The Most Common Annoying Social Mistakes and How to Fix Them
A few years ago, a friend of mine had a classic toe-to-mouth moment. “Congratulations!” she told a colleague who dryly replied, “I’m not pregnant.” This embarrassment makes you want to crawl under a rock and never show your face again. It’s tempting, but it’s probably best to get better from now on.
I had my share of awkward moments (I swear the example above was a friend of mine!) And I was on the other side of the coin too. Sticking a foot in your mouth is never fun, but how you react to it can make or make things worse. In general, it helps to admit it , not to dwell on it and, depending on the situation, laugh it off. But here are some additional tips to keep in mind during certain moments of confusion.
Mistaking someone for pregnancy
I should probably add a caveat here: never assume a woman is pregnant unless you know for sure. Even if she is pregnant, I believe that this is not really my business, at least until she decides to share this fact with me. She may have health problems; she may not be ready to announce it.
At the same time, I asked my friend how she recovered from this mistake. “I apologized and then avoided her whenever possible until she quit years later,” she told me.
This is certainly a natural reaction, but it may not be the best solution in the long run. The best thing to do right after that is to quickly apologize and then blame the misunderstanding on you. Manners expert Adam Lowe recommends a self-deprecating joke :
Use humor or self-deprecation to show that what you said was not an evil spirit … tell her that you are blind without glasses and that you have failed biology twenty times.
Another friend of mine was at the other end of this scenario; someone suggested she was pregnant. I asked her what she thinks about this. She told me, “The woman kept apologizing every time I saw her. It was annoying and embarrassing. “
Persecution also seems natural. And it’s very important to offer a sincere apology . But you don’t mean to say that I am so sorry that I annoy the person. This can be a little selfish because it makes you calm down.
If you are really worried about the situation, suggest that they fix it somehow. Everyday life offers :
If your embarrassing moment was about offending someone’s feelings, make extra special efforts to get out of your way and compensate your coworker, for example, buy him lunch or cover him during a break. This helps to establish a good understanding, and your mistake can be quickly forgotten.
It takes a little courage, but this approach is likely to make things easier in the long run.
Call your partner after your ex
It’s all on sitcoms, but this kind of mistake happens all the time. I once named a new boyfriend after my last longtime boyfriend and immediately panicked. Instead of pointing out that this is purely a habit, I said, “Well, that was weird.”
Of course, this was not comforting. This suggested that I was not sure why this might have happened, and that perhaps there was some deeper, Freudian reason behind it. It wasn’t, but I was scared and I’m terribly on my feet , so I blurted it out.
I was on the other side of that too. The new guy called me by a different name and then said, “Wow. It was about two friends ago. Not the best answer either. There are a couple of additional answers that don’t work right after this error:
- I can’t believe I did this. I hate my ex like this: Yes, we get it. You don’t love your ex anymore. But this suggests that some feelings remained.
- I promise I will never do it again ; it will get worse if you do it again.
- Let’s just pretend it didn’t : even if it works for a short time, your partner will think about it at some point.
There are a number of understandable reasons why you might want to refer to your current partner as your ex. When you are dealing with damage control, focus on them. Maybe the names are similar. Maybe it’s just a habit. A study published in the journal Psychological Science indicates that slips of the tongue often happen simply because our brains are thinking faster than our mouths:
… beyond the intrusion of the environment, word substitution errors reflect problems stemming from linguistic processes, rather than extralinguistic ones, such as visual attention … These cases are objective evidence supporting the subjective sense that speakers know what they want to say in conceptual or level of message, even when the words they say are wrong.
This is why my mother often confused my name with my brother’s (and, unfortunately, with the names of our dog and cat). Bottom line: Instead of hiding your mistake, you need to make sure your partner understands why it happened. After proposing a rational explanation, psychologist Michael Wiederman suggests the following :
… that it might be worth focusing on calming down the main source of his anger or frustration when you’re wrong: insecurity. That is, when that happens, just reassure him that you would rather be with someone other than him, and then let it go and focus on something else. Plus, as your relationship matures, an accidental mistake will matter less, as there will be a more reliable story that reassures you that the mistake is not emotionally significant.
If this continues, Wiedermann suggests a workaround: come up with a nickname for your current partner that doesn’t look like your ex’s.
And if there is something deeper, more Freudian going on there, and you think you still love your ex, well, that might be a completely different post .
Destroying the surprise
To this day, I get nervous at the simple suggestion of a surprise party. It all goes back to high school when I asked a friend what time we were going to her party and she said, “What party?”
If you find yourself in a similar situation, Etiquette Survival will tell you what to do :
You cannot put the cat back in the bag, but you must handle it carefully when it is removed. “If you collaborate with the person for whom the party is being hosted, you won’t ruin it for the host,” says author Peggy Post. However, if the host discovers that the surprise is angry, Post recommends admitting a mistake and doing whatever it takes to fix it, either by helping prepare for the party or by sending flowers to the host.
They add that in the future, you might want to limit contact with the guest of honor as the date approaches, in order to avoid any spoilers.
Sending the wrong email
Gmail’s undo feature is a godsend, but mistakes still happen. Talking is generally bad at work. But suppose this happens and you send an email to a colleague (or worse, your boss) complaining about them. Business Insider believes a complaint is better addressed than silenced:
if it does offend the recipient it is best to confront the situation immediately, and as the sender, you should be the one to take the first step. Thus, you do not expect the other side to come to you, but bring it up first, because it is your fault.
Or maybe this is not an offensive letter. Maybe it’s just personal. Anyway, confess and send an email of apology. Keep it simple and to the point. Don’t draw more attention to the situation with a long, drawn-out explanation.
Try this template from PR pro Peter Shankman:
Subject: Apologies
My apologies – I just sent you an email that is clearly not for you. My sincere apologies.
Best,
-Peter Shankman
And we have some additional tips on how to avoid this .
Passing gas in front of someone
This is not so much a slip of the tongue as it is a slip of the tongue for other bodily functions, but the point is that escaping gas can be humiliating.
This isn’t just limited to humming or burping. Maybe your belly won’t stop rumbling during the meeting. Whatever the scenario, recovering from bodily dysfunction can be challenging. Do you admit it or avoid drawing attention to it altogether? Workplace Diva offers the following :
The more obvious the physical malfunction, the more you must own it. If you’ve fumbled at a staff meeting and heard it all, point your finger at yourself (or have someone pull it) and show a sense of humor about it all.
If you’re not getting to your feet quickly, take this line from an old story that Abraham Lincoln reportedly told about a man who turned in gas at a dinner party. Let’s see if I can split this turkey without farting.
Humor works well, but depending on where you are and what your work environment is, it might not be appropriate. If this is really obvious, you may have to resort to a simple “sorry”.
Of course, every history of bodily functions is different, and your experience may be different. One day I quickly sat down at the table in a skirt. My feet rubbed against each other, making an unpleasant sound. I was terrified. I wasn’t sure if everyone had heard, but one colleague definitely heard because she turned and looked directly at me. At that moment, I almost stopped what I was doing in order to explain to everyone in the room what really happened. But I knew my explanation wasn’t much better, so I ignored it completely and kept working. Nobody ever mentioned it, and even when we became friends for lunch, my colleague never raised the issue. It was one of the best hasty decisions I have ever made.
You usually know that ignoring a situation only makes it worse, so use common sense and only reason when necessary.
It takes a little effort, but it’s usually better to recover from the embarrassment than just pretending it didn’t happen. We all do stupid things from time to time, so people usually understand more than you think. Eliminating the error makes it easier to meet colleagues, friends, or loved ones in the future. It will also help you walk away from this moment and forget that it ever happened.