EFO. Embarrassment in Front of Others. It’s one of the most painful phenomenons known to man (and woman). We’ve all been there at some point in our lives. Maybe you tripped in front of a group of people. Maybe you threw up all over the girl or boy you had a crush on. Maybe you tripped and then threw up. Maybe you watched Meet the Parents with your actual parents when you were in seventh grade. It’s all humiliating and it keeps us up at night.
Take a look at these embarrassing stories from AskReddit and try not to sympathy cringe for these poor souls.
1. Damn Cashier
Here’s one thing I hate about grocery store lines: they’re all separate. I would much prefer that everyone wait in a single line and move to the next available cashier, like in customs.
Because we all know how much we hate waiting in line and seeing everyone around us go much, much quicker.
Well, I was having a particularly bad day, and I chose a particularly slow line in the grocery store. Ridiculously slow. Lines twice as long were sailing through, and I wasn’t moving at all.
And then I realized the problem. The cashier was taking his sweet time, swiping groceries through one at a time, using only one hand. He didn’t care. Some teenager with a scowl on his face, probably forced to work there by his parents.
Finally I’d had enough. I snapped. “This line is huge! Things would go a lot quicker if you used two hands.”
The two people in front of me turned and stared with looks of horror and disgust, and finally, the cashier, with a totally blank look on his face, turned toward me as well.
His left arm had been amputated at the shoulder.
2. Wrong Campsite
I went camping with some friends once and we ate some shrooms. At one point I had to go to the bathroom so I went to find the bathroom on the camp ground, did my business, and went back to our campsite.
I grabbed a beer from the cooler and it was Bud Light and I thought that was weird because I don’t drink Bud Light and neither do any of my friends, but I just wanted something cold in my mouth so I didn’t care.
I sat down at the fire and started drinking my beer and I realized everybody had gone quiet and was staring at me. First I was like “Why aren’t you guys talking? Did I fart?” then “Why are you staring at me like that??”
Then it clicked…”OH MY GOD YOU’RE NOT MY FRIENDS WHERE AM I??” I went to the wrong camp site and just plopped my tripping self down at the fire with a family of 4 (a husband and wife and two kids).
They just looked horrified. I’ll never forget the look on their faces. This was years ago., I’m sorry for ruining their camping trip.
3. Wrong room, bro
I had gotten hooked on Rubik’s cubes during college, so I carried that thing everywhere, playing with it as I walked to and from class.
So I walk into my dorm building, up the stairs and to my room, mostly focused on the Rubik’s cube. I open the door, walk through the kitchen (they were suite style dorms), and I notice a girl doing something in the fridge. No biggie, she’s probably with one of my roommates. I open the door to my room, and immediately start noticing something strange with the decor, and then I noticed two girls in the room sitting on either bed. Then it hit me.
I started backing out blurting explanations. To this day I still remembered the horrified look on the girl at the refrigerators face as I backed past her. They followed me to the door and slammed it in my face, partially pushing me out with it.
Then the screaming started. To this day I don’t know why they started screaming, but they did. I got out of there. Later heard from a friend on that floor that the girls apparently had the RA looking for me.
4. Oh, mother
When I was 10 my dad had his co-workers over to our house with their families for a Christmas party. My mom was doing the whole hostess thing and had been stressed out. I went to use the bathroom in the middle of the party and it stunk something fierce.
Being 10 and a social idiot I then walked out into the big room with the party going on and yelled while waving my hands in a smelly motion “WHEWW, WHO MADE THE BATHROOM STINK SO BAD?!”
My poor horrified and embarrassed mom’s face when admitting it was her.
5. Lol
Middle school: we were asked to use single words on paper to describe ourselves. I looked up synonyms for ‘weird’, and got queer… Didn’t know what that meant, but all of my classmates did. Couldn’t convince anyone I was straight for the rest of my school days. Which wouldn’t be so bad except that I could never get a date.
6. Lug Nut
When I was in high school I was sitting with my ex-girlfriend before class started. I was building a motorcycle in auto shop and brought a large chrome plated castle nut to school with me to finish attaching the wheel to the frame…
Well we were goofing around and I thought it would be cute if I slid the lug nut onto her ring finger, then after the novelty wore off it quickly dawned upon me that it won’t slide off. The threads of the nut were tearing her skin every time we pulled, like a sadistic finger trap.
So first I went to my shop teacher and we tried to use motor oil to get it off, a painful and un-fruitful venture which only lead to me being insulted by my favorite teacher. So I had to go with her to the principal’s office and explain what happened and then she went to the hospital, I went with and watched as the fire department cut this super hard lug nut off her hand while all the firefighters laughed and insulted me…
The nut kept heating up and burning the skin because metal gets very hot when being cut so this lasted quite a while….
7. “Mom tried to console me”
Well, let’s see…
When I was in middle school I had just started getting my period. Unfortunately, at the time, I didn’t know that I had very heavy and long periods (which would later cause me to get anemia). One day before I go to school my period comes and I have absolutely no pads (tampons scared me at the time). So, my dumb middle school self decides to just stuff some TP in my underwear to line it and I should be fine.
Yeah, well, I was wrong. Not even the first class passes and I’m leaking. Bad. Oblivious me doesn’t really realize this until I get up from my seat and see a giant red stain. I ran out of that classroom so fast and called my mom to come pick me up. Cried for about the rest of the day as my mom tried to console me.
Ugh, even thinking of it now sucks.
8. Fly’s open
I was in community college at the time and two of my friends and I were starring in a student run production of “The complete works of William Shakespeare, Abridged”.
The whole show is three goofy guys acting out all the parts in every one of Shakespeare’s works so theres a lot of running around and instant costume changes. Our core costume was velvet shorts, puffy shirts, purple stockings, and chuck taylors. We had been doing a lot of dress rehearsals to get used to costume changes and our budget was low so we had opted for the cheap stockings which began to fray at the crotch.
About a week before our first show we decided to do a little promo show on the sidewalk in a big downtown open air mall to get people interested. The show was going great. There was a decent crowd around and we had just finished the bit where we rapped “Othello, the moore of venice” when I see them in the very front. Two college age girls are leaning in towards on another and whispering and smiling and pointing at my crotch.
I looked down and realised that the end of my penis had been out of the front of my shorts for god knows how long. All the animated movement and the bad panty hose and the loose fly of the shorts had come together to create the perfect storm.
I swiftly grabbed a kilt and wrapped it around myself and shuffled away once we took our bow. I made sure to take a needle and thread to those shorts when we got back. My face was so red. Dear god… there were children there.
9. Answering Machine
This makes me want to die every time I think about it.
When I was around 6 or 7 my best friend lived next door to me. And they were the well-to-do type because they had an answering machine, while my family did not. This was circa 1995 PS.
So, I never really thought much about how an answering machine worked, I mean I got the general concept but I am an idiot. Anyway, I would call their house before coming over and ask if Michael was home. From time to time they would be gone to Disneyland or making wine or helping disadvantaged children or whatever rich people do with their rime and I would leave a message.
At first I’d leave messages like “oh, you’re not home, just me calling, call me back” Click. After a while I realized that you could listen to the message back. Gradually I would start to leave more messages just to listen to myself talk because I was a little narcissistic. Eventually I would leave messages that went something like this “I love Danielle, I want to have sex with her, we would have sex all the time, Danielle is so hot ” Mind you, I really had no idea what sex even was, but I wanted to do it. And since I was dumb and didn’t realize you could delete the message, my poor neighbours would arrive home to these pornographic gems.
Needless to say, they made my parents listen to these messages and they talked to me about it. All I remember from “the talk” was that I wanted to die from shame, and I had no idea what sex actually was. WHY COULDN’T YOU JUST DELETE THE MESSAGES!?
10. Choke
That would be a speech class in college when the one and only week when we would be videotaped, I began my demonstration speech by taking a big bite of a peanut butter sandwich; and, likely due to a combination of nerves, dry mouth, dry sandwich, and lack of rehearsal, was basically unable to swallow and spent half of my time limit choking on the sandwich.
11. Therapy
When I was around 14 years old I used to play videogames all day..actually a certain MMORPG which is not WoW. So my mother made me go to a group therapy for gaming addicted people.
So we made our way there and I enter a room full of people at least twice my age and after the door was locked (to have a secure location to talk) it hit me. The German term for “Gaming addiction” can refer to gambling aswell – so here I was, 14years old in a room full of people who have lost their possessions/family over a severe gambling addition that has ruined their lifes and they make me talk about my gaming addition. Lots of fun!
