Confessions of an HR consultant - embarrassing truths

At the start of a workshop the facilitator came up with a rather novel ice-breaking idea. We were all to write down our most embarrassing workplace experience and put the paper in a balloon, which we then inflated and tied. “That’s easy,” I thought and wrote, “I once wet my pants on the first day of a new job and had to hide the offending pants in a bin in the toilets.” The facilitator then collected our balloons, burst them and started to read out the confessions. “Oh God!” I thought and wondered at my madness. Didn’t she say it was confidential? “I used the MD’s favourite coffee cup and he got cross”; “I called my boss Dad by mistake.” These can’t be their most embarrassing moments. My peers are lying to protect themselves; they must have had more distressing moments than those. What was I thinking? That the balloons would be released into the sky and our crippling embarrassment would float away with them forever? That by sharing the mortifying memory it would be somehow diluted? Well, it wasn’t. In fact, the stunned silence that followed the facilitator’s faltered reading of my admission has now become my new most embarrassing moment at work.