Friday, May 8, 2020

That Time I Was Topless at a Work Dinner

A few months ago, when I talked about skincare, and specifically deodorant, I alluded to a funny story involving how sweaty I used to get, and I decided to tell this story today. In advance, you're welcome. {grin}

I used to sweat REALLY badly. Like I had to be careful about what colors I wore because it would show SO BAD in clothes. I had to wear super light or super dark colors only if I didn't want to risk showing armpit stains. 

Well, this story is a time I broke my own rule and wore a hot pink shirt...to a work dinner...as an intern...

Through the accounting program I was in during college, I did an internship with a large accounting firm January through March of my 4th year of school {so winter 2002}. Not the one I ended up working for full-time after college, and still work for now, but a competitor, so also a global company. I was one of 10 interns, and one of the activities we did was a Progressive Dinner. With this dinner, we did a round-robin at different partners' houses - so appetizers at one house, main course at another, etc.

As a typical 21-year-old trying to make/maintain a good impression, driving to areas I was unfamiliar with, making sure I was on-time, looking nice/appropriate...all that...resulted in me being extremely nervous. Add nervousness to an already propensity for sweating and a hot pink button-down shirt, and your end result was by the time we arrived at the first house, I already had giant armpit sweat rings in my shirt. 

I WAS MORTIFIED. So my solution was that I tried to keep my wool peacoat on and claimed to be 'cold'. But that started to get awkward the longer I was there, and I honestly started to get really hot so being in a wool peacoat wasn't a viable option anymore.

I just finally gave up and went up to the partner's wife, showed her my shirt, and asked if she had a blow dryer. She was so sweet and took pity on me and took me upstairs to her master bathroom, showed me her blow dryer, and left the room. I had to take my shirt off to be able to dry it, so there I stood - in a partner's bathroom wearing a bra, pencil skirt, and heels. 

This is what nightmares are made of.

I spent the next 5-10 minutes praying no one would walk in there. Can you imagine how that would have looked? A 21-year-old intern standing in a partner's bathroom in a bra and skirt blow-drying her shirt?

Thankfully no one walked in on me and my shirt dried out and I survived the rest of the night. Doesn't that sound like a fun evening?

And can anyone blame me for using toxic, aluminum-filled Certain Dri for years? Ha!

Now you play along - got a funny or embarrassing story worth sharing today??

4 comments:

Judy Koeck said...

Ah....yes!!!
One day a couple years ago I was taking my son to Gainesville for a Florida Gators Football game. On the way out the door I decided I didn't like the way the shirt I was wearing fit, so I grabbed another Gators tee shirt and ran out the door figuring I'd change my shirt in the car once we got to the game (which I did).
Everything was fine until about 10 minutes later when I looked down at the short and there was a stain on it. I briefly thought about buying a shirt once we got inside the stadium but decided to save money, I'd just turn my shirt inside out.
I always wear a camisole under my shirts so when we approached the intersection of two very busy streets and were waiting (along with at least 50 other people), I took the tee shirt off to turn it inside out and ------yep ----the camisole accidentally started coming off with it! Got it all the way above my head before I realized it. Oh, the looks I got!!!!!

Emily said...

Oh myyyyy. I cried laughing. I had a similar instance with an unfortunate pair of dress pants and a work-sponsored baseball game where the sweat spots on my butt made it look like I sat in a pool of water. But that was later on in my career and I just left early. Internships are so different because you are desperate to make a good impression but also really clueless (or I was). Which firm did you intern at? There’s only 3 so I’ll take KPMG as my guess.

Kathryn Bagley said...

I don't have any work related stories but I do have one from college that I will never forget and I may have to email you about it and not post it on here..ha!

Natasha said...

My embarrassing moment is when we went to New York City a few years ago in August. We'd had a long day, Sam hadn't had enough water, and he ended up with a migraine.

We were at a Yankees game and had to leave early, so we knew he was really sick. However, we had to take a subway, walk about ten minutes, catch a train back to the town we were staying, and drive about ten minutes "home."

Sam threw up once at the game and felt better, so we grabbed the subway. However, by the time we got off the subway, he was feeling worse again so I said I'd piggyback him the ten minutes to the train station. Which was fine until he threw up again -- in my hair, down my back, yep, disgusting.

Thankfully, I had a sweatshirt I could put on (and a nice street vendor gave us a bunch of paper towels to clean up). However, I had to take my shirt off first as it was covered in puke. And that's how I came to be standing on the street, in the Bronx, in my bra on a Saturday night at about 9:30pm. Ughhhhh...