People Share the Most Cringeworthy Things They’ve Ever Witnessed
We all mess up from time to time, and we all have our cringeworthy moments.
No human being is perfect, and that means every one of us has our moments where we do or say something that we probably should not have done or said.
And at times, those little mistakes can be some of the most cringeworthy, awkward, and embarrassing things we ever experience, especially when they happen in front of a large crowd.
Whether they happened to us directly or to someone else we know, there is one thing to be said for cringeworthy moments--they make for some great and unforgettable stories.
Here are 41 examples of the most cringeworthy public moments people have ever witnessed.
41. Getting in Touch With His Feminine Side
A couple of years ago I saw a guy I know at a mall, sitting in the food court a couple tables away from me, with about six or eight women and no other guys around. Because I rarely see one man chaperoning eight women around, I listened in on their conversation to hear one quote:
"What is a pap smear? Or is it schmear like the cream cheese?"
I could tell the conversation turned awkward at that point because they immediately changed the topic. I left after that.
40. Lending a Hand
When I worked retail, there was one regular customer who would come in frequently and was missing his left hand just below the wrist. One of my frequent greetings to most customers was "need a hand?" or "can I give you a hand with that?"
I managed to keep from saying that to him, although I thought of it every time. Well, one day around 2011 I was training a new cashier who had apparently picked up some of my mannerisms.
The guy missing the hand comes up to the counter and looks like he needs help, so the cashier looks right at him and says "Need a hand?" She then let out an audible gasp and just proceeded to stare at him then me, him and then me, with a "
WHAT THE HECK DID I JUST DO" look on her face.
Finally the guy just busts out laughing, maybe because this sort of thing has happened before, maybe because of her reaction, maybe because he's just awesome. He was a really nice dude. I start laughing, and she's just hysterical with "
OH MY GOD I'M SO SORRY!"
It turned out great in the end, but for that 1-3 seconds frozen in time it was borderline unbearable.
39. Show Stopper
We had a talent show when I was in first grade and the teachers wanted us all to participate. I was crazy into Star Wars so I said that I wanted to play the theme song on piano. I took piano lessons and was decently good at piano for a first grader, so nothing was going to go wrong on my end.
The problems began when two other kids heard I was going to play the theme song on piano and wanted to join in with more instruments to make a "band." One kid wanted to play the recorder and another a freaking bongo drum.
I was like, fine, y'all can join in.
We practiced a few times and here's me playing my nice sheet music version of the song that my piano teacher helped me learn, accompanied by one dude playing an off-key recorder version of the melody and some ridiculous girl hitting a bongo at random intervals.
My teacher heard this and suggested we all play separately (because even first grade me could tell it sounded like complete garbage) without considering the consequences.
So the day of the talent thing comes and I go out and play my piano version. I might have messed up once or twice but overall not bad.
The next kid plays his recorder melody and it was below-average to bad, same as every elementary school recorder performance in existence, but hey, he learned the song and it was probably cute for the parents.
Then, the grand finale. This stupid girl comes out and hits a freaking bongo for however long the Star Wars song is. No music in the background, nobody else playing, nothing.
Just this one girl poorly hitting her bongo to some random tune in her head that no one else could hear.
And the worst part was she finished, and bowed a bunch of times like she was hot stuff, and then bragged about her sympathy claps for days, saying she stole the show. I have seldom cringed to that degree at anything I’ve seen before or since.
38. A Little Cheesy
Outside a pizza place, saw a mom yelling at her ten-year-old child saying, "YOU'RE EMBARRASSING YOURSELF!!"
