How an unexpected reply changed the way one woman responds to fumbles

This story is part of the My Unsung Hero series, from the Hidden Brain team. It features stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else.

In 2004, when Claire Burnside Och was in college, she waited tables at a high-end restaurant.

One night, she had a group of 12, and a man at the table ordered two bottles of expensive wine. Burnside Och dreaded opening wine, because she had a history of doing it wrong.

When she began to open the bottle, she looked down and realized she had broken the cork — half was now stuck in her corkscrew, and the other half was stuck in the bottle.

“And my eyes are just saucers. I’m terrified,” she remembered.

But instead of acting annoyed, the man handled her mistake with decorum.

“He just kind of leans over and places his hands on the bottle, and looks at me and says, ‘I got it.'”

He took the wine, turned away from the table so no one else could see, and tried to pull out the cork. But by then, all he could do was push the rest of it into the bottle.

“So now there’s a half a cork floating in this beautiful bottle of wine,” Burnside Och said.

She considered all the scenarios that might unfold; none of them ended well.

“He’s going to want it replaced. He’s going to talk to my manager. It’s going to come out of my check,” she remembered thinking. “There’s no way he’s going to drink this.”

Instead, the man poured himself a glass of wine, speckled with tiny bits of cork, and proceeded to drink it. Then he continued to put her mind at ease.

“He leaned over and he said, ‘Don’t worry, it happens,'” she recalled.  ”And he turned to his guests and he started pouring them wine, and everything was fine.”

Today, Burnside Och often hears the man’s voice in her own as she responds to someone else’s fumbles. When her two young daughters break something by accident, or a server spills something on her clothes, she lets them know that it’s just a mistake; they don’t need to worry.

“‘It happens. I got it,'” she tells them.

“It’s amazing how disarming those words are, and how they can completely redirect a situation from one ending to another,” she said.

“And if I could talk to that man again, I would say, ‘I heard you, and you’re aces. Thank you.'”

My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.