Yes, but you have the excuse that you were saving him from mistaking you for someone else.
Are you sure he didn't mean that, during his hiring process, he got a bunch of emails that were all "Watch out for heebie-geebie, she is utterly lacking in tact or conversational skills"?
Any chance he got the pictures of your ass forwarded to him?
I hope they'd also send a warning out about the chair of my department, who asked me if I was planning on having more kids in the middle of a discussion about staffing classes, during a joint meeting with another department where I was the only woman of the 8 of us present.
(I answered "Yes! A whole Smurf village." which defused the initial question, while also being up front about the answer, plus everyone is very relaxed so I didn't actually feel too uncomfortable. But then later there were a couple (friendly) jokes about "Better get busy!" and the whole thing was kind of annoying.)
"Why you dirty man, [w]e've never emailed."
5 would have been awesome. Even better with "Why you cad, ..." instead.
I had an awkward moment the other day: Wandering around the hardware store, waiting for the manager to finish up a pipe order, when I back up a little bit and realize that I'm brushing up against somebody. Immediately I say "Sorry, excuse me, didn't see you there". Then the fellow walks past me, and I see that he is a contractor-looking guy, who is noticeably shorter than average for white American men. So immediately I'm thinking "Shit, now I just said something that he's going to interpret as foregrounding his shortness, which he's probably not crazy about." And then I thought "No, now you are patronizing him, it's probably no big deal and casting him in this over-sensitive role is what's really offensive."
So then I hid in the back until my pipe was threaded.
7.last: So then I hid in the back until my pipe was threaded.
Now that's what I call service.
8: Yeah, I was trying to figure out if there was any way to talk about the process of purchasing pipes cut to a certain length and then threaded without creating some low-hanging fruit, and then I realize, no, there wasn't, it's an inherently dirty hardware store errand.
"Well, let's just wrap up this awkward conversation. Bye."
Heebie killed the blog!
I have two more posts to post but it seemed sad to stomp my own post so quickly.
Every twenty weeks there is a spontaneous pause in Unfogged conversation.
I recall the recurring pause thing from my youth, but never heard the Abraham Lincoln variant.
Every conversation I have with a woman is awkward.
12.1 is fascinating. I was initially prepared to say that surely a group pause (in a roomful of people) is merely a coincidence, but I'm willing to buy a more reasoned explanation.
I'm liking this possibility:
he hypothesized that the noise level at a party randomly goes up and down, and when it goes down to a certain level we subconsciously pick up on it as a signal to be quiet because something's happening, and so the noise level drops further.
Last night my gf and I went to a restaurant which was fairly quiet when we got there, but then a couple of additional tables filled and a baby started crying and everyone got a little bit louder to be heard over the noise of everyone getting a little bit louder.
I then proposed an automated system to track volume levels in restaurants, that would automatically duck the house music and play a recording of a maternal-sounding voice going "SHHHhhh-sh-sh-sh-sh" when loudness crossed a certain threshold.
15.2: God knows there are some restaurants where reviews, whether from a friend or layperson or professional reviewer, can't fail to mention that after x o'clock, the place is just loud, so avoid if you're not into that. And I do.
The 'Harvard pause' doesn't seem to apply, in my experience, to a lot of largish parties or restaurants. (UnfoggeDCon II became pretty loud.) Maybe the group needs to be below a certain size. What size I couldn't say.
14.2: I like this explanation too. To make matters worse, once there is a noticable lull, people may get self-conscious about breaking the silence, since it feels like everyone will be listening.
Back in the olden days, at moments like that some joker would say, "Well, my broker is E. F. Hutton, and he says...."
To make matters worse
Does it make matters worse? If it becomes a dead silence which nobody knows how to break because the previous conversations have been strained in the first place, sure, it's bad. Otherwise it's just a collective taking of breath, and a moment to ask yourselves and one another (silently) whether you've just been talking in order to make noise.
17.1: The origin of the expression, "You couldn't hear a peep."
Otherwise it's just a collective taking of breath, and a moment to ask yourselves and one another (silently) whether you've just been talking in order to make noise.
And then continue posting comments regardless of how you answer the question.
18: That's funny. I was having a hard time wording my sentence (as usual) and, as soon as I thought of "to make matters worse", it occured to me that parsimon, lover of silence, might object. Then I thought, "Well, that would be kind of funny."
So I guess I was trolling. I'm sorry, parsimon!
20 speaks truth.
Such silence, perhaps all conversational is politeness and kindness, a biting of the tongue. But then all conversation, including kind words, comforts and compliments, is aggression.
I then proposed an automated system to track volume levels in restaurants, that would automatically duck the house music and play a recording of a maternal-sounding voice going "SHHHhhh-sh-sh-sh-sh" when loudness crossed a certain threshold.
Years ago I had just arrived in Paris on a red-eye fairly early in the morning and couldn't get to my room in a hostel until the late afternoon. The weather wasn't nice enough to sit in a park, so I went into churches and may or may not have dozed off.
At Notre Dame, in addition to signs telling people to keep quiet (and warning people about pickpockets), they also had someone on a loudspeaker who, when the crowds of visitors got too loud, let out a few long "shuuuuuuuuuushes".
I encountered the Shush Man at the Sistine Chapel as well.
My awkward moment of the day: I was having a conversation with this young dude about overprivileged undergrads, and related the story (told to me by a coworker) of the student who asked to reschedule a midterm because he had a terribly important wine tasting to get to. "Have you ever!" said I. "A terribly important wine tasting! For a college kid!"
"Actually", said the kid, "I was the president of the Princeton Oenophiles Club."
Were you, now.
As an undergraduate, I once mixed wine (domestic, sparkling white) & Jack Daniels. Nobody else would try it, I assume bedside I was not president of a club.
I got yelled at yesterday by a guy sitting under the scaffolding of a scaffolded sidewalk. I suppose I could have been specifically avoiding him, as he accused me of doing, by moving to the un-scaffolded part of the sidewalk. I don't really remember what was going through my mind; I was more concerned with figuring out if I'd made a wrong turn (which I learned I had when I walked out into the open and could see the end of the block). But once I heard him telling me that I was an asshole for avoiding a human being, and that he hoped I was in need of help some day, and so on, there wasn't really any question that I was going to walk by without acknowledging him.
I did want to tell him that he was so vain, he thought my walking motions were all about him, but that seemed like it would be rude. The whole thing was a bit awkward.
My awkward moment of the evening was hanging around briefly with a friend who just went through a surprise (to him, I gather) break-up over the weekend. I'm not sure he knows that I know yet. (A third mutual friend told me about it.) I didn't know what to say to him.
28.last: "Sorry for sleeping with Jessica!"
29 would be particularly effective if the name of the lady in question was in fact not "Jessica."
"You slept with a hypothetical future hurricane?!"
I can't be the only one here still watching True Blood, can I?
This also reminds me that I spent a fair chunk of the weekend putting together a breakup playlist. Does your friend have Spotify? I could send it to him.
I am also counseling a good friend through what I believe is an imminent break-up.
34: Whether your friend is the breaker or the breakee, what better way for him/her to end the impending break-up conversation than "Well, let's just wrap up this awkward conversation. Bye"?
It could become canonical, up there with "It isn't you, it's me" and "How can you be so cold/stupid/self-centered?"
"Well, let's just wrap up this awkward relationship. Bye."
Well, let's just wrap up this awkward comment thread. Bye.
can't be the only one here still watching True Blood, can I?
My cousin's on that! For one episode (#4.3). His IMDb credit is "Vampire".
I'm still watching it! For some reason!
You should really consider the company you keep, Josh.