In a world where offense seems to lurk around every corner, there are moments that leave us scratching our heads in disbelief. From the trivial to the downright absurd, instances of people getting offended can range from mildly amusing to downright baffling. Whether it’s someone taking offense at the color of a coffee cup or the pronunciation of a word, the spectrum of what triggers outrage knows no bounds.
This woman at the Walmart deli was standing next to these three men in the line. She starts going ballistic and screaming how these men are too close to her and is threatening to call the cops if they don’t back up. They were at least four feet away from her.
My alcoholic flatmate asked me if it was raining. I said I didn’t think so, but he wanted me to go outside and check. I told him to go outside and check if he wanted to know if it was raining because I didn’t care either way. He got angry and offended that I would suggest he had to go outside to check if it was raining. I really couldn’t understand that argument.
I asked my roommate if she could wash her 4-day-old dishes that were growing mold and attracting pests when she had a bit of free time that night. She went on a rant about how “I have school and work, and I’m the president of a club on campus, and I do all of these extracurriculars!!! You don’t know my life or how busy I am, don’t tell me what to do when you don’t know what I’m going through!!!”
I accidentally called a border agent “sir” instead of “officer,” and he got quite upset. Airports are not always the nicest places.
I worked at a restaurant, and we put up some Halloween decorations. We had to take them all down when someone found the glittery skull decoration offensive.
In college, I was using the laundry room in the dorms. Good etiquette dictates you get to your clothes promptly, so people aren’t waiting all day for a washer/dryer you left your clothes in, especially since it’s crowded and hard to find one. Common sense dictates that if you don’t return to your clothes on time, instead of hogging a dryer that could be utilized, it’s perfectly acceptable for someone to move your clothes to the table. I did exactly this after waiting hours for the dryer in my washer/dryer combo. I set an alarm on my phone and come back to get my freshly dried clothes, only to find my damp clothes scattered all over the laundry room. The person whose clothes I moved got so upset I touched his stuff, after wasting my time for him to show and finally giving up, that he sabotaged my clothes. I hate people like this. If I forgot my dryer time, I would be thankful that someone moved my clothes so I’m not the butthole clogging up the line.
There was a story about how two girls from Portland went to Mexico and liked the tacos, so they learned how to make tacos and opened a food truck.
This made them literally the devil.
I found it especially hilarious because they were “stealing jobs from the Mexicans.” Haha. Nice to see nobody’s above that argument.
My old roommate invited two girls we met at the bar to our place. one girl bought popcorn and was eating it in the living room while we were all chatting. She kept spilling it on the floor, and I politely told her to stop doing it. everyone could see she was spilling it. then she developed a sarcastic tone in her voice while saying she understood and was sorry, but she kept doing it.
it eventually escalated to the point where she was yelling at me. because SHE was spilling popcorn in MY apartment, and I pointed it out. Woman’s lunatic.
I had a subscription to Sports Illustrated when I was a kid for years, and I always looked forward to not just the yearly swimsuit issue, but a couple of issues later, they would print letters to the editor from outraged parents who were canceling their subscription or never buying SI again because of how shocked and offended they were that they would print such moral-degrading smut. This was the 80s, so the SI swimsuit issue then was just models in bikinis, nothing worse than what you’d see on a walk down the beach. It always cracked me up at how offended and outraged some people got over pictures of women in swimsuits.
About five years ago, I pulled up to a gas pump at a Speedway to fill my car. For a little perspective, most of the pumps had been claimed. The pump in front of the one I had chosen had a vehicle already there when I had parked my car. My car and the other car were facing bumper to bumper.
The Lady who owns said the car had just come out of the station doors and was marching up to her car as I was preparing to pump gas; looks at me with the expression of someone sucking on a sour lemon and says ”Thanks for making me have to back out” in the most overly sarcastic way possible. I simply smiled the cheesiest grin I could muster, waved, and said ”You’re welcome, and have a great day!”
Well, this caused little miss thing to go into a rant with the other people in her vehicle as she backed up from the pump and sped off down the street. After leaving the station, my boyfriend and I saw her car had been pulled over by a cop and were being issued a ticket about a mile from the gas station.
We still laugh about it sometimes.
I was in a cafe/ice creamery when a woman came in with a Chihuahua on a basic dog lead. She went over and sat down at the table right next to mine when she was approached by an apologetic staff member who told her that, unfortunately, food regulations meant that her dog wasn’t allowed inside the cafe, but she was welcome to sit at one of the outdoor tables.
This woman pitches a fit and tells the staff member that this is her service dog, and she will sit wherever she wants, she was so deeply offended that she was called out as she didn’t want to bring attention to the fact she had a service dog. Now, I’m pretty sure Californian law means that service dogs are exempt from the “no dogs in eateries” law, but at the same time, it was a freaking Chihuahua on a normal dog lead, not a labrador on a harness like Guide Dogs for the Blind. I totally could forgive the staff member for thinking this was just another pet. Obviously wanting to avoid a scene and avoid being sued for discrimination, the staff member left it, but the lady turned to me and started complaining about discrimination and how service dogs aren’t just German shepherds and labradors, and how her little furbaby was just a much a service dog as the rest.
I used to work at Chipotle.
A customer comes in and orders a salad. Halfway through, I mentioned that we are out of vinaigrette right now (less than an hour before closing), but it should be fine because I can put a bunch of other toppings on the salad anyway. Still tasty, right?
He reacted as if I had taken a dump in the bowl.
He told me to throw it out, that he didn’t care about the excuses I was making, that I had some nerve to try to carry on a conversation with him after telling him we had no vinaigrette, that I clearly wasn’t the manager and I would be lucky to have a job next week by the time he was through with the e-mail he was about to write corporate.
The funniest thing about him is that he had his two youngish (about eight and twelve) kids with him, but they were both incredibly polite and friendly when they ordered their meals before him. You usually see crappy parents rub off on crappy kids, but they seemed to be impervious to his brand of insanity.
My cousin got mad at my sister when our local NFL team made the playoffs, and my sister said she really didn’t care because she didn’t care about sports. My cousin took to Facebook to bully her, get others to bully her and pile on, make fun of her, and comment on how our parents (her aunt and uncle) are probably so disappointed in her because they didn’t raise her like that. This cousin is a 47-year-old and a 9th-grade teacher. My sister doesn’t care about football. Cousin horribly, personally offended.
One time someone got offended when I put on my seatbelt and thought I was commenting on her ability to drive.
Maybe 22 years ago, I had a phone interview with a baking company. I didn’t care to let my peers know what I was up to, so I took the call on my cell phone in my car. The call was crystal clear, and no technical issues.
At one point, they had mentioned the weather and asked how it was where I was. I told him that I was sitting in my car, and I could see that it was actively snowing and whatnot. The interviewer asked me, “Are you taking this call on a cell phone?”
I told him I was. Then he asked me if I thought that was appropriate. I asked him what he meant by that. He said he thought it was kind of rude to take a formal call on a cell phone. I told him I would be more than happy to conclude the interview if talking on a cell phone was an issue. If he was interested, I’d be happy to continue it the next day when I’d be at a desk. He again repeated how rude he thought it was that I had called from a cell phone and that there was no need to continue the interview process. I disagreed with the first point but did agree with the second.
To this day, I wonder what the heck he was talking about and where he was coming from.
I was at the vet with my cat, and he sneezed. This was apparently very offensive to an elder woman (she was there with a corgi), and she started screaming at me for about 30 minutes about pet hygiene.
I had a coworker who got mad at me because I asked her not to tickle me.
(a) That’s inappropriate at work; (b) we’re not children, we’re not in a relationship, we’re not family; (c) I DON’T LIKE BEING TICKLED.
She flipped out and said everyone likes being tickled, and I was being mean to her. Happily, my boss had my back.
This happened over a decade ago. I don’t work with that woman or for that company. In fact, even the company doesn’t exist anymore.
I am also a woman.
The coworker was very young and immature. This was her first job, her first time in a professional environment, and she really had no clue about professional workplace behavior. I wasn’t upset because she truly thought she was being friendly.
But I still don’t like being tickled.
Using a walking stick. I was in a car accident a few years ago, and it messed my leg up. Since then, I’ve been using a walking stick. I was walking to shop (pre-pandemic), and an old bloke gave me the dirtiest look I’ve ever seen.
“What do you need a cane for? you’re only a kid…”
He actually got quite p*ssy just seeing me using a stick. Like, my dude, I’m just out trying to buy some milk, I don’t need your crap today. (I didn’t say that out loud, I just said it to myself after I got home)
A measly picture of an eye. We have an organization-wide theme every year, and all the PCs on our network have the same background and theme, which can’t be changed. So this year’s theme is “Vision is 2020,” and the background was a zoomed-in picture of an eye in really awesome colors. Two women on staff wrote letters to complain that the picture was “heathen” as it drew from “Illuminati” imagery and paid tribute to the “all-seeing eye of Egyptian deities.” They wined and complained to such an extent that the picture was eventually changed to shut them up and let the normal folks get back to our actual work.
I managed a small, new team that had no procedures or policies, so I set about instituting some. “I mean, you never know, I could get hit by a bus tomorrow, and then no one would know how to process these requests,” I told them when asking for their feedback and for them to write up how they did their tasks. Then we would come back together and decide on best practices in a meeting.
The little man filed a complaint to the manager for my use of “violent imagery” and said that he felt threatened. It was a whole thing. Ultimately, he got fired. Screw him, byeeeeeeeee.
For clarity, he didn’t get fired for this one incident. He was a horrible employee with real issues having a woman in charge.
My dad loves to tell the story of how, shortly after they were married, he and my mom went to get some fast food. As they pulled up to the drive-through window, my very conservative mom saw a sign that said “Condiments available upon request” and said, “OMG, that’s disgusting! WHY would a restaurant feel the need to give those out!?” She had misread it and thought they were giving out condoms upon request.
Ex of mine once flew into a shrieking rage because while he was driving, someone swerved or did something surprising, and I gasped out loud.
Apparently, that meant I didn’t trust him, and our entire relationship was in question.
The amount of rage for the level of infraction was…upsetting.
For those suggesting I was overreacting and the annoying one, he was a terrible, aggressive driver. And we lived IN BOSTON.
I’m reminded of the time he reversed the car out of a spot by turning the wheel, sharpening and gunning the engine, and smashing the entire side of the car into the concrete pillar next to the parking spot. That was my fault, too, for not warning him he was going to hit the pillar. I gasped that time, too, despite being warned that gasping was a sign of distrust in the relationship.
Slow creep. The slow creep of crappy behavior until the frogs boil to death, not realizing how hot it is. Fortunately, I woke up before I boiled to death.
I still remember in kindergarten when my friend and I were reading all the colors out loud on one of those Crayola super packs. I got straight up yelled at and sent to the principal’s office for saying “orange pizzazz” because the teacher said I called someone a “p*ss a**” and would not listen despite having the crayon as evidence.
After a 30-minute scolding and waiting for my mom to leave work to pick me up for my suspension, she came in all apologetic. When I explained to her the whole situation, not the school’s side, Ma went apeman. I’d heard her say “stuff” once, that’s the only swear I ever heard from her, and we had just been rear-ended in traffic.
“How about c*nt?! Can he say c*nt?! Cuz you’re all being c*nts right now! This is ridiculous!” And it just went off while I was sitting there all 😮 and the principal is just red af.
I got unsuspended on the spot, but she pulled me out of school for the day anyway. We had a lovely day, and she explained very well how I shouldn’t swear like that unless absolutely necessary, and I’ve exhausted all civility. “When being civil simply isn’t working, sometimes you might have to call someone a p*ss a**.”
The next day at school, I learned that I now had the stigma of being the kid who got the Crayola super pack taken away 🙁
An old man got deeply offended when my friend and I were walking her dog off-leash in an off-leash dog park. He was riding his bike there, which wasn’t even explicitly allowed and started screaming at us about how disrespectful we were being. Her dog didn’t even look at him.
Another time, same friend and the same dog, we got yelled at by a different old man for “not cleaning up after that dog.” She peed on the grass.
Old boomer men get offended by her and her dog just existing near them constantly. She moved away but sends me stories every now and then because it happens all the time. Her dog is a well-behaved golden retriever straight from a family movie from the 90s, and she is a young professional adult who keeps to herself. I don’t understand it.
Typing in someone’s phone number to activate their rewards card. I finished typing it in, found her name, proceeded with the transaction, and said: “You’re good to go.”
The woman replied with: “What Is That SuPpOsEd To MeAn?!” And she gave me a fiery glare as if I just kicked her toddler across the store.
“It means… I found your information. You’ll get your points.”
The woman: “…Oh. Okay then.”
I still can’t figure out why she flipped out like that. It was a rewards card, she got her points, and she got her discount. I just… What?
I spent 9 hours deep-cleaning the house for an inspection. I went above and beyond, clearing my work schedule and going the extra mile, and my roommate “double-checked” my work. He had a complete psychotic meltdown because I forgot to sweep underneath the couch.
I moved out the next day and never spoke to him again.
I was at my mom’s apartment one morning, and my mom and little brother were asking me if the laptop on the floor was mine. All I said was, “No, mine’s a little bigger,” and my mom proceeded to lecture me on being rude and all that good stuff. She was all like, ” You didn’t have to say that. That means you don’t have to brag about having a better laptop. Some people don’t have enough money for a laptop like yours.” I just looked at her. I got my large, touchscreen, I7 Dell laptop for under 20 bucks. Ma’am (It’s a really good laptop that has 16 GB of RAM, Windows 10 and runs as fast as all outdoors. And GUYS, I swear I didn’t steal anything.
My 7-month-old was wearing a shirt that had a rocket ship and the ‘NASA’ logo, and some middle-aged woman in the shop said, “he shouldn’t be wearing that because he’s clearly not an astronaut”
I was dumbfounded.
At school, someone didn’t have a calculator and asked if anyone had one they could borrow. Someone offered them a pink calculator, and they refused, saying that they were offended they’d try and give them something girly.
At my job, we often move around from desk to desk. One guy left his desk with a small fan, and my neighbor would point the fan at his desk.
A new person came and sat at the desk with the fan and rearranged everything to her liking. After she went home the first day, my neighbor pointed the fan back at his desk.
When she came in the following day, she saw the fan was pointed away from her chair. She loudly asked the room if someone had been interfering with her workspace. My neighbor apologized and took responsibility for it but reminded her that it was not her fan — it belonged to the former desk occupant.
She went ballistic. My neighbor was DISRESPECTING her and HER SPACE and CREATING A HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT, and she went to the floor supervisor and demanded a new seating assignment. When she packed up her desk, she took the fan. She eventually got a seat alone in a quiet private space, so that worked out nicely for her.
*: She had gotten into almost the exact same fight in her last seating area and had been moved into our area to soothe her.
It’s specific to France. In French, we have a way to address a man (Monsieur), a married woman (Madame), or an unmarried woman (Mademoiselle), and we used to have one for an unmarried man (Mondamoiseau), which disappeared from official paperwork since I don’t even know when.
In the name of gender equality, “mademoiselle” was also removed a few years ago from official paperwork. Also, in the name of gender equality, some employees were told not to call young women “Mademoiselle” anymore and to go with “Madame.”
So the trick is, some women will get offended when called “Madame” because it makes them feel old, and some women will get offended when called “Mademoiselle” because it’s sexist. Clerks a doomed.
We were choosing a mascot for a summer camp where I worked. It was the first day of camp, and we’d always let the campers vote on a mascot that we’d use for the rest of the summer as sort of a bonding thing. This year, the kids voted for Wolves as the mascot. It was almost unanimous. But one kid, probably about 9 or 10, threw a fit because wolves are “bad guys” and predators and killers, and he doesn’t want to be a wolf. He wants to be a hero. He refused to participate in any team activities because he didn’t want to be on a team with the “bad guys.”
At one point, we brought in a guy in a full mascot wolf costume for some anti-bullying program, and the kid had a massive tantrum. I almost felt like we were going to learn at some point that his brother was killed by wolves or some other tragic origin story. I did feel bad for the boy because I was fairly certain he had some kind of unaddressed emotional difficulties or something, but we weren’t going to change the mascot name that almost everyone voted for.
The really sad thing is that wolf populations have suffered a lot due to stereotypes that they’re “bad.”
I want to start this off by saying that when this story happened, I was going blind. So I had some vision but required the use of a white-tipped cane.
So I am on campus one day. I am leaving a building when I spot a man in a wheelchair coming up behind me. He had a squeaky wheel, so I noticed the noise and looked back. This man had a backpack and some stuff in his lap, so when I went through the door, I held it open for him. Being a nice guy and helping out a random person. That is where I screwed up.
This man in a wheelchair stopped. He looked at me and started yelling that he didn’t need help from me. He didn’t need my pity, and I was only holding the door because he was disabled. I waggled my cane at him and said, “I am disabled as well. I was only trying to be nice and open the door for you as I would for anybody. I was not opening the door for you because you were disabled. I am not going to slam the door in your face because you are disabled. I am going to do it because you are an a**.” Then I slammed the door in his face and tapped myself away.
never thought someone would get upset by me opening the door for them.
My sister’s marriage started its demise over mustard. She was offended that French’s yellow mustard was in the fridge instead of something organic. She didn’t want their (then) infant son growing up with yellow mustard in the house. Arguments were started, but it was just the beginning of the end. My poor BIL couldn’t even eat a sandwich without getting blasted from her.
“Hey, I love your hair! So cool!”
A girl walked by with bright purple hair, which looked amazing on her. So I told her, and she ranted at me about:
– How I shouldn’t talk to girls/women in “this way”
– That it was offensive to say such a thing (for god knows why)
– That I was almost sexually harassing her
I didn’t make any weird movements or say anything else. I just told her I loved her hair, and that’s it. The quote above is literally the only thing I said.
Awkward train ride, that was, since there weren’t any other available spots.
I’m a yoga teacher. I try to find inoffensive ways to refer to body parts so people don’t get uncomfortable. I once had a student tell me I shouldn’t refer to the butt as ‘bum’ and spent a good 10 mins complaining to me about how offensive it was, then complained to the owner of the studio about how I use offensive language to refer to body parts, and she let me go.
About 2 years ago, I went to rent a Corvette in Miami. I wanted a white one I’d seen the day before. The guy in charge told me they didn’t have it available and told me they had it in black. And I was like, “Man, I loved the white one”.
And he got all offended (or put up an act to mess with me in front of his also black coworker). “You don’t like it in black?”.
Like implying it was somehow because I was a racist since I’m white.
It must be pretty exhausting to be inside his head all day.
I used to work at a bookstore.
One of my coworkers was helping a customer who wanted a book from the top shelf of a stupidly high section. The coworker is 4’11”. Customer is maybe 5’2″. The nearest stepstool is God knows where. I’m 5’10” and was nearby, so a coworker waved me over and pointed out the book. I plucked it off the shelf and handed it to the customer with a polite, casual “here you are, ma’am” type of smile. No big deal, right?
Customer EXPLODED. Total Karen, though we didn’t call them that back then. Apparently, it was simply COMPLETELY UNFAIR that I was SO TALL and could reach the book easily, and clearly, I was MOCKING HER and blah blah blah. She went to my manager to complain. I didn’t hear that conversation, but she left quickly.
Bonus: The book was about weddings. She’d told my coworker her daughter was getting married. I pity her soon-to-be-in-law…
I’ll never forget, sometime in the mid-90s, I was walking with my friends in the park, talking about Street Fighter 2. We started arguing about what Chun-Li says when she does one of her moves. One of our friends says, “She goes JE TAK!” (I’m old and haven’t played in a while, can’t quite remember the sound)
At that moment, a cop was running by, pushing his baby in a stroller. He suddenly turned, letting the stroller roll away onto the grass, and got in our faces. Like he was trying to fight our cause he thought we were insulting him, and not just in the middle of a conversation. Now, I was probably 14, but the kid whose face he was mainly getting in was 11 and like 4 feet tall. This guy was definitely in his 30s. He was like, “You won’t back up your words, P*SSY?” and we were like, “The words from Street Fighter 2….which we don’t even know why you are reacting to…? And we aren’t even sure what the words are…?”
Btw we knew he was a cop from the shirt he was wearing and bc he told us we were lucky he wasn’t on duty, or we might have gotten shot.
I worked with a woman who got upset at our old maintenance worker for telling her he liked her new glasses. She was upset because “When you compliment my new glasses, it makes me feel like you hated my old ones, and that’s really insensitive.” It was in the break room, and I was very visibly flabbergasted.
I work “customer service” by phone and have experienced a number of times people getting super offended for little reason. I do a small variety: roadside assistance, service calls for equipment repair, product Q&A, placing orders, and minor tech support – all for different brands.
One roadside assistance call, this guy got a flat tire on the side of the expressway. They had a spare tire but no jack. No biggie. I dispatched the call and told them help would be there as soon as possible.
He asked for the time they’d arrive, which is a common question. Well, I can’t provide an exact time, only an estimate (less than an hour), and most of the time, when I tell people that I can’t give an exact time frame, that fires and accidents take priority, you’re in the queue… They accept that information, and thank me for the help.
Not this guy.
He DEMANDED an exact time as to when help would arrive. Insert a story on how he’s an important person with things to do, followed by saying we’re “not real” if we don’t give him an exact time of arrival to change his tire.
I verbally slapped him out of his story (I can do that per my job protocols) and told him I’ve done this work for a decade and can’t tell him anything like “they’ll be there in 4 minutes and 13 seconds” because it WILL be wrong.
I reiterated help will be there as soon as possible. Then I released the call.
No sense in me entertaining this offended guy, who’s already got help on the way, when I’ve got other people still waiting to call for help.
I had a stranger get upset because I covered my ears when emergency vehicles went by. He said I was showing disrespect or something. Screw that, those sirens are loud.
Fun story.
One year for Christmas, my sister gets an all-in-one printer (scanner, copier, printer combo). Just for fun, we decide to use the copier function on a $20 bill. It prints, we crop it, and now we have this really crappy fake $20, which is obviously made on printer paper and is blank on one side.
The next day we went into Walmart and left it on the ground, just to watch someone get excited and pick it up (we lived in a REALLY small town). One lady picks it up, freaks out about it, and rushes to the jewelry counter to say that someone is trying to use counterfeit bills. To prove this, she takes a marker out of her purse and makes a mark, claiming, “See?! There’s not even a watermark!” Apparently, simply turning the thing over wasn’t proof enough.
We continue our shopping, and eventually, we find that police were called in and they’re taking a report of the “incident.” The next day, we saw our local newspaper published a story about the counterfeit bill found in Walmart. Did I mention this is a really small town?
At a restaurant years ago, this guy ordered soup.
He pulled a bay leaf out of the soup and went freaking mentally, “THERE’S A LEAF IN MY SOUP.” and was convinced it was off the tree outside. The manager continued to explain it’s a bay leaf – an ingredient for flavor and this guy wasn’t having it. Since then, any time my wife cooks a soup, we treat the leaf like the bean in a cake, and whoever finds it gets free reign over being super grumpy (as long as it’s in jest).
I was buying cat litter at the store one time when the cashier asked me what we did with the cat poop. She’d never had a pet before so she didn’t know, no big deal. At the time, we were using flushable litter, so I told her it was really easy, we just scooped it into the toilet, and bam, away it went. Her face turned into a mask of horror, and she began ranting about how absolutely disgusting that was, and don’t we know that they treat that water for us to drink?? How could we possibly be doing such a thing?! I was too stunned to ask what she did with her own poop…
At work, one day, a woman asked for an iced green tea with light ice. She made it a really big deal that she wanted light ice. I was still somewhat new and asked my co-worker how much ice was considered light. I made the joke that maybe we should use little ice cubes, and we laughed about it. This woman overheard us and blew up. She demanded to speak to my manager and said that we were making fun of her. I told him, “They said maybe we should use little ice cubes!”. At this point, my manager could see how stupid this situation was and told the woman he would deal with it. He just told us not to talk about customers while in hearing distance and went back to work.
Backstory: Back in ’99 or so, a small group of us made the pilgrimage to Memphis to spend the weekend eating ribs and touring Graceland. During a taxi ride from Beale back to our crappy motel, barreling down 240 at least 90mph, the taxi driver is completely turned around, facing us in the back seat. He has sock puppets on both his hands and knees on the wheel. As we scream and white-knuckle anything we can hold onto, the sock puppets tell us racist jokes that are so horrible even Reddit would be offended. He swerved from lane to lane and scared the crap out of all of us. It’s a miracle we didn’t all die.
The Offense: Years later, I was the best man at the wedding of one of my fellow riders in that cab. In referencing all the exciting adventures we’d had together, I alluded to “The Racist Puppet Show” in my best man speech. A friend of the bride who was in an interracial marriage stood up, berated me for being a racist a**hole, took her gift back from the gift table, and left. Talk about a tense crowd for the rest of that speech. I was able to play it off and finished the last half of what I had to say. Everyone else thought it was a nice speech.
To be clear, I didn’t tell the story. I didn’t repeat any of the jokes. All I did was list a series of unrelated yet noteworthy events that occurred during my years of friendship with the groom. It was later explained to me that this girl LOVED playing the race card since she was a white girl married to a black guy. When the husband (who returned to the wedding with the gift about an hour later) explained to her that nothing racist was said, only that the word “racist” had been used as an adjective, she was too embarrassed to come back. All she heard was the word “racist,” and her instincts kicked in.
I told a really cheesy joke at work. Something along the lines of, “This kid was a pirate for Halloween, and some lady who answered the door said “Where are your buccaneers”, and the kid said “Under my buckin’ hat, lady” and this perpetually angry woman at work told me it was offensive to her because her mother had deformed ears. She was dead serious. Like I should have known that my dumb joke had nothing to do with ear deformities, she got offended that some older guy everyone loved called females “Tootsie” or “Toots.” She was offended by the image of the box of Skinny Cow Ice Cream.