‘What’s the most awkward thing you’ve seen or been part of?’ – 17 cringe moments that have haunted people for years

Unless you’re inhumanely cool, chances are you’ve embarrassingly put a foot wrong at some point in your life.

It’s not the end of the world though. As CobaltBlue389 found out over on r/AskUK, everyone’s been there.

They did so by asking fellow users ‘What is the most awkward thing you’ve seen, or been part of, IRL?’ and even got the ball rolling with their own suggestion:

‘I used to manage at TGI Fridays, and the levels of forced fun managed from the top were abysmal. We did team briefings before each peak shift, and “baby shark” was used to motivate and energise essentially teenagers before every shift (before it became a viral kids thing)… yes I was compliant. But I was dying inside.’

Brace yourself for secondhand embarrassment, here are the top replies…

1.

‘A drunk man telling another man that a 16-18yr old girl at the holiday resort bar was a “gobby little shit but I bet she is so dirty in bed”

‘He wasn’t aware that the man he was telling this to was the girl’s dad.’
-flyingokapis

2.

‘At a wedding where the maid of honour did a speech about how everyone has a box full of happiness, but sad times would deplete the box a bit. but don’t worry [groom] because we, the family will fill [bride]’s box for you if you can’t. It went on for ages and she was crying with emotion. every single time the word box was used I started to become more hysterical and eventually 5 of the people at my table were horizontal with me, gasping for breath as we whispered “[groom] can’t fill her box” it was hysterical and so cringingly awkward’
-snarkycrumpet

3.

‘When I worked at the Co-op and they had rumble time at 2pm where all the staff had to pull forward the shelves. They used to play Lets Get Ready to Rumble over the tannoy and we all had to comply. Our store manager tried to do the worm and kicked a trolley into an old lady, who fell into the potato bin.’
-CozJeez85

4.

‘A lad walking ahead of me on the high street tried to cat call a woman in front of him and shouted “oi love, you want some shake with your chips…..”.

‘She stopped, looked at him confused, he mumbled “I meant fries….not chips….” and awkwardly shuffled off. Never seen someone’s swagger disappear so fast, it was amazing.’
-weeble182

5.

‘My colleagues being strongly encouraged to chant “We will rock you”, with the words modified to reflect our employer, at a thousand plus person conference centre.

‘Holy shit.

‘I still have a video of it. Horrendous. All of EMEA aside from the UK appeared to be loving it as well… Never seen so many people who would drink the kool aid.’
-VolcanicBear

6.

‘Boss I worked for was leaving the country to return to his home country. One of the senior leadership gathered everyone around in a circle to do a speech but started it by pulling out a guitar and serenading him with ‘leaving on a jet plane’ the second hand embarrassment almost killed me.’
-Clemtastic1

7.

‘My company has a property near Paris they ship people out to every so often.

‘We had a trip for our French and UK colleagues to get to know each other and they made us do a haka as part of team building. Just a bunch of pale, weedy Compliance officers embarrassing themselves. I cringed so hard I wanted to turn inside out.’
-sparkypants_

8.

‘At a family wedding where one of the couple’s parents had recently split up. The father did a speech which ended with ‘welcome to the family, well what’s left of it.’

‘The room went silent’
-idontlikemondays321

9.

‘I used to work in bingo. I helped a woman propose to her partner on Valentine’s Day once, he seemed mortified but said yes. We also had 2 members of staff who were dating and he proposed to her on the stage in the middle of a bingo session. She said yes but after I had a chat with her it was clear that she was very disappointed he decided to do it this way during their shift.’
-No_Top6466