this happens to me a lot and i'm guilty of just letting it go every time. had a girl who i work with. same building, diff dept. she thinks my name is matt. i have 2 christmas cards at the bottom of a desk drawer somewhere wishing matt happy holidays. i have no idea who the fuck matt is. there is no matt, not even in the entire building. some times i wonder if she's doing it on purpose to see how long it’ll go on.

i also have a somewhat similar and just as awkward story that happened to me only a few weeks ago. i work for a large company and in our dept there's three guys with the same name as me. another elderly gentleman, we'll call him jeff, is responsible for picking up our mail and delivering it to our other locations around the city. so even though we know very little about jeff we see him every day and exchange pleasantries when he stops in. you know, that stupid small talk no gives a shit about but we do it so as not to look like complete dicks. but there's one thing about jeff - he is genuine as hell, one of the nicest guys i've ever met, and he actually does enjoy those small conversations. so seeing him every day wasn't completely agonizing and unbearable.

anyway, so one of the guys in our dept that shares the same name as me found a new job and put in his two week notice last week. word travels fast around the place so it took less than a day for the entire company to find out. a few days passed and i stopped by a grocery store on my lunch break to grab a quick bite to eat when i saw jeff at the other end of an aisle i was in. now this is one of those awkward moments where you lock eyes with a person who is too far away to carry on a conversation with and you have no idea how to proceed. do i wave? yell? pretend like we didn't lock eye contact and run away? but jeff is nice as shit so i said fuck it and casually walked down the aisle to say hi and then go on about my business. so i'm about half way down the aisle when jeff looks at me and says something i can't quite make out. as i got closer i heard the words "new job." i assumed he was asking me if i had heard about my coworker leaving so i get closer and say something to the effect of "yeah! isn't that awesome?!" he responded, "that is awesome! good job kid, you deserve it. i'm proud of you." i froze. i didn't know what to say. he thinks i got the promotion. so like any socially awkward penguin, i didn't care about anything other than getting as far away from that situation as fast as i could. so naturally, my response back? "hey thanks. i appreciate it!" what the fuck brain? it wasn’t until several seconds later that i fully realized what i had done. i was so motivated to get the hell out of there that i forgot jeff sees me every day. every. single. day. he’s going to find out i lied. by the time my brain came back online it was too late. i was already too far gone to remedy the situation. i’ve concluded i have 3 options at this point: 1) really quit. 2) hide from jeff for the rest of my life. 3) kill jeff. this is going to make for one awkward conversation in the next week or so. i’m completely fucked.