awkward encounters

I consider myself to be a very social person. I like laughing, talking, drinking, eating and any other verb that comes along with socializing with other people. Some even find me to be slightly quick-witted, or even fun to be around! I am a social person, so why am I completely and totally awkward in certain social situations.

There is one encounter that I am getting progressively better at: office interaction. When you are new, workplace banter is the hardest art to master: which coworker is a chatter, which should you avoid, which will think you are completely and totally annoying. Tough crowd! Further, once you answer those preliminary questions and you identify who the talkers are, how much conversation is too much?

Then there are the motherships of all office encounters, the grand poobahs of perchance off-guard office run-ins. The kitchen and bathroom encounter.

The kitchen encounter usually begins normally because each party has a set action to complete: make a meal. It is when there is a lull in bustle, after the normal “hi, how are you’s,” that the interaction has the capacity to get awkward. The culprit: the microwave. After both parties finish their prep time and begin their wait time, there is an awkward panic moment for me: do I take the “mmmm, your lunch smells and/or looks delicious” route or the “any good plans for the weekend?” route. I usually go with the latter, but that can create an awkward moment when I realize its Tuesday, and now appear to be a hyper-aggressive weekend planner. Eek! On top of that, I wonder if my co-workers think that I have a normal and appropriate meal…are they judging me for eating an Activia? Do they then wonder if I am irregular? Um ew.

The bathroom run in: I cringe to think of the awkward, off-guard conversations that have come from this forced interaction. All kinds of bathroom rendezvous’ are awkward (the same time entering/exiting, handwashing, and my personal favorite, going at the same time interactions) and will always heighten my anxiety. Being a stage-fright pee-er as is (no, seriously, my college friends used to need to sing so I could pee), bathroom encounters are particularly difficult for me. I can never manage to go if I know there is someone sitting next waiting for me to pee. On the rare occasion that I cannot get over my stage fright, I awkwardly sit there until my coworker leaves, who now thinks I am in there for a reason other than peeing (you know, from all that Activia I eat). The term “shit or get off the pot” never has been so relevant, but we all know that I would never be able to close that deal at work.

Luckily, the awkward office encounters diminish as time goes on, and having been at my current company for over a year, I rarely experience an office encounter that I would consider to be particularly compromising.

Run-ins with ex-boyfriends/manfriends and/or hook ups are additional rendezvous’ where my tongue suddenly shifts into a giant knock. I know how to speak English; I know a decent amount of information about the individual standing in front of me…why is it that I am not only unable to form coherent sentences, but that when I am able, they come out as complete conversation ending phrases. The “It’s so great to see you and to hear that you and (insert name of new girlfriend) are doing well!” line is a sure way to put your already awkward conversation to bed.

Now, how to get away? If I am lucky, I usually have a gal pal to pull me away to that “super important thing I am now late for,” since I have taken sixty seconds of my time to talk to my ex-manfriend, but if I am unlucky I need to handle it alone…awkwardly. I usually try to pull the “I need to buy a drink” move, but usually I have a full drink. Double fisting? Sure! If that doesn’t work, the bathroom is always a sure break away or the “I need to go find my friends” (who are surely standing in close proximity monitoring this very conversation, waiting for a potential breakdown.) Regardless of how the chat ends, I am no longer in the red zone. I am now safe.

The last of my least favorite interactions is one that I rarely experience alone: the drive thru window. Here we are sitting in line in between two old Windstar minivans, committed to the fact that we have opted for fast food as our meal. We might as well inject fat cells directly into our inner thigh, but as Americans it is our God given right to eat at an establishment such as this. We pull up to the window and wait to be served. Insert awkward anticipatory silence here. The server, in broken English through 423 layers of static, says something. We aren’t sure what he says, but instead of asking him to repeat it, we assume it is now time to place our order. After a moment of hesitation, I begin to yell, like I’m attempting to communication with a deaf person, our “two #7 with fries and diet coke” order in the general direction of this black box speaker. Privacy? No such thing at a drive up window. Every car, person and scavenging squirrel within earshot now knows that we are complete nom noms…not to mention all the nearest vehicles around have their windows down to order, but no judgment- they are in line too. As if our first order broadcast wasn’t embarrassing enough, the server then chooses to emphasize our nomnomness and read our menu selections back to us, almost giving us an out to change our 6,000 calorie meal to an appropriate 3,000 calorie selection.

After little to no discussion with either the guy who swipes my credit card, or the guy that hands you the bag, already soaked in grease, it is time to whip out of there as fast as possible, and hope no one recognized me, my car, or my school decal. Hand me my chicken nuggets.