I was eating out with my daughter the other day, and she slopped sauce all down her front. As she used the wet-naps I supplied to clean up her shirt, she noted she was glad it was just me who saw the mishap instead of someone important.
This reminded me of the most disastrous business dinner I’ve ever attended, which occurred shortly after I graduated from college and started working for a consulting company (no, I am not Chelsea Clinton). I think it’s pretty common for young professionals to feel like imposters — children in dress-up clothes pretending to be competent adults and fearing exposure.
That fear goes away eventually, but I had a pretty acute case of it back then. I was invited to attend this dinner at a fancy restaurant with my boss and some of her colleagues as well as some senior executives of a client company.
I had no business being included in such an august gathering. My boss, who was a wonderful mentor and deserved a much better mentee than I turned out to be, thought it would be instructive for me to tag along. She assumed I had basic table manners and could competently handle dining utensils. Tragically, she was wrong.