I occasionally work as an accompanist. In this story, I was accompanying someone’s junior cello recital. I’d worked with her before, but we weren’t close or anything.
At the end of our penultimate rehearsal, she tells me that she’s nearly feeling ready, she just needs some more practice with the devilishly tricky runs in the piece.
At this point…. I wanted to say something empathetic. e.g. “Yeah, they sound like they’d be really tricky to get down.”
But I suck at talking, and what I actually said was “Yeah, they sound terrible.”
Fortunately, as I was blurting out an apology, she understood what I meant to say and found my blunder hilarious. But man, that could have gone so much worse with a less generous person.
TL;DR: Tried to empathize with a client, but actually told her that her playing sucks.
Comments
10 years from now you’re going to wake up in a cold sweat remembering this randomly for the first time in years, even though she’ll probably forget it in a month or remember it fondly as hilarious.
This is absolutely a verbal blunder I’d make, and very likely have!
When trying to sweeten the deal goes Bach-wards.
My most embarrassing client story:
I worked as a BPO manager and my client at the time was one of the largest health insurance providers in the country. I can’t say who, but they recently had a well publicized change in leadership. High level executives from this company used to go on quarterly site visits and they were always a huge deal. Usually it was the same core group of them coming, but there would always be 1-2 new people that joined them each time.
I am extremely bad at remembering names, its something completely beyond my control. Before you even finish telling me your name I will have forgotten it. However, once I do remember it, I’ll know it for good(usually)
So, cut to this particular site visit. I get the guest list the day before. Its all the same people, with only one additional this time. I spend the whole day repeating the new guys name. The next morning before the meeting, where I have to introduce the guests, I’m silently repeating this guy’s name. I go to do the introductions, and completely space on one of the guest’s name who always comes. I was completely mortified. I was so focused on remembering the new guys name, that his name was all that was in my head. I went up to him after the meeting to apologize and explain myself. But its hard to explain to someone who pays you millions of dollars a month that you couldn’t remember his name.