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Boy Was My Face Red: How To Recover From Gaffes In The Workplace

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By Rachel Weingarten

Keeping your career on track is a challenge. In this series, we’ll look at what it takes to survive - and thrive - in 2015! This post touches on that sensitive topic: what to do when you commit a horrible gaffe in the workplace.

Sometimes I wonder how I ever got through my first job. It seemed as though every day brought with it a series of excruciatingly embarrassing situations. I remember one of the first client lunches I tagged along on: I was there to observe and felt comfortable that there wasn’t much I could do to mess things up.

I was wrong. The client chose a restaurant with bar type seating instead of a standard table and chair setting. My supervisor and I sat across the bar from our client and his wife, enjoying our salads. I bit into a particularly juicy cherry tomato and almost immediately noticed a horrified look on my boss and our client’s faces. I looked up in time to see the entire juicy center of the offending tomato making its way into the copious cleavage of our client’s wife. Worse yet, I turned beet red, stammered, and then burst out laughing.

I laughed alone.

Thankfully, I moved on from that situation, but I often wonder what I could have done differently.

I asked some friends and professional colleagues to share their most embarrassing work stories to see if we could collectively glean some important takeaways.

Accept Help: Anne Isenhower, an independent media relations consultant, shared a story of when her colleague took her along to meet with his CEO client. “Pretty much the first thing I did in the meeting was knock my cup of tea all over the CEO and his desk and notes and computer. And it was very HOT tea.”  What followed wasn’t yelling or recriminations. Surprisingly, “The CEO said ‘no worries’ and went and got paper towels and cleaned it all up himself.”  Oh, and the CEO in question? The CEO of Boys and Girls Clubs of America. Isenhower said that she apologized profusely, but “he laughed and said it didn’t matter a bit. He went out of his way to put me at ease. I was mortified, but he was so gracious that it became a non-issue.” For Isenhower, the takeaway was that despite her mishap, the meeting had gone very well.

Lesson learned: Your mistake might not be as huge or awful as you think. Take your cues from the reactions and responses of others and graciously accept their offers of help.

Do you recall your most embarrassing moment in the workplace and the lesson you learned? Comment below to share!

Team Up: One businessman, who preferred to remain anonymous, shared a story that “involves an email blast, inappropriate photos, and humiliation at a startup company I worked for. Luckily, we were all young and laughed it off. But the embarrassment took a while to overcome.” I won’t share the gory details, but the gist is that the man hoped to send some rather “personal” photos to a new girlfriend; instead, he shared them with the entire staff.

Overcoming embarrassment wasn’t easy. “Look, I'm a confident guy, but no one wants their entire workplace to see them basically in the nude. After making it very clear to my boss (the CEO) that it was a complete accident, I co-authored an email with him that apologized for the mistake and quite literally made fun of myself.” Luckily, the teasing remained at a minimum, though there definitely were some awkward moments. He credits the CEO's quick response “to support me, back me up, and co-author that forgiveness email. Our CEO talked about how mistakes happen and how this shouldn't affect our culture or team.”

Lesson learned: The now older and wiser man says he’s definitely more cautious professionally: “Before every email I send, I probably check the ‘to’ field at least five times. And make sure there aren't any attachments.” But he’s also learned to be more empathetic to others going through their own work-related humiliations.

Choose What You Chew: Laurie Hoffman shared another culinary catastrophe. Hoffman was working at a small newspaper bureau when a job candidate for a news editor position came through to have a Q&A one morning. “I'd had a rushed morning and was happy to see we were serving an array of breakfast rolls and doughnuts to our guest. I grabbed a sugary treat, and happily gobbled it up.” I think you can figure out where this is going. “As the questioning died down, I took my opportunity to welcome the candidate and tell him a bit about the area, and the folks he'd be working with. He listened politely, but his mind seemed to be elsewhere.” The Q&A wrapped up, and the job candidate was escorted out the door and to the next stop on his round of morning interviews. As Hoffman passed the conference room window, “I looked at my reflection – and realized the front of my navy blue ‘business blazer’ (and the ends of my hair) were covered with powdered sugar.”

Lesson learned: It can be awkward to eat during work events, so make sure to eat food that isn’t too crumbly, or drowned in sauce. Hoffman says “I don't remember if the candidate got the job, but after that, I stuck to bagels and a teeny schmear.”

For the most part, what seems like a huge work humiliation at the time inevitably ends up being just a blip on your professional radar. But in the age of Instagram and Vine, it’s also entirely possible that the shame will live on in perpetuity.  Miller says “Our society has become such an unforgiving place – mostly thanks to technology – and I hate that. People are forced out of high-powered positions for using the wrong word or not being politically correct – or really just being human.”

Maybe the most important lesson here is to be more forgiving of the foibles of others and hope that kindness will carry through to your own red-faced situations.

Other articles in this series:

1.The Top 6 Networking Turn Offs And How To Improve Body Language And Attitude

2. What’s The Worst Thing That Can Happen? How to Survive 3 Potential Career Killers

3. Family Emergencies: Organize Your Life To Keep Your Career On Track

Rachel Weingarten writes most frequently about business and style and the business of style. She’s also the author of three non-fiction books. Visit Rachel at http://byrachelweingarten.com or tweet with her @rachelcw.