People have been sharing the moments they really screwed up in public and the second hand embarrassment is strong!

Sometimes, the urge to turn back time – just five minutes, nay, thirty seconds – is overwhelming.

Like that time I set up camp in the dark in an Italian spa town and found out in the morning that I’d spent the entire night sleeping on top of two large human turds. OK, so five minutes would barely have touched the sides with that one, but you get the point.

Anyway…

Redditors have been responding to the question, “What’s your favourite ‘Oops, I just really fucked up’ moment?” and it goes without saying but we’ll say it: Some of the answers are… precious.

1.

I prepaid for gas and never pumped it. I just paid, walked out the door and got in my car and drove off.
–stupidsexyf1anders

2.

Buddy in college once pulled $200 out of an ATM, grabbed his card and left the money.
–Pleasant_Scar9811

3.

I was a brand new, right out of college Computer Programmer (back before we had Software Developers). We worked on minicomputers at the time and I had a long process that I needed to run which tied up my terminal.

I went into the storage closet and dragged out another terminal so that I could do stuff while the process ran (an old version of multi-taking. You kids have no idea how easy you have it nowadays).

Well, because the new kid had two terminals, none of the other programmers wanted to look less productive, so everyone else did that. Then a week or so later the president of the company came back to the programmer area so he could mess around with some new hardware that came in.

He looked around and said, “Looks like everybody has two terminals now!”

Being a smart-ass, I quickly quipped “Well, we all have two hands!” Which was met with silence. Huh, usually my quips get at least a chuckle.

It was then that I remembered that the president of the company did not, in fact, have two hands. He had a birth defect and one did not develop properly.
–Bigfops

4.

It was my first day as a help desk technician. I had been asked to change printer toner on the main printer in the company office.

I pulled the black toner out, and I dropped it. The thing exploded like it was a new years’ fireworks show. All over me, all over the floor, all over the printer….even 10 years later, I still think they’re digging toner out of the cubicle.

I looked like one of those cartoon images where Elmer Fudd was given a bomb just before it exploded and then it blew up.

Fortunately my boss was my friend, and he laughed his ass off. Photos, email distribution, the works.

I made my best effort to clean it up until the facilities guy shoved me aside and said “Let me do it.” with his nuclear powered backpack vacuum.

I’m just glad it wasn’t the yellow I dropped. I didn’t want to look like I peed my pants all day.
–EarHumble1248

5.

My aunt looks like your standard white woman. She moved to Japan for a year for her husband’s job.

No one there remotely suspected she spoke fluent Japanese. She was on the bus (subway?) in Tokyo when she heard two woman talking about her.

The first one said, “That white woman is so beautiful! She looks like a cross between Grace Kelly and Sophia Loren, don’t you think?”

My aunt was really feeling herself until the Japanese woman’s friend replied, “No, she looks like Grace Kelly ATE Sophia Loren”.
–midnightsunofabitch

6.