The football field was a mass of excited high school grads, teary-eyed parents, and bored younger siblings. My fellow graduates and I had just tossed our caps in the air and relished the sight of their chaotic arcs against the blue sky. I jogged over to where my cap landed, picked it up, and dusted it off.
I looked around for my friends, and for one in particular. As usual, he stood with a half-clueless look on his cute face and shifted from foot to foot as he eyed the crowd. I ran toward him, and he gave me a startled look. I threw my arms around his neck. “Happy graduation!”
I expected and hoped that his arms would encircle me. We’d graduated, after all, and we didn’t have to be shy or uncertain high schoolers around each other anymore. But our graduation gowns hid our body contours, and I misjudged the distance between his lower half and my knee.
“Oh!” He bent forward, sucked in air, and puffed out his cheeks. I tried to laugh it off but I felt terrible. He straightened, somewhat, and was gracious (or stunned) enough to pose with me for family pictures. He stood next to me with his diploma folder held before his lap, like a shield. I grinned for the pictures, but behind my sunglasses I wondered: why did I always do this to myself? Why couldn’t I just “be cool”? No one else was as awkward as me, and I knew I would continue to embarrass myself for the rest of my life.
If you think there’s no way I could be more awkward than you, then chances are you and I often experience the same thing – the spotlight effect. We’re sure all eyes are always on us, and that our audience can hardly believe the awkward situations we get ourselves into. “Won’t they ever learn?” is what we’re sure everyone thinks of us, even when evidence tells us that everyone feels the spotlight effect, and we know we can’t all be in the spotlight at the same time. Something else we may have in common: we see our workplace setting as a stage for our best cringe-inducing moments. At work, we sense that the “be cool” ethos is heightened, because it really does matter what others think of us. Each of my top-three most awkward incidents at work happened while I lived in Las Vegas and worked in public outreach.
I approached a co-worker’s cubicle, and braced myself. This particular co-worker was an intimidating person and I was on her turf – an elevator ride and a long hallway trek away from my desk. Her seniority meant she was responsible for delegating work to colleagues, and she maintained a complex network of workplace allies. If she made a mistake, she had an ability to deflect blame that approached the level of a superpower.
I cleared my throat. “Corinne?” She sat and leaned with one elbow against her desk and one hand on her computer mouse. Her attention remained on her computer screen, and I waited. Then I noticed that something wasn’t right. She wore a wrap-around collared blouse which crossed in front and tied at the waist, and while there was nothing odd about the make of her shirt, I was troubled by where Corinne’s shirt was currently not.
Wow, Corinne is really bold to wear her purple satin bra exposed like that, I thought. It’s especially bold for her, a pastor’s wife. I guess she’s more fashion-forward and less conservative than I thought. I began to doubt that the exposure was a conscious choice, and to look away, when Corinne turned to face me. She noticed my stare and looked down at her chest.
“Hmpf. This shirt!” She tugged the shirt, which was open almost to her navel, closed. If she was embarrassed, she didn’t show it, but it took a moment for me to recover from my awkwardness, and to remember why I had approached Corinne in the first place.
Back then, if I had considered the situation, and my discomfort, I may have gained some wisdom. Corinne was someone who cultivated an overbearing, all-knowing persona, but in truth, she was also the type to wear a purple satin bra with an ill-fitting blouse. She was human, like me, and though she treated me no differently after the incident, I liked her better than before. My discomfort, therefore, led me to compassion.
Could there be a link between awkwardness and truth? I feel like awkwardness is what happens when we try to conceal the truth about ourselves. My next incident of awkwardness, another in my top three, is evidence of this.
I looked up as Maria approached my desk, and I returned her smile. She was a wildlife biologist, and I was always interested in what she was studying. But she didn’t often visit me in my department, and as we talked I sensed there was something she was getting around to bringing up. “So,” she finally said, “when is Brandon starting the new job in New Zealand?”
I searched her face as I processed her question. Brandon was our co-worker, and my fellow outreach specialist. Maria and Brandon, who were not dating, but also not just “hanging-out,” had just returned from a weekend together in Mexico. Moments before her question, Maria had shown me a picture of them frolicking in their swimsuits. In the picture, Maria looked delighted, while Brandon looked distracted. Maria watched my brows come together. We didn’t have a project in New Zealand. “Well,” I shrugged, “I don’t know. That’s news to me.”
The light in Maria’s eyes faded a bit. “Brandon said he was being sent to New Zealand soon to work on a new project.”
I gave her a tight-lipped smile and shook my head. “Sorry, I don’t think that’s right. I haven’t heard anything about that.” What a jerk, I thought. He could have just told her he wasn’t interested in anything more than a weekend in Mexico. Maria read my mind, and her cheeks reddened. I wished I could say exactly what I thought about Brandon, but workplace decorum prevented me. In not so many words, I encouraged Maria to dust herself off and to carry on. If there was a silver lining it was this: Thanks to the awkwardness between us that resulted from Brandon’s lie, Maria and I shared a truth that united us in every subsequent interaction.
An awkward moment is not as bad as you think, at least not for everyone involved, is the lesson I learned from my third and final most awkward moment at work. When it was my turn to pick a movie for the company’s monthly lunch together, I picked Office Space, thinking that my co-workers could use some comedy in their workday. I forgot that I worked with a large number of conservative, church-going people, and I forgot about the film’s naked scenes. When those scenes occurred, you could cut the silent tension in the room with a knife. But afterwards, a co-worker came up to me who hadn’t seen the film before and laughed and said how much she enjoyed it. The top executive didn’t express the same impression, but thankfully he didn’t outwardly criticize the choice either.
Our high school teachers warned us that, since we rented our graduation caps and gowns, we’d be charged for the caps if we lost or damaged them. I couldn’t imagine letting the cap-tossing tradition slide, however, and my peers felt the same. In the same way, I suppose if we were all more cautious at work, we would experience fewer awkward moments. But then we would miss important lessons in compassion and truth.
I recognize now that awkwardness is, in itself, an important human tradition. My high school self had other ideas on the topic, of course, and I’m sad to say that ever since then I have wasted a lot of energy worrying about and trying to avoid awkwardness. So, as I think about what we can gain from awkwardness at work, my takeaway is this: when I picked up my graduation cap from where it landed, I pinched a bent corner flat again. I saw that no real harm was done in throwing caution to the wind… and now, I carry that lesson with me through this often awkward human life.