Social Blunders du Jour...thread

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I'm beginning to learn that whenever I don't readily agree with certain people, it becomes a social blunder that spreads even faster than wildfire.

I am conscious that to some extent I am probably unwittingly committing social blunders on a daily basis, over the same thing. This is because I work in a workplace that seems to run on its culture of banter and sarcasm, which I am constantly not "getting" and have real problems giving appropriate responses to.

It was an organisation and there was a man who was responsible for my affairs. There were documents that had to be filled in and he was meant to monitor and provide them to me, so that we can then fill them in together and regularly. Being the naive sort, and missing those unwritten rules of pride and ego, just bypassed him and went to administrative people requesting the documents. They sent me the documents. I offered to do it again, thought I was being helpful (!), but the man was very annoyed and shaked his head with disdain. Apparently he was afraid of being shown up for being not that caring about his responsibilities, because he may have been too busy and not that interested in those he was meant to be responsible over. I worked the whole thing with the pattern of things going on, tis a pity. I spoke about the event with another person, and they picked up what I should have done and why a certain behaviour was triggered in different situations, further what people would think of such situations. I am very bad at getting social conventions of hierarchy and the recriprocities that is necessitated by them. Things like 'I was made to appear little', 'he/she should have come to me first', 'you're wasting my time' etc.

Another convention, I found about later, is that if you don't make eye contact while speaking to someone (which is almost impossible for me, as I have to focus on what I am saying, and if I look at the person I will blank) is a sign of dishonesty.

I swear social conventions and those stupid rules people make up, just makes social interactions like a chess game...a lot of it is 'keeping up appearences' and 'saving face'

Last edited by blossoms on 19 Dec 2008, 9:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

yeah I ment it to be funny, that's my sense of humour and it doesn't get the amount of appreciation I think it deserves, so thanks

I think it's the mentioning of death in any context that makes NTs so disturbed, I have no idea why it's such a taboo. on another occasion I was talking with a good friend about the most painful ways to die and everyone else left the room and said we were being disguisting I thought it was a great conversation though, I'm very interested in human anatomy and those sort of things and totally indifferent to death and dying subjects...

ha! I just thought of another one I made today (which was not at all a blunder in *my* eyes, but meh).

my friends were criticising this guy they know for playing with a fire torch in his bathroom while his 4-year old was there with him. I asked how big was the bathroom, to which they replied: "why, that's not important".

that made me really angry lol. how can it not be important? if it was a big, spacious bathroom then the guy might have been doing it safely and thus was being now bashed for no reason. I really felt like I have to defend the poor guy but I got called irresponsible and a few other names, and they also said that I should never have kids

I'm pretty sure I have ODD though so it's possible that if I saw that situation myself first hand I would have been badmouthing him too lol

Once again, why would you have a regular ID? If it's because of seizures, sorry I asked.

(I was told once online that anyone with a regular state ID would be looked down upon by job recruiters because that implies the ID holder has a lot of problems in their lives that keeps them from functioning much like regular members of society. Another reason why I hope to get a CDL someday. That should make me stand out somehow.)

Death is a far topic. Maybe the people that you were with were just one in a million(?).

I've never had a problem with death. When I was a child I sunk into depression because the Transformers cartoon was no longer on TV. Since then three of my close family have died and I've been mainly and increasingly indifferent with each passing.

I never really felt much empathy in regards to death until I was in my mid twenties. When I was younger I didn't take the idea seriously at all, more like a video game(?). It was OK if people died, sometimes preferred.

once in high school my brother said his friend was giving him a ride home and I could tag along. So I got in the car and sat in back trying to not be weird. And then the next day the lady called my mom and reamed her out and demanded that I come apologize to her (written) because I didn't say hello.

My mom blew her off and said that was beyond reasonable behavior.

Once at a party, whilst drunk, I was sitting beside a one-legged guy. I didn't know he only had one leg & was tipsily confused as to why I could only see one of his legs (I thought he must have the other one tucked up in under him some way). So I asked 'where's your other leg?'

I was really mortified when he informed me he only had one leg. But he just laughed. & then some punk song came on the stereo & he hopped up & started pogoing up & down to it in the middle of the room.

It was a very surreal 30 seconds.

OK, the other week I wouldn't go to school, for a reason I won't go into here, and my mum made me speak to the social worker on the phone. I hate speaking on the phone anyway. So I had to sit and talk to the social worker for ages, while my mum was at the door nagging me to walk the dog at the same time, which is dumb cos she would never let me interrupt if SHE was on the phone. So anyways, after I while I just says, "I've gotta go now, I've got to take the dog for a walk." So I did, and life goes on. Only then, two weeks later, during my appointment, the social worker says that it seemed a bit rude to say that, etc. And was fully ANALYSING the incident and all. What is it with NTs, can't "I gotta walk the dog" just mean that I gotta walk the dog?! And more to the point, he's a social worker, isn't he paid to deal with mentalists and their antics which could be considerably more dramatic than ending a phone call to walk the family pet?! I didn't say any of this stuff at the time. Neither did I say that I have Asperger's and thus cannot be held to petty social constraints which a bunch of NTs with nothing better to do dreamt up at some point for no logical function. Nobody cares until you have an official diagnosis.