failure

sigh. the other day i committed an enormous gaffe. m, s, and i were at mc. donald's, friday afternoon in cp. there were no tables downstairs, so we went to the first floor and found a table for 4 that had just been vacated. of course, the people before us didn't think it necessary to clear their crap, so we had to dump their trays for them. the table was still dirty, and i was keeping an eye out for an attendant who could wipe it for us.

then climbs up a man carrying a tray. i don't go to mc. donald's nearly enough to instantly realize that it has a self-service counter, and that customers carry their own trays to their tables. what it says about my personal biases on appearances, i don't even want to get into, but i quite spontaneously assume the guy to be an attendant, and immediately ask "isko thoda saaf kar denge? (could you please clear this up?)".

i realized my mistake almost as the words fell out of my mouth, and would've given anything to suck them back in that second. the shock was apparently quite visible, because the guy was kind enough to laugh and say "it's ok". i did apologize ten times, thought of other nice things to say but only "sorry" came out. i hope he's forgotten and forgiven, since.

of course, then i had to face m and s at our table, and that wasn't fun. if i was already at 11, on an embarrassment scale of 1 to 10, they took me to 100. i am relieved to say that the moment has now passed, the embarrassment subsided, and lessons learned.