My most embarrassing experience:
I've mentioned my uncle on this forum many times. This was my father's brother who had no children and who treated my brother and me as his children. Every Saturday, he would pile us and any of our friends that we wanted into his car and take us to Charlotte (about 40 miles away). We would go to the area's first enclosed mall (Charlottetown Mall), shop, and eat at the S&W cafeteria. This was a Saturday ritual that went on for at least ten years.
One afternoon when I was twelve or so, we were browsing through the school supplies in the drug store in the mall. I was picking up various pens and colored pencils (loved that stuff when I was a kid) but didn't want to buy anything with the dollar he always gave us on these weekly trips. (I would save them up weekly to buy cast albums.)
The store manager thought he saw me and my cousin Sonny pocket some items and leave the store without paying. So, once we got out of the store, he accosted us and demanded that we empty our pockets. I really didn't know what shoplifting was and had never stolen anything in my life, but I turned six shades of red to be stopped by this angry man and be ordered to empty my pockets. Both of us complied and, of course, there was nothing there belonging to the store. The manager, instead of apologizing, lectured us harshly about the evils of stealing and then stormed back into the store.
I can't tell you how upset I was! I was crying and shaking (my uncle wasn't with us; he was in another part of the mall). Anyway, when he finally joined us back at the car, he asked and asked what the matter was, but neither of us would talk. FInally, about 1/3 of the way home, I couldn't hold it in any longer and told him what had happened. He turned the car around then and there and drove back to the mall and went to the store where he proceeded to give the manager a piece of his mind and also demand to talk to someone higher up. Phone calls were made, but that was the last we spoke of it that night.
The next weekend, the manager was no longer at that store. My uncle told us on the way home that he had been fired for his actions.
