Those Embarrassing Moments at Work
By Michael Kaufman
Every once in a while something happens to remind me of my most embarrassing moments at work. When it happens, chances are it is another embarrassing moment on a grand scale. I had one the other day at a meeting I was covering in Chicago… but before I tell you about it I’ll share the original.
It was my first day at a new job with a fancy title at a big agency in Manhattan. I went to use the bathroom and as I emerged from the stall when I was finished, my pants caught on a protruding piece of metal and ripped badly. To say that you could see my underpants was an understatement. Most of my right thigh was completely exposed. Without hesitation and without a word to anyone I walked briskly to the elevator with one hand holding my pants in place as much as possible. I kept it in the same position as I rushed to the nearest clothing store and bought a new pair of pants that almost matched the jacket I was wearing. I was back at the office within minutes and, as far as I know, no one at the job ever knew about it.
The next day I was extra careful not to rip my pants again when I went to the bathroom. But when I reached over to flush the toilet a large section of my tie went into the toilet bowl. (One might see this as a metaphor since that job lasted slightly less than a year.) It is impossible for me to think of one of these two events independently from the other. Together they represent my most embarrassing moments at work, not counting the time I mistakenly used the ladies’ room right before a job interview. (That doesn’t count because I wasn’t at work at the time….but it is right up there in the embarrassing department.) I was straightening my tie and gazing at myself in the mirror to make sure I looked okay for the interview when a woman walked in, stopped short, and fled just as I blurted, “This is the ladies’ room?” All I could do was hope she didn’t work where I was applying. But she did….and even after I was hired it took months before she would say hello.
Okay, so I was in Chicago the other day to cover the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting. If you have ever attended an event at McCormick Place, the big convention center in the Windy City, you know how disorienting it can be. The place makes the Orange County Government Center building look like a scene from Better Homes and Gardens. It’s a crazy quilt of ramps, stairways and escalators. Here were 17,000 cancer researchers from all over the world and every day you would see them wandering around, dazed, looking for rooms with names like 221 CC and 183 F West.
As part of my work I went to the exhibit area (once I figured out how to get there) where investigators explain the findings of research depicted on their posters. I had noted several posters in the program I thought especially worthy of coverage. I walked up to one of them and asked the presenter how soon he thought his findings would be widely implemented in clinical practice. But I was at the wrong poster. I thought I was at one describing how a certain experimental combination of drug therapy and surgery had dramatically improved outcomes in patients with brain cancer. But the person I asked (a renowned brain surgeon) was presenting far less encouraging information: When two drugs known to have some modest effects in shrinking brain tumors were combined in hope of achieving a synergistic (or at least additive) effect, it didn’t work. In fact, the combination was so toxic the patients died sooner than if they had just been treated with one of the drugs.
“Say,” said the famous brain surgeon. “Aren’t you the guy whose tie went in the toilet bowl?” (I just made that last part up.)
Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.
Tags: Michael Kaufman
April 4th, 2012 at 11:18 pm
Here’s my most embarrassing work moment:
I was a college student, editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, and a worker in the college print shop.
At the time, a foreign language professor with a very strange sense of humor was faculty advisor to the French Club. One day she came into the print shop and left me a truly bizarre photo that she wanted printed in the college newspaper. For the photo, students had dressed in outlandish costumes and positioned themselves strangely outside the door of the college president’s house. Somebody apparently rang the doorbell and when President Haggerty opened the door, somebody snapped the picture. I had a good many questions about that photo, and so I put it in my notebook, intending to speak to this faculty advisor later.
Then the phone rang and I was summoned to President Haggerty’s office for a press conference. There were big plans for the campus and Haggerty was releasing the blueprints for the new buildings to The Oracle first. He concluded our meeting by saying, with all the coolness of an executioner,
“Here are the blueprints. It is the only set we have. If you lose them, I will expel you.”
I reassured him I would guard them with my life, got up off my chair to accept them from his outstretched hand, and watched in horror as the incriminating French Club photograph sailed out of my notebook to land – face up – at Haggerty’s feet.
“What’s this?” he said, picking it up. I was speechless. Finally, I uttered something like,
“Fr–Fr—ench Club……”
“I’ll just keep this,” he said, pocketing the photo.
I returned the blueprints to his secretary the next day and could never look him in the eye again.
April 5th, 2012 at 10:05 am
Thanks for sharing, Lee. As you know, I was on the Oracle staff but left before you arrived. I also have some not-so-fond memories of President Haggerty and I well recall the woman with the strange sense of humor (as you so politely put it) who was faculty advisor to the French club.