My handshake turned into a full palm sweat festival in front of my boss

So on Tuesday I was at the annual staff BBQ at Riverside Park and my manager decided to introduce me to the regional VP, Mr. Callahan. I was holding a plastic cup of lemonade in my right hand and a hot dog in my left, so I did that dumb thing where I shoved the cup under my armpit to free up my hand for the greeting. The cup slipped and dumped sticky lemonade all down my side and onto my jeans, and meanwhile my palm was already sweating from nerves so when I finally shook his hand, it was this gross mix of lemonade drip and pit sweat. My boss just stared at me like I'd grown a second head, and Mr. Callahan said "Warm day, huh?" with this tight smile. I mumbled something about needing a napkin and power-walked to the bathroom, but my jeans made that squishy sound with every step. The worst part is the VP probably remembers me as the lemonade guy now, not the one who did a solid project update that morning. Has anyone else completely botched a work handshake under pressure or am I the only disaster here?

1 comments

1 Comment

the_claire7d ago

Did you at least get a good story out of it for the family dinner table, because that's about all you can do at this point? For what it's worth, I've learned to wipe my palm on my pant leg right before any handshake, and if you're holding anything, just say "let me put this down" instead of doing the armpit trick.