this guy always orders a whopper cut in half w/extra mustard & onions.' It only takes a week or two of a customer showing up the same time every day before you can tell they'll have a 'usual' thing. I realized I was this customer once at a McDonald's and that was the last time I went there. ;_;

I knew there's hella customers too but you still get a feel for people who show up every day.

They're in the minority so they're memorable.

I used to buy tons of red bean paste. The owner of the shop (annex restaurant) said to me:"You do know you get fat from that cause it has tons of sugar?" Last time I bought it. Positive outcome: I dropped weight. The woman at the fruit/veg shop asked me if I ate all the fruit I bought there. I said yeah. "Well, you can't really tell, cause you are not THAT skinny." (I was about 57 kgs, which is pretty darn skinny.)

People are fucking retarded when I comes to making comments about people's weight. They say things that they think are innocuous but are actually pretty painful insults.

Apparently while trying to help my girlfriend up today I ~made a face~ suggesting great strain.

lol

People are fucking retarded when I comes to making comments about people's weight. They say things that they think are innocuous but are actually pretty painful insults.

Haha. In Japan, it's entirely acceptable to be simply say, "you got fat." When I see my wife's family, like the first thing out of everyone's mouth is an assessment of weight gain or loss since the last meeting. This is totally normal. People seem fine with this kind of talk, but it often makes me cringe.