Ooups! I Did It ... Again!

    In life, we've all done some things that are just downright embarrassing. I cannot pretend I'm an exception to that. On the contrary, I've made more than my fair share of mistakes, and I believe it's important to be able to laugh at oneself. So, in this first real blog entry, I'll write about some moments in my life that I am not so proud of and what I learned from them. 

    This first incident happened a few years ago. I had these two friends, and we were trying to pick an activity to do together. One day, one of them proposed we go swimming. The other one immediately supported the idea and, well, I too pretended
to like the idea. The truth is I detest swimming. I always have, and I always will. The only reason why I said yes to the idea was because, I wanted to make them happy, and I knew I would have a very hard time finding another activity idea they'd be as enthusiastic about. So, we went swimming, and my god, it was so bad. I found it boring, and let's just say they knew it. I guess that's why they were surprised when, a year later, I suggested we go swimming. I honestly don't know why I did that. In retrospect, it was such a bad idea. At that moment, though, I forgot how bad the first time went. Well, I never made that mistake again. There is an expression: “The sequel was like a second date that makes you question why you swiped right in the first place.” Well, that expression is perfect for this situation. It went so badly that halfway through, I tried to sneak out of the pool. I stopped myself, though. That was a mistake. In the end, I lost my temper with them and yelled at them, “Fuck you!” (that happened in the lobby that was full that day). After that, we never managed to recover and our friendship was over. I learned a few things from that pretty horrible experience. Firstly, never forget or try to distort the past. If you thought something sucked the first time, it probably won't be any different the second time you do it. Secondly, don't suggest you do something you know you hate. That's what people who hate themselves do, not people with self-confidence. Thirdly, I shouldn't have lost my temper with them. After all, it was my fault that I was in that situation. The only person I should have been mad at was myself. Lastly, don't say stuff you'll regret. In this case, I regret yelling what I yelled at my friends. I believe it's what caused the end of our friendship and well, it's such a stupid reason for a friendship to end. In the future, when I'm in a similar situation, I'll make sure I keep my cool, even when I feel like just screaming at whoever is pissing me off.

    I have another embarrassing incident that happened to me that I will write to you guys about. This happened two weeks ago at McDonald's (that's where I work). It was a Friday and I had a shift from 2:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M. When I arrived, it was super busy, and they immediately put me to work at the drive-through station (I just had to give out the bags. I didn't even have to take the orders). It's important to note that I never did the drive-through before. There is also a screen that ranks all the McDonald's in Quebec (or just the ones in Montreal, I'm not sure) in order of how well they perform (in this case, the time it takes to serve a customer). Before I arrived, we were number 2, which is excellent. When I arrived, that changed. Because of my inexperience, I caused a lineup of like 7 cars, which was way too long (you need to send the longer orders to the parking lots to wait, something I didn't do). Anyway, our position on the board started going down, very quickly. We went from number 2 to number 12. Our McDonald's was in red. All the managers (for some reason, all the managers were there that day) were freaking out. Then, one of them went up to me and started yelling at me. “THIS IS FAST FOOD! IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE FAST! WE WERE NUMBER 2 BEFORE YOU ARRIVED! NOW WE ARE 12! 12!!!!!!!!!!! YOU SUCK!!! IF YOU CONTINUE LIKE THIS, I'LL KICK YOU OUT OF DRIVE-THROUGH! WHAT IS THIS?! YOUR FIRST TIME?!” I told them that, yeah, it was my first time. I never did the drive-through before. Suddenly, the manager became nicer. I got an apology. The manager said that they weren't aware I never did it and if they knew, I would have had more help. They then told me they thought I had done it before (in my head, I was like, “If you wanted to know, you idiot, you should have asked me”. I didn't say that out loud; I would have been certainly fired if I did). I then got help, and it all worked out (we went from 12 to 7, which still kinda sucks, but what the hell. It's an improvement). Most of what happened in this story wasn't my fault. The managers should have done a better job making sure I knew what I was doing. If they did, we wouldn't have ended up at number 12, because I would have either been put at another station or I would have gotten the help I needed. However, I should have told the managers that I had never done the drive-through before, I had no idea how things worked. That leads me to the lesson I learned from this story. It's important to be honest with other people and with yourself. In this story, I tried to convince myself that it's all intuitive and that I could do it, without any help. I quickly realized that wasn't in any way true. And if I was honest with the managers, the whole story wouldn't have happened. I want to be clear I'm not blaming them for everything, it was a team effort. Therefore, everybody gets a bit of the blame. We learn from our mistakes and become stronger afterwards.

    Here's another one. This one is especially embarrassing. I was doing volunteer work, and I was given a break. In the break room, there was this very pretty girl and well, I decided that I'd try to impress her. I'm not the type of guy who'd just go up to a random girl and start using crappy pick lines to seduce her (That's just dumb and corny, but well, some people must like that. I don't know any who do. If you do, tell me in the comments). I decided that to impress her, I'd use my scientific knowledge. That didn't work out the way I wanted it to. She found an excuse to leave and never came back. Science may turn on your brain, but you aren't gonna be turning on any girls. That was the first and only time I ever really tried flirting with a girl. I decided after that incident that my future girlfriend would start as a friend (that way I wouldn't need to use flirting to impress her in the first place). There isn't a clear lesson I learned from this story. I guess you could say I learned that science is like wearing socks with sandals: it's practical, but not a turn-on.

    I've done many more stupid things. However, for the sake of preserving my reputation, I won't tell you all my secrets. I gave you guys some of the more embarrassing ones anyway. So no one can accuse me of trying to make myself look good. I hope you guys found my stories amusing; I enjoyed writing about them. More importantly, though, I hope you learned something from these stories. In life, shit happens. But in the shit, there are some lessons to be learned. You need to look for them though.

Image source: https://www.simplyneuroscience.org/post/the-science-behind-embarrassment