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    Saving Face: How to Lie, Fake, and Maneuver Your Way Out of Life's Most Awkward Situations
    Saving Face: How to Lie, Fake, and Maneuver Your Way Out of Life's Most Awkward Situations
    Saving Face: How to Lie, Fake, and Maneuver Your Way Out of Life's Most Awkward Situations
    Ebook165 pages1 hour

    Saving Face: How to Lie, Fake, and Maneuver Your Way Out of Life's Most Awkward Situations

    By Andy Robin, Gregg Kavet and Mike Pisiak

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    About this ebook

    Little fixes for life's BIG faux pas

    Figuring out which salad fork to use is a relative no-brainer, but what's the protocol for using a lockless bathroom or getting caught regifting?

    Saving Face daringly examines dozens of our worst-case social scenarios. Using helpful illustrations and a "toolbox" of general techniques and technologies, you'll learn what to do if caught:


    • Arriving without a gift
    • Forgetting a name
    • Being served horrible food
    • Starting or ending a workplace romance
    • Sitting next to your boss on a plane
    • Mistakenly thinking someone's coming on to you
    • Clogging someone else's toilet
    • Getting rid of guests
    • Leaving a bad phone message


    From the office to the dining room to the appearance of freeloading cousins at your doorstep, you'll confidently turn snafus into saves and finesse those social situations once destined for disaster.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGallery Books
    Release dateJun 15, 2010
    ISBN9781451603439
    Saving Face: How to Lie, Fake, and Maneuver Your Way Out of Life's Most Awkward Situations
    Author

    Andy Robin

    Andy Robin is a writer and producer known for his work on Seinfeld, Bee Movie, The Michael Richards Show, and Live Free or Die. He has worked with collaborator Gregg Kavet on numerous projects. They have been nominated for three Emmys and their Seinfeld script for the episode "The Fatigues" won the 1997 Writers Guild Award for outstanding comedy.

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      Book preview

      Saving Face - Andy Robin

      Saving Face

      If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as unsold and destroyed to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this stripped book.

      This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      SIMON SPOTLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT

      An imprint of Simon & Schuster

      1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

      Text copyright © 2005 by Andy Robin and Gregg Kavet

      Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Mike Pisiak

      Designed by Joel Avirom and Jason Snyder

      All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

      SIMON SPOTLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT and related logo are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

      www.SimonandSchuster.com

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      First Edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Library of Congress Control Number 2004022100

      ISBN 0-689-87890-7

      eISBN 978-1-451-60343-9

      Contents

      acknowledgments

      preface

      introduction

      1 unhappy hour:

      SURVIVING PARTIES AND OTHER GET-TOGETHERS

      1. arriving overdressed/underdressed

      2. arriving without a gift

      3. deciding whether to hug, kiss, or shake hands

      4. forgetting a name

      5. mislabeling people

      6. pretending to understand something you don’t

      7. drinking with alcoholics

      8. getting caught telling tales

      9. not liking the food

      10. leaving early

      2 the service industry:

      KEEPING SPIT OUT OF YOUR SANDWICH

      1. dealing with someone who seems to have stolen from you

      2. repeatedly losing prescription drugs

      3. learning the person you’re about to let go is in financial straits

      4. deciding whether to tip

      5. dealing with solicitors

      6. getting naked too early at the doctor’s office

      7. doing-it-yourself and regretting it

      8. breaking up with your hairdresser

      3 the workplace:

      SALVAGING YOUR DIGNITY FROM NINE TO FIVE

      1. carrying on a workplace romance

      2. ending a workplace romance

      3. falling asleep in a meeting

      4. greeting the same person repeatedly

      5. getting fired

      6. waging an unspoken war

      7. sitting next to your boss on an airplane

      8. sharing a hotel room with a coworker

      4 sex:

      GETTING TO YES, YES, YESSSS!

      1. yelling out the wrong name during sex

      2. mistakenly thinking someone’s coming on to you

      3. breaking up with someone suddenly beset by misfortune

      4. undressing prematurely

      5. regretting that you’ve asked about a partner’s fantasy

      5 friends and family:

      KEEPING YOUR WORST FROM THOSE WHO KNOW YOU BEST

      1. skipping out on an event

      2. being asked to appraise someone’s boyfriend/girlfriend

      3. getting caught regifting

      4. not calling when you’re in town

      5. falling to return a call

      6. getting rid of guests

      7. encouraging someone who shouldn’t be encouraged

      8. leaving a bad phone message

      9. feeling obligated to buy from a friend who makes crafts

      10. borrowing something and destroying it

      11. purchasing embarrassing items

      12. being asked to recommend someone who is undeserving

      6 what’s a body to do?

      PRIVATE FUNCTIONS IN A PUBLIC WORLD

      1. finding a bathroom

      2. using a lockless bathroom

      3. using a bathroom where noise carries

      4. hiding an erection

      5. clogging someone else’s toilet

      6. farting around others

      7. running out of toilet paper

      7 clash of civilizations:

      STAYING ON THE GOOD SIDE OF 6.3 BILLION PEOPLE

      1. ordering off a foreign cuisine menu

      2. reaching the limits of your foreign language skills

      3. having problems telling two people apart

      4. participating in unfamiliar ceremonies

      5. determining if others are speaking english

      afterword

      about the authors

      acknowledgments

      We’d like to thank Tricia Boczkowski of Simon Spotlight Entertainment for conceiving the project, our editor, Patrick Price, for making it better, and all those who rescued us from awkward situations before we learned to do it ourselves: Lindsay, Anna, Roxane, Peter, Jackson, and Kirsten Larson.

      AWKWARDNESS, LIKE PORNOGRAPHY, is hard to define but easy to spot: the cold sweat, the brain freeze, the sensation of having the eyes of the world upon you.

      Ask anyone to tell you his ten worst experiences. A great loss or a couple of bouts of sickness or pain may be in the mix, but odds are that seven or eight are simply cringeworthy, horribly awkward moments.

      We go through life trying to flee from such situations. But we fail, again and again. We get stuck, don’t know what to do, and end up saying or doing things that make the encounter that much worse.

      The problem is we haven’t been educated. No one has systematically studied embarrassing moments and offered remedies that are easy to use.

      Until now.

      We have personally tested thousands of potential remedies for awkward situations. Most have failed terribly. We’ve been slapped, sued, screamed at, and ostracized. We’ve lost jobs, become estranged from our families, and severely cramped our sex lives. All for you, gentle reader.

      But a few have worked. In the following pages, we tell you exactly how to extricate yourself from a wide range of sticky situations: How to greet someone when you’ve forgotten their name. How to dodge responsibility when you clog your in-laws’ toilet. How to ask your handyman if he’s stolen from you. How to dump your workplace paramour. How to return your neighbor’s Weedwhacker after you’ve fried the motor.

      So, ubiquitous as awkward situations are, you no longer have an excuse to hide in your home like some clean-shaven Ted Kaczynski. Go out, socialize, work, live, lust, and love. But keep this book handy. Because you never know when events might turn … well … awkward.

      introduction:

      THE TOOLBOX

      THE TACTICS IN THIS BOOK work for anyone, from the brain damaged simpleton to the self-indulgent genius. However, all readers will be helped by mastering a few techniques and assembling them into what we call, collectively, The Toolbox.

      the toolbox

      LYING

      Make lying your friend. You will use lies, big and small, again and again. Practice your lies. Make them believable. The only thing worse than not lying at all is lying unconvincingly.

      MODERN TELECOMMUNICATIONS EQUIPMENT

      Because the telephone obviates face-to-face confrontation, it will be used heartily throughout this book. But to effectively maximize its power, you should also enlist a range of modern technological enhancements, including an answering machine or voice mail system, caller ID, call forwarding, call waiting, selective line blocking, and the versatile STAR 69. Take the time to learn the limits of your particular system. How many messages does it take to fill your voice mail box? What’s the code to make your phone number untraceable? Where are the dead spots in your cell phone service so you can experience convenient disconnections?

      A DISTRACTED LOOK

      Make it your default expression. A distracted look helps excuse a host of inconsiderate or criminally stupid behaviors. Look in the mirror and practice the look. Pick a thought to help you: Your mom just died. You’re a week behind schedule on a big project. You have a deadly disease. These situations cause exactly the sort of inner

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