Most Embarrassing

About 6 years ago I was engaged to give a 4 hour presentation to a group of 150 managers from a head office department of a large insurance company. They were assembled for a 2-day meeting and I was a guest speaker. My talk was about leadership.

The event was being held in a small ballroom at a fancy downtown Toronto hotel. It was to start at 1 pm, after they had lunch.

I love peameal bacon on a kaiser roll. Just love it.

Whenever I'm in the heart of downtown Toronto, I just have to go to the St. Lawrence Market where one of the stalls sells what is arguably the best peameal-on-a-kaiser on the planet.

And the St. Lawrence Market is only a short stroll to the hotel. A perfect plan, yes? Get a peameal, take a half hour stroll to the presentation. A leisurely slide into an afternoon of hard work.

The plan came together. I was sitting amongst the other peameal lovers, (actually crammed in, because it was lunch time), munching away, REALLY enjoying my sandwich.

There's no real "skill" to eating a peameal-on-a-kaiser, but one does need to manage the crums and keep a napkin quite handy. In my case, for example, I was wearing tan dress slacks, a dress shirt, and navy blue blazer, and, after all, I was about to stand in front of a small crowd to do my thing. So extra caution was called for. No doubt.

So, it happened. I slopped a glob of mustard onto my pants. Actually the glob landed immediately to my left of the fly on my pants. The gob was about two inches from stem to stern.

My eyes bulged out of my head as the magnitude of what had occurred set in. I had to speak in 35 minutes. I was over an hour from my home or my office.

I grabbed a cab to the hotel. I stood in front of the concierge, spread my arms to display my entire frontal image, and said, "look." I was kind of hoping that from his angle it wouldn't be so bad--maybe I was overreacting.

The concierge put his hand over his mouth. After a second he said, "we have a dry cleaning service, sir, if you'd like to send them in."

I explained that I had a presentation down the hall in 20 minutes.

He replied with his index finger pointing up in a "eureka" moment that, "we have Maria, our head of repair from housekeeping. She can do anything."

He called Maria. She would be up in a minute. I used that minute to run down the hall to check in. The crowd was still eating. I told the sound and lighting guys I was present and that I would be right back.

Maria was a sweet old Italian lady. I adopted for her the same pose I offered to the concierge 7 minutes earlier. She too immediately put her hand to her mouth, in her case stifling a long "ooooh."

It was 10 minutes before show time.

Maria was grunting as she shook her head. She knelt down, grabbed the crotch of my pants (just the pants), and looked very closely. More sounds, more head shakes, while the concierge was asking, "can you do it Maria? He has 10 minutes." She said as she stood up, "I be right back."

My heart was pounding. By this time the yellow appearance of the mustard went away, but it left a large, black/gray, serious-looking pee pee-like stain. My blazer wouldn't cover the stain. It was obvious, ugly, and it makes me shake my own head just to write these words. It wasn't a dribble, it was a blotch.

After what seemed like ages, Maria returned with a spray bottle and a rag. She sprayed the rag, grabbed the cloth again and began to gently wipe the stain. It had no effect, but to take away a small piece of dried mustard that had given the stain a three-dimensional effect. Now it looked somehow like a more realistic pee pee stain.

Time was up. I walked quickly down the hall, said hello to my host. His assistant took me to my seat near the front where I would sit while he was introducing me.

My heart was pounding. I kept looking down at my stain while he was making his remarks. I had no idea what I was going to say. It was obviously going to be visible to all. It was the most embarrassing event of my career.