10 Social Situations Where Everyone Just Ends Up Embarrassing Themselves

9. Mishearing Someone

There's an unofficial rule when talking to a relative stranger. If you have misheard them, you can only ask them to repeat themselves twice at most. Any more times than this, and you'll have the other party questioning whether you are potentially deaf, merely a buffoon who is incapable of listening to what is being said, or too rude to care. Even worse, we are paranoid we may even look racist if we are struggling to grapple with someone's accent from abroad. "What's that? You can't understand my accent? Racist." When we realise that we have already said "Pardon?" twice and there is absolutely no way we can ask again, we resort to the best way we know how to cover up this slightly awkward exchange - to pretend you have understood, smile and nod away. You have a 50:50 chance with this tactic: maybe this cringeworthy conversation will be drawn to a close now that you seemingly understand whatever was being said, or they will just give up. Still, there's also a chance you could land yourself into deeper awkwardness, if you then realise that they were asking you a question. There's no covering that up.