57 Times Saying The Wrong Thing Backfired Spectacularly

When I was running and a mosquito flew into my mouth.

Many years ago, I learned the hard way that any time I talk to a coworker I need to pretend I’m talking to the top brass.

When I was 4 or 5. Some Jehovah’s Witnesses had been coming to our house to recruit my mom. She ran to the bedroom and sent my dad to the door to get rid of them so she wasn’t stuck there for an hour. When they asked if my mom was home my dad told them no, and I blurted out “yes she is! She’s hiding in the bedroom!”.

Just yesterday. Recently started a new job and was sorting out some process issues. Casually, suggested I wasn’t impressed with an industry standard guidance; not unprofessional but my experienced opinion. The guy I said it to led the industry working group that put it together years ago. Open mouth- insert foot.
Luckily, he now sees it as flawed so I seem to have gotten away with one.

Told my mom her cooking had gotten worse since she started working double shifts. She didn't say anything, just kept eating. Found out later she'd been skipping lunch so my brother and I could have seconds.

In customer service, don't try to explain or give background details if nobody has asked. Here's how an encounter at the gas station could have gone:

Customer: $20 of midgrade gas, please.
Me: Sorry, we're out of midgrade.
Customer: Oh, darn.

Here's how it actually went.

Customer: $20 of midgrade gas, please.
Me: Sorry, we're out of premium, and since midgrade is a mixture of regular and premium, we're out of midgrade, too.
Customer: So, in the meantime, you've been running a science experiment—OK, thank you. I will be sure to tell others that. 😠

The customer apparently thought we were making, I dunno, bootleg midgrade.

When talking to a chiropractor at a party I asked, "So, you believe in that then?"

She responded with something along the lines of, "That thing I studied for six years? Yeah, I believe in it."

We got a couch from my grandma, I was pushing it out of the bed of the truck, and I found a $50 bill that had fallen into a crack and got wedged between the armrest and base.

I showed it off after I pulled it out... and my parents made me give it back to Grandma.

Grandma was big into her religion, and donated that money to the church with her tithing and told me the Lord's blessings are my repayment for being honest about finding that money...

My parents always had this unfunny joke of telling me I was adopted. There's nothing wrong with being adopted, it's a blessing, right? Well, I met someone new at a cookout and somehow could not shut up about, "yeah my parents always say I was adopted and they want to give me back and they don't know where I came from," not realizing the person I was talking to was having an existential crisis over her own adoption. Bit of an awkward interaction, that.

My SIL was passing of ovarian cancer. She’d already divorced my husband’s brother at that point. I’d been friends with her and her cousin for years, even working for her cousin for awhile. When she entered hospice care, I was talking to her aunt and cousin. This aunt has a fairly common name but not so common you’d assume there’d be multiple family members of the same name, something like Shannon. Anyway, I reached out to her Aunt Shannon who I thought was the aunt she’d been dealing with her end of life stuff with.

Nope. I knew the other Aunt Shannon. So when I sent a text that said “I’m so sorry to hear about how SIL is taking a turn. We’re here for you guys.” And she responded with “what do you mean??” I ended up calling Aunt Shannon and talking it through, sharing I knew that SIL was pretty private about it all, I didn’t mean to spill the beans. I felt awful. In the end though, the Aunt Shannon and cousin I reached out to were grateful and SIL was glad to have the opportunity to connect before she passed.

But man I learned my lesson to clarify the family tree before speaking.

At work.

A coworker asked what I thought about a new manager and I answered honestly. Not even rude, just honest.

Turns out they were very good friends.

Amazing how fast the sentence “just between us” turns into a company-wide newsletter.

That’s when I learned that at work, you assume every conversation might somehow reach the person you're talking about.

Me: You've got a lovely tan, where have you been?

Them: "I have jaundice"

I should have stopped digging, apologized and dipped at that point but instead i said:

"Oh, well considering you're ill you look very healthy".

I was working for a cleaning company and had to do the one house we all dreaded. As soon as you walked in you were hit with the smell of animal waste. They allowed the cat to poo all over the basement that we couldn’t go down there half the time. I had to do it one time and didn’t realize anyone was still home, there were piles of dog poo all over the upstairs and yes we were expected to pick it up while we cleaned so I was having a meltdown to my work partner.

The person who was home was the daughter. She heard me say the most awful things about how filthy their family was and no wonder they were always sick. When I walked in her room to vacuum, I almost died of embarrassment. I was lucky not to lose my job but I was banned from going there so it was a bit of a win. It’s not like it was a small house either, this was a 4 bedroom 600,000 house that was covered in animal waste.

Several years ago myself, my friend, and her boyfriend all went to lunch together. They brought a friend along that I had never met. Chatting at the table and what not, I shared the interesting fact that when cremated your teeth explode under the intense heat.

Several minutes later the friend I had never met when to the restroom. That’s when I found out that her 9 year old sister had recently passed from preventable complications after a tonsillectomy… and she was cremated.

I learned to shut up with the random facts after that.

My life is a series of these but my most recent one was at a job interview when the interviewer told me I was overqualified and I just simply and bluntly asked would she rather have someone under qualified.

I didn’t get the job, so I guess that was a yes.

(walking in late) "Hey, that looks like the same cake and ice cream we had at the last office birthday party."

It was literally the same cake and ice cream.

My passport was set to expire the following week.

I was good to go - we were going to a country that didn't have any sort of restrictions if your passport was valid. However, we were stopped by the gate attendant at our home airline and they spent five minutes verifying this.

My anxiety was through the roof. We boarded our first plane to Texas. No problem.

While we were waiting to board for Costa Rica, my wife went to the bathroom, and I went to the United Airlines kiosk to let them know the situation and make sure I didn't go through that again.

They didn't let me board.

And that's how I ruined our honeymoon.

Work meeting w a vendor whose service only my team could understand/use and none of us were invited. Only found out a few mins before when the rest of the dept. got up to attend.

I was livid, and made my frustrations known to my superiors afterward (who have zero experience to our specialty at all). Got a disciplinary action for doing this. Had been feeling our tenure was coming to an end and this meeting sealed my suspicions.

We were all laid off 3 months later. Would have happened either way so I don’t really regret saying my piece, but realize it was a waste of time in hindsight.

When I accidentally shared a very personal secret with the wrong people and saw the look on their faces, I realized that silence is golden.

Small company, close coworkers.

Turned out one of them is a certified psychopath who lies every chance he gets and was telling everyone different stories to get them to turn against each other. Luckily, we all found out and squashed it, but had to be like…well, yeah. I hated you and talked major gossip about you, because I was getting intel that YOU hated me and were talking major gossip.

Just…don’t be friends with coworkers or be very selective lmao.