you can’t be cringing

my friend and i have this thing where we get super embarrassed for other people and want to cringe because of their behavior. it’s a litmus test for potential beaus…at least that’s how we’ve been using it. we say to ourselves, “you can’t be cringing” as a reminder of what we don’t want. last week at a meeting one of my co-workers made me cringe so hard. all of the nerdy as hell, control freak, anal audiologists had a meeting and a guest speaker was scheduled. well, the speaker was late so instead we presented some really interesting case studies. when our guest speaker arrived it was clear she hadn’t understood that the meeting time had changed. so my co-worker, the one who arranged the meeting, pulls out her blackberry and finds the email exchange and proceeds to give the poor woman such grief for her misunderstanding. i wanted to die. it was so unnecessary to whip out the blackberry. the damage was done and it didn’t matter who was right and who was wrong. it was a mistake. i felt so bad for the guest speaker that i made sure to tell her not to worry. it’s so embarrassing when your co-workers act like freaks to other people in the professional community. really, it was so cringeworthy. i feel the same way when my colleagues talk during presentations or ask aggressive questions that clearly, they don’t want the answers to, they just want to sound smart. when this kind of thing happens i want to cringe so hard. 

it reminds me of something one of my friends said a long time ago. she was at a crowded bar and i guess she had a full beer and some of it spilled on this girl who got super pissed off.  when my friend molly recounted the story she said, “haven’t you ever accidentally spilled a beer on someone?”