I need to learn to shut my mouth
If you know me at all you know that I am quite sarcastic, in a funny way I like to think. Today a group of people (including my immediate boss and a more indirect superior) were standing around the counter in our office chatting and, in the course of conversation I made a sarcastic comment that, to be quite honest wasn't particularly funny (and I mean that in the sense that it wasn't funny haha, not like it was hurtful or rude). It wasn't my best effort and so I wasn't surprised that no one really laughed.
Unbeknownest to me though I managed to come off looking like a sexist to my direct boss and a homophobe to my indirect boss, even though my comment wasn't sexual in nature at all (and certainly not intended that way). It wasn't until about 10 minutes later, when my boss (a woman), who had been giving me a weird look ever since I had said something, made a comment about females in the workplace that one of my co-workers realized there might have been a misunderstanding and pointed out that I probably did not mean what she thought I had meant (I had no clue there had been a misunderstanding and just kind of figured the joke wasn't that funny, which it wasn't).
Immediately seeing the danger of having my boss (again, a woman) seeing me as a sexist I protested that that was not what I had meant at all, at which point my other, indirect boss, jumped in to mention that he hadn't thought my comment was sexist, rather he thought it was homophobic. So now I was getting it from both sides when I really hadn't meant anything by it at all. Thankfully I managed to assure both of them that there was no malicious intent and, even more thankfully, they believed me and no damage was done.
The moral to this story is, boys and girls, that you shouldn't always try to make funny comments. Sometimes you (and by this I mean me) need to STFU.
Holla at me