She said WHAT?!

by Anonymous

I was working late one night in 2003, along with my best friend at work. Let's call her Best Work Friend, or BWF for short. BWF and I were both relatively new to the company, and we'd bonded quickly. I stopped by BWF's cubicle for a quick break around 6 p.m.

One of the head honchos (let's call her Head Honcho, or HH for short) in our department was leaving for the night. As she left her office, she came over to say good night to me and BWF. The three of us chatted for a bit. HH's husband knew a lot of filmmakers, so she often talked to us about movies, both mainstream and arthouse films. On this particular night, we asked HH for some movie recommendations for the weekend.

After HH gave us her recommendations, she then said, "Oh, and I also saw The Pianist, and so ... " HH had started looking for something in her purse as she said that, and she trailed off before she finished her thought.

Without skipping a beat, BWF looked up and said, "Oh, you saw the Penis Dildo?" There was no mistaking what BWF had said.


HH looked up with a horrified/aghast look on her face. I was frozen in disbelief. Before I could stop myself, I doubled over at the waist and laughed so hard that I couldn't even make any noise. I could NOT stop laughing. I heard HH say, "No, I said the Pianist," and I heard BWF say, "Ohh....." in a small voice. I felt bad, but I was still laughing throughout all of this.

After HH left, I asked an extremely mortified BWF why she had said what she said. BWF said, "Well, I don't know ... she sees all these artsy movies! I thought maybe Penis Dildo was one of those independent films!" It did make sense to me, but I still couldn't believe BWF had actually said that. Luckily, BWF didn't write me off as the worst friend ever for laughing at her in front of HH.

BWF and I are still good friends. To make it up to her, maybe I'll make a documentary one day about people's embarrassing moments at work, and I'll call it Penis Dildo.