this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2026
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There's a bakery close to where I live that I used to get stuff from regularly. One of the things I liked had a really cringeworthy pun as a name, though, so I just said something along the lines of "the one with ham and eggs". I regularly got asked "so one [cringeworthy pun]?" At some point I said, "yes, the one with the cringeworthy name". The employee (who seemed to be a more senior employee) said I should use the product names because it would apparently confuse the apprentices otherwise. When I said that it's just too cringeworthy she started saying things like "no one else will notice that it's cringeworthy" and going in the direction of "come on, you can do it". Well, I don't go there anymore.
EDIT: since a number of people are commenting on my use of the word "cringeworthy": for one there are a number of places where it's fairly normal to use that word (and I mean IRL), and for another this happened in a different language.
Well now I have to know what the pun was, if it was so bad
I would likely do the same to be honest, Customer experience is huge when it comes to stuff like that. I don't care what your corporate overlords or your management wants. If what your management wants leads to me feeling uncomfortable spending my money there, I'm not going to spend my money there.
In my opinion, I think it's more than fair to be able to describe what you're looking for or point your finger at a menu item and have that be sufficient.
Right? Having the employee repeat it back in their internal words is fine and tells the customer they've been heard correctly, but you don't need to make then customer jump through hoops.
Coffee shop I go to used to do the Italian thing. Then they switched to small/medium/large. They finally settled on just listing the volume on the menu.
The entire time you could just say any of them and they knew what you meant.
If they have no idea what you meant they can ask for clarification. They even have the cups right next to the register they can hold up and confirm.
Turns out not pissing people off is often as easy as "asking for clarification if needed". Also offering free espresso occasionally helps.
Oh yeah, firm agree, like the employee should definitely be able to clarify that they understood what you wanted properly, but it shouldn't require the customer having to use whatever internal lingo that the establishment decided they wanted to call a bagel or, in your case what they wanted to call sizes of the beverage. I've actually had a similar issue with Starbucks because our somewhat local one did that and I haven't gone back since.
UK here, I'd say cringeworthy is a pretty normal word. Or at least it was before kids dropped the second half of the word.
In my books, without the second half of the word it's a verb, and not an adjective or noun. But maybe I'm just getting old.
It's a verb, adjective or noun. Whatever you want it to be, it's that! A bit of everything at the same time.
we had "cringy"
Common, you can't let us hang like this, what was it?!!
It's in German: "Ei" (pronounced "I") means egg.
The one was called "Ei Love you", the other "Ei Love you more" (apparently even my autocorrect didn't want me to write it). No, I'm not telling the person behind the counter something that could be misunderstood as I love them, not happening.
That's an incredibly dumb reason to not go to a nice bakery. People take themselves way too seriously. Embrace the cringe. Be whimsical and silly. Life's too short to go through it with a stick up the ass.
Some people don't mind cringeworthy things. For me, saying something that cringeworthy can hurt inside. Also, I just really don't like being coerced to say something in a certain way just to match some marketing shtick. The question shouldn't be "why don't you want to do it", but "why do you feel the need to compel me to use a term you made up".
Some of us have too much trauma for being made fun of as children for doing cringe worthy shit. It's not fun and whimsical for us to be forced into it as adults. It literally hurts to expose ourselves to that again.
Yea, I was too. I grew up autistic in the rural US South. I know all about getting made fun of for being "cringe".
The thing is though, holding onto that trauma and letting it dictate your life instead of learning to cope with it and move on is incredibly unhealthy.
Good for you buddy. It's been a few decades and I've learned to cope with a lot of shit but that's not something I've ever been able to power through.
The great thing is, people can choose to be silly or people can choose to be serious. Let the person go find a bakery that works for them.
Edit: that being said, I don't personally get why you can't just say a silly product name unless it's like really vulgar.
That's cool and all but I'm still gonna express my opinion from my side of the fence on the subject.
Sure, go ahead.
You don't get to tell people how to spend their time and money
No one who goes outside has ever used the word “cringeworthy” in real life.
You might be surprised.
they dont go outside
And why would they? There's bugs out there.
I went outside once.
It was awful.
They generally don't use the full word, but I have 1,000% heard people shorten it to cringe. It's mostly people that are millennial or gen Z though.
Using cringeworthy off of the internet is itself a bit cringeworthy. But I notice younger generations are no longer making such distinctions. So maybe this is becoming the norm. Older generations would not have done this. Except for really old generations, like boomers, who will occasionally throw in an Internet slang they picked up recently. Again young gen x and older millenials had this one figured out, just like we figured out technology on our own. Which is probably related, as we wouldn’t use those terms offline since we knew other generations wouldn’t understand. Now that all generations access the internet all the time, on the mainstream monopoly services, that distinction is no longer there.
Cringeworthy isn't Internet slang. It's been around for decades. It's like saying "humongous" is Internet slang.