How to recover from embarrassing mistake?

Question

I took my children to the park, took a chicken lunch.

The park was packed, the shelter area was packed except one table had a rolled up fast-food bag on the end, nobody there. I told my kids to just set up there. My son asked what to do with the "trash," so without thinking I told him to just toss it in a container.

So we are enjoying our lunch and ten minutes later an angry woman came up and began yelling, asking where her lunch was. I admitted my mistake and told her it appeared to be trash. She continued screaming, then started saying, "that was a tuna sandwhich from ___. Do you know how good those are?" I apologized again and offered to let her share in our meal. She kept blowing me off and repeating the above statement over and over.

I said, "look, I'm very sorry. I have $3 on me, which I can give you, or I'd be happy to share our meal with you."

She flipped me off in front of my young kids. I tried to fix the mistake...what else could I have done?

Answer 1

I think that you did everything you could to fix this situation. You apologized for your mistake, offered to pay for her lunch (as best you could), and offered to replace her lunch with your own food. It sounds as though you stayed calm and reasonable. It was extremely rude of her to scream at you and flip you off in front of young children. Assuming that you remained polite and genuine in your attempts to rectify the situation, I think your children probably learned an important lesson about how best to deal with situations like this from your good example. I don't see anything else that you could have done.

Answer 2

.. A me about 5 years ago would've said "Really looking at it, if she wanted the sandwich it was still in the bag." Haha. She clearly wasn't hungry or she would've taken up your offer on sharing the meal. hmm. This individual seemed to just want a sandwich. Unfortunately, to my knowledge one cannot undo time as of yet. This seems to be a case of an individual looking for a situation to become offended by. I remember once waving to a group of teenagers with a few friends of mine only to be accosted with sarcasm and suspicion. At the time I had a hard time really believing a person could become upset at your waving at them, but it wasn't until later that I learned that if anything that you do can be translated as "you're less than you should be and I acknowledge that" even if that's not at all what you meant, someone somewhere will find fault with it. You did everything right. The best thing to do here is to let it go. Pray for the person or meditate on sending love to them. If that had been me, although not being the type to throw away an uncrumpled bag unless it was visibly filled with trash after opening, I would've done my best to establish a contact point at a later time and I'd do something nice for her that twice compsensated for whatever it is that seemed to have upset her. In this case, two sandwiches or it's monetary equivalent. She's not poor. She can afford to buy another sandwich but by my gesture I'm recognizing that her feelings mean more than money. Not only that, by her seeing that she's living in that type of a community. She'll be more likely to become that herself should the occassion arise. That's an amazingly positive influence that could gradually change the course of the community for a few simple dollars. Amazing.

Answer 3

You did all that you could reasonably do. She left her lunch there, and there was nothing on it that indicated it was anything but trash. If it was so important to her, why didn't she come back for it until 10 minutes later? You did everything you should have done, and she was the one who acted rudely, not you.

Answer 4

You did everything right.She should not have left her Lunch on the table and walked away from it. There is no more that you could have done ,well except drive her to that special place where that one in a million Tuna Sandwich came from.-Ha-Ha,you did good you remained calm in front of your Children.

Answer 5

Wow, what a witch. You did nothing wrong. The only other thing you could have done is look in the trash, but ew. She shouldn't have left her lunch there for that long of a time.

Answer 6

you couldn't have done anything else. no one should leave food unattended for that long anyway. i would have thought it was trash and threw it away too. you were as nice about it as anyone could have been. i would have flipped the lady off myself and told hger to get lost as soon as she came over. and SHE was very rude to flip you off in front of your children.

she definitely had a stick up her ***!

Answer 7

You were not entirely responsible for the mistake. Who leaves a bag of food unattended in a public place? You handled it perfectly, sorry the woman was such a nutball.

Answer 8

I think your apology was fair. You didn't know, it shouldn't have been left there unattended, you offered the money you had and offered to share your food.

It was a mistake and there is nothing more you could have done. But it shouldn't have been that big of a deal to her.

Answer 9

I really hate people like this. It sounds like you did everything that you could have done to resolve the situation. Don't worry about ******** like this; karma will get her back! Just feel sorry for her kids-they will probably be just like her when they grow up.

Answer 10

You did the right thing, she was being rude, and should've excepted your apolige.