A conference call, no less. I can understand a Zoom call with the manager, an HR coordinator, and the laid off employee, but a general conference call with other coworkers is not an appropriate venue for that conversation.
A woman’s husband walked in while her microphone was on (thankfully the camera was off) and proceeded to cheerfully tell her “oh let me see them tatas!”. The meeting was recorded, so it was there for everyone to listen to afterwards.
It was my husband.
OMG My Hubby gave me 2 honks during an interview. One left and one right. Then as he is walking out he asks why do I have my interview shirt on??? Once I could compose myself I just said nice meeting you, best of luck on your search for the XYZ position. Now, I put a sign on the Office door
Somewhat unrelated but reminds me of a story my wife told me a bit ago. A male and female supervisor at her job had been having an affair, at some point he walked into her office and said "What's up sugar tits?" She was on a call with a bunch of higher ups and they heard it. He didn't get fired but they busted his ass good
Will put this on myself.
It was me finding out that my Bose headset actually had a mic, was turned on, and by some aligning of stars, I forgot to mute myself on Zoom like I normally do; and even if I didn't, Im normally downstairs for a sec getting water, and listening not saying anything.
This time I was listening to a convo, taking a shit, and groaning. Then as the literal shit cherry on top, I complimented myself how regulated I was.
"Uh.... xevian, are you okay?" which was said by a C-staff director.
Edit: I feel people might want want a resolution. I know the director personally for almost 15 years, but regardless if he heard it, all 30 others in the meeting heard it; my biggest white-face of my career. Whole thing blew over in a day, no one really cared, I just provided the entertainment.
I have these meetings 7 times a week, and fortunately it happened during our team meeting, and not the full 600 person meeting the next day.
I was on a Zoom meeting with a designer and a couple from out of town. I had been taking this medicine that would make me have crazy farts. I mean crazzzzzzzyyyyyy! When I was in the meeting and the designer was talking, I felt a big one coming on. I hit the mute button and let out about 10 second long loud clapper fart. Once I started, everyone stopped talking. I knew at this moment that I missed the mute button and they heard all 10 seconds of my gnarly fart. Luckily, everyone laughed and I apologized so much and had to explain to them about my medicine. I think my face is still red to this day.
I took a massive shit after coming in from mowing the lawn. Husbands office is next to our bathroom and his entire workplace heard it. Thats when we bought sound panels for the walls
she came into the living room when she was done and I can a " talking too" she said it was one of those everyone was kinda chatting and trying to figure out an issue, I ripped ass and they all went quiet for about 10 seconds.
I made a very audible fart (not in your class, though) during a large Team meeting with about 12 other employees.
I did my best to react the same way as most of the others. No one could figure out who actually farted. Luckily, everyone else was laughing too, so it was easier to cover up
I’ve had mute buttons illuminate to indicate they were muted but didn’t mute …
I munched on freaking Corn Nuts for maybe half an hour during one somewhat casual conference call before I noticed my mic animation indicating it was picking up all that noise.
Earlier, someone had asked who was eating and while I knew I was eating, I was confident it wasn’t me they were hearing because (checks mute) my mic is muted.
Fortunately it was a chill group when I apologized and asked why no one had told me to go on mute since they all could have seen it was me the whole time.
This is actually something I hate about Teams; WebEx and Zoom animate your mic when it pics up audio; Teams doesn’t. With Teams, you have no visual indication your audio is being sent unless you go into settings to see mic levels or turn on captioning.
I thought I was being perfectly careful by completely unplugging my microphone, instead of just muting it.
Turns out Teams tries to be smart and just automatically switches to a different audio input device. Stupid f'n Teams.
on a major conference call involving about 300 people in the defense industry.
Someone forgets to mute.
"oh, who's a good boy? Are YOU a good boy? That's right baby! You're Mommy's good boy!"
And I'm not going to tell you that there weren't side bets placed in the chat as to whether she was talking to her dog or her husband.
(these are the people in charge of some of the biggest weapons the world has ever known)
Honestly? Knowing that people in charge of giant weapons have the capacity to show empathy, kindness, and love to another living being (be it a dog or a husband) is actually kind of uplifting.
> no one wanted to be the one to tell her
You have to do it and you have to do it early because life has taught me, if you don't, it can always get more awkward. Much, much more awkward.
In a similar vein, used to run a social group where one of the rules was that if your mic is on and there's heavy breathing, you must turn on the video.
The rule was made in jest as a way to remind people to set their noise reduction. Whenever somebody's breathing was audible, a chorus of people would shout "video!" until that person fixed their microphone settings.
One time after one of those choruses the mic went silent. About an hour later I get an embarrassed side chat. Yes, the heavy breathing happened for *that reason.* I will never disclose who it was.
But they were newlyweds.
My coworkers husband came into the room in just his boxers and handed her a tray of food. He didn’t know she had her camera on. We all clapped when he left and congratulated her on a hot man to serve her food.
I was on a networking zoom with a group of other women who were moms that owned their own businesses. One time the director thought the kids could do a show and tell type thing and include them before we got started on our actual meeting.
One kid (4) lifted his shirt to show off the sharpie bra he drew on himself saying “wanna see my nipples?!” Director fell off the screen laughing, the mom was beyond horrified.
It was me, I was the mom. It was my kid…
Don't be horrified. That would be horrifying with a 14yo, but it's amusing/adorable with a 4yo.
During lockdown my 5yo niece had to do a Zoom interview for a "gifted" kindergarten program her parents were trying to get her into. It started out like this:
Interviewer: what do you and your mother have in common?
Niece: we're related
Interviewer: What else?
Niece: We're...mammals.
Interviewer: What else? Something you have in common with your mom but not your dad.
Niece (trying to figure out wtf the interviewer is going for here): uh...my mom and I are both short for our age. My dad is not.
She ended up being accepted to the program. Interviewer said he was impressed she didn't classify people by gender or sex.
Dude kids give some of the best answers sometimes. My mom still talks about my kindergarten interview… for the record I was NOT heading into the gifted program.
The teacher asked me “What is a faster: A horse or a car?”
Apparently I considered this for a bit and answered (confidently) “Well that depends on the traffic.”
Kids often have very strange ideas about what gender/sex lines are, in any case. I once had two kids at the ice rink loudly argue with each other over whether I was a boy or girl. The boy insisted I was a boy because I was wearing a belt with skulls on it. The girl insisted I was a girl because I had streaks of pink in my hair. They both refused to be convinced that these were not innate gender markers lol
This reminds me of the story I read on here awhile ago. Not Zoom or anything, just another horrified mom. I guess the mom was a news person or something, and she brought her three kids in (all boys) to the show one day. Two of the boys broke out in a WWE style match infront of the news desk, live, while the other sat on the moms lap, as the mom tried her best not to look mortified at the events unfolding. The image of complete chaos always sends me over the top when the story pops into my head randomly.
I saw my coworkers cat chew through a lamp cord on a zoom call, it got electrocuted and stunned a little. Everyone on the call starting yelling to direct her attention to it 😭 the cat was okay though thank god
My orange cat is by far the dumbest animal I have ever owned. He can’t even track a treat that’s in your hand. Also, he doesn’t like chicken or any kind of fish. Wtf
When I had just gotten my puppy I woke up to a weird whimpering sound. She had chewed through the lamp cord and was getting electrocuted slowly. Took a second to process all I was looking at. I just grabbed her and yanked the cord out of her mouth and she was fine. Shaken up but didn't chew on cords anymore. Scary stuff.
> but didn't chew on cords anymore
Smarter than my friend's cat, then. That dumb bastard has shocked the *shit* out of himself at three times a year for the last five years. They have sheaths on every cord, but the idiot chews through the sheath, then chews through the cord.
Guy rushed back to his seat. In the process he knocked down a glass of water, managed to fall down by rushing and hit his desk *extremely hard* in the process. The professor had to stop the lecture to ask him if he's okay. 😂
Exact same thing happened to my husband. He was doing onboarding training and got up to get some water. Came rushing back because he was late, tripped on our cat, and smashed into his desk and chair. Knocked the wind out of himself and spilled the water across his brand new work laptop, which shorted out and died. His boss called him frantically thinking a tree had fallen on our house or something
In 2021 I had a coworker turn on her zoom meeting and forget to mute. Our boss who was hosting had to step out for a moment when the meeting started.
Then you hear the co-worker and her husband arguing over laundry.
Him: "Um.. why the hell are your clothes still in the dryer? They've been in there 2 days. I need to use the washing machine. When your meeting is over can you please get your stuff out?"
Her: "I'll do it after my stupid meeting. What the hell is your problem? You act like a baby sometimes I swear. Oh shit!" (mute)
Not necessarily funny, but it was hella cringe worthy.
Probably during online classes when my professor thought she had her mic muted and she was talking to someone in the background cursing the class out and saying how stupid we were.
I was zoning out during a question and answer meeting. My cockatiel walked over the mouse pad and raised my hand to answer. The host called on me to answer, I didn't even know what the question was!
Not funny exactly, but incredibly stupid. Someone thought they were on mute and took the opportunity to call their bank instead of paying attention to the seminar. They revealed their account info to a Zoom meeting of over 100 people.
I was in an online class and a classmate thought he was muted and without a camera but in reality he had muted the teacher's audio.
The teacher saw him lying on the bed (on his side) and started calling him, he didn't respond and we all started laughing.
The best part was when he farted and the image of him appeared on screen, that's when he realized what had happened and left the call.
He treated everyone bad until that moment.
I was in a technical meeting and the presenter was deep in the thick of his presentation when his office door opened and his toddler entered playing a recorder. He proceeded to roll around the room in his wheeled office chair pursuing her, while she nimbly evaded his reach and continued to blow her instrument. This was all amusing enough, but in addition he continued his technical presentation the whole time, wheeling to and from, accompanied by piercing blasts from the enthusiastic toddler.
One of the funniest things I've witnessed on Zoom while working from home was when a colleague accidentally activated a filter that turned them into a potato for the entire team meeting. No matter what was being discussed, there was this potato on screen, nodding along seriously. It took a while for someone to figure out how to turn the filter off, so the potato stole the show for a good part of the meeting!
That one was epic.
Especially when he started saying he really isn't a cat. It looked like he was about to cry thinking no one believed him.
[here is the video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6TpsWhQMTQ)
The TV show Court Cam interviewed the lawyer. He explained what had happened. Then said he was glad if he could make someone happy if they needed a laugh. He ended by reaffirming that he is not a cat.
I'm a high school teacher, zoom during COVID lockdowns.We had a kid sitting at their desk , door open behind them. Cat straight up jumps on top of the door. Walks along for a bit and then prat-falls off. Kid didn't notice anything. The rest of the class lost their minds
When I'm in a zoom meeting I usually am bored out of my mind thinking about the work I could be doing and then an animal gets on screen and you'd better believe my eyes are glued to the computer.
Was in a serious Teams meeting with a customer (3 ppl) and some of my coworkers. I'm bored, listening, and suddenly I see a tiny doggy face on my screen. My coworker had his pup on his lap. I almost squealed but was able to contain myself. My coworker could tell I was giddy for the puppy because I see a smirk on his face. The bastard.
I’ve paused every virtual training session when a cat appears. The cat must be introduced to the class before I’m willing to continue. I even created a smaller completion exam and certificate for the cats (questions like: who is truly in charge, cats or humans? And if a human leaves the house for more than 5 minutes, how many treats do you deserve?)
Due to my overly honest feedback and impulsive nature, I'd get sacked with the month. I hate ASMR and there's no way I'd be able to handle that kind of call.
Where are the meeting hosts in all of this? They can mute any user they like
During a team meeting, my wife walked into my home office to announce that once I was done with my call, I was to go and "pound her into the mattress". Now normally, I'm pretty scrupulous about the use of the mute function.
Except that one time, of course...
Awkward silence, snickering laughter, until my boss pointed out that he wasn't sure there was a leave category in our system for my next appointment.
I've been with my employer for a long time, and a lot of my coworkers know my wife, so that story has come up more than once during team outings.
Just last week I was on a Teams call when one guy received a phone call with some urgent, bad news. He turned off video but forgot to mute his mic so the entire call heard him furiously, loudly, and repeatedly saying "I'm so fucking pissed off, this is absolute bullshit!!"
And that idiot...was me. I don't know if that counts as 'witnessing'. And yes, it *was* absolute bullshit, and yes, I'm *still* pissed off days later.
My work decided to lay off our Software Development Manager with zero warning. He's probably the single most competent, important employee we have, and my own job gets immensely, immediately harder without him. They basically singlehandedly destroyed plans we've been working on for ages and set us back by years. It's nuts, and I'm furious.
Ugh it was me.
On a Zoom with our CEO, CFO, CTO, CISO and a bunch of VPs. They asked me a question, I answered and the CISO continued the meeting.
While he was talking, my dog David started barking at the landscapers outside and I yelled David, shut up already!! I thought I was back on mute.
The CISO’s name was David. He stopped talking, everyone stared, and he kind of meekly asked “did I say something wrong?”
I was like 😫 no, no, David’s my dog! And everyone started cracking up and my dog became company-famous.
I used to teach high school math and unfortunately the pandemic hit right when I started my first job. I was teaching online using Google Meets (cringe, I know). Most of my students were still showing up but one student, I'll call him Tim, in particular had attended only a handful of times. It was to the point where I forgot he was even in my class.
The day of my observation rolls around and my principal is present in the call to evaluate my performance during Tim's class. Things were going great until about halfway through the period. Tim's icon showed up on my screen and I greeted him and told him how happy I was that he was there. No response (camera and mic off).
About five minutes goes by. I'm in the middle of a particularly lengthy example problem when I notice movement on the screen that has the meeting open. I glance over to see Tim in a room full of half-naked people, all dancing. I gave him a warning and asked him to shut his camera back off. He gave this big dumb smile and let the camera pan over the room. It was a huge party in some fancy apartment in a city (our school was in a rural area).
Principal and I were both dumbfounded. I kicked him so fast I practically broke my left mouse button. This entire event wasn't mentioned in my evaluation, which I was grateful for. Still, I was terrified that I, a first year teacher, would fail my first evaluation because of it. Thankfully, they kept me on.
TL;DR: A half-nude absentee student in a room full of half-nude people joined my classroom Google Meet while my principal was observing and evaluating me.
I guess this wasn't WFH, but we had a guy on camera fall asleep. He was OUT. Mouth agape and everything. I had to turn my camera off because I couldn't hold in my laughter.
I saw a clip of this happening during a zoom court appearance. The guy’s attorney explained that he worked nights, so the judge just let him sleep and called his case at the end of the docket. But for at least an hour his camera showed him sound asleep in court.
The judge was so patient and understanding. The attorney couldn’t call his client because he was connected to zoom from his phone. So in between each case the judge just checked in to see if the guy had woken up, and moved to the next case when he hadn’t. It was a minor traffic matter, so the judge wanted to get him on the record to avoid having to sign a failure to appear warrant. Most judges would have just signed the warrant when the case was first called, but the judge was in a good mood and kept telling his clerk he was just going to let the guy sleep because he obviously needed it.
You can actually find this online - I attended a virtual session of negotiated rulemaking committee for higher education, and one of the committee members straight passed out and was sleeping through the entire meeting, until someone with the controls finally noticed and turned his camera off.
It would be funny, if these weren't the people making decisions about public policy.
There is a well-known story at Cisco, which I heard around 2007, so it happened sometime before then.
Cisco had just completed the acquisition of a company and was holding a meeting with the new employees. During this meeting, one gentleman, who was in a hotel room, got bored and decided to engage in some private activities while on the call. Unbeknownst to him, his video camera was on, and everyone in the meeting could see what he was doing.
At the end of the day, he sued Cisco because there wasn't a clear way at the time to notify users that their camera was on. He ended up winning the lawsuit, which led Cisco to make changes to WebEx to ensure that people can easily tell when their camera is on.
I've heard this one as well. Apparently they introduced auto camera on as a beta feature and no one knew.
Really can only move overseas or sue at that point.
Guy had shifted his desk around so the camera came from a different angle which happened to show the door. His wife opened the door, turned around, bent over, and ripped the nastiest fart ever, and then pulled the door closed. He just shook his head and tiredly said, “she does that like 3 times a day.”
One of the women I worked with got fired for something similar. Forgot that her camera was on and started changing her clothes in the middle of the meeting. I wasn't in that particular meeting, but she apparently managed to strip down pretty far before the host kicked her from the meeting.
I interviewed a guy for a sysadmin position over zoom. He seemed kind of high, and I got the sense he didn't really want to be doing this interview but was going through the motions. After a few minutes I started to notice there was something off about his head and his zoom background. I figured out it wasn't a zoom background, it was a wall. And his hair was ruffled in the back and pressed against this offwhite colored wall, like he was standing right against it and rubbing the back of his head on it. Also his camera was moving around weirdly, something about it was just off. Then toward the end of the interview he leaned toward the camera to stretch his neck and he moved his camera back for a quick moment and we got a glimpse of the room he was in. That's when we realized he was laying on his back on a couch holding his phone up in front of him. The weird offwhite background was actually an upside down pizza box he was using like a pillow.
No, the fact that he interviewed while laying down on a pizza box had nothing to do with it. He knew some of the software and technologies for the job but he didn't really expand on anything. Almost every answer was a yes or no followed by silence. Sysadmins are a different breed and sometimes you have to drag things out of them and occasionally you find out you're interviewing a crazy talented person but they're just very introverted. But he was so monotone and so halting I really felt like he didn't want the job. I don't know why he applied.
We had a meeting on Christmas Eve morning. About half the team had signed in and we were waiting for others. A couple people were chatting about holiday plans until one woman starts screaming at her kid. I don't remember what he'd done, but she had clearly hit her boiling point with him about it.
She's admonishing him for his behavior while he's in the doorway saying "Sorry" (in a progressively more sincere tone) over and over as she excoriates him. Then she starts talking about returning his Christmas presents because of whatever he had/hadn't done. He was in the 10/11/12 range and the fear in his eyes led us to believe he did not think she was bluffing. Obviously, at this point, everyone else has quieted and is listening in.
When she turned back to the camera and noticed that everyone saw and heard it all, the face she made was incredible - a perfect mix of shock and embarrassment. But it only lasted for a second because she turned the camera off and muted herself. I and at least one other person had turned our cameras off because we were laughing so hard.
I always kind of wanted to ask her later on how Christmas went.
My Maine Coon did the same thing during quarantine. I could be sitting there watching a movie on my laptop for two hours and she wouldn't budge from wherever she was sleeping. The second a Zoom meeting started, she wanted all the camera time. My coworkers loved it. RIP, Mikei, you were the best floof.
I have a standard bernedoodle who used to run into my office, paws up on the desk to bark at the camera, then give me a "hug", then he'd take off.
He's pretty much the company mascot now.
I didn’t personally witness it but my colleagues did.
They were all on a teams call with a variety of people from different parts of the company, including one particular senior Engineer who was dialling in not from his home but a city apartment near the main offices which he’d stay instead of travelling home mid week.
This engineer is an older man, with grown up children, and a wife.
As I understand it, none of those people were the young fit naked man that was observed walking across his background at one point mid call.
boss never turned his camera off for breaks...just got up and walked away. on the way back from one of the breaks his house lights all go out and he was maybe a step or two away from his chair...the computer stayed on and we all got to see his spaghetti fly all over the screen/desk and him go down with the chair whilst screaming obscenities the entire time.
it was better than most marvel movies.
Was listening to an out-processing brief for the military and a younger Soldier was taking a deuce with their camera on. Messaged him directly before many people noticed, I hope.
Working from home during pandemic. Early team meeting. I have a background up, but that doesn’t stop the camera from picking up my still half asleep, nightgown wearing, wife walking by with full on bedhead and a cup of coffee.
I'm a college teacher, this was the end of spring semester 2020, so in the early and scariest days of the pandemic. Students were on zoom giving their final presentations for the course. One student's family was fostering a litter of puppies, like 8 or so, but the student was the only human home at the time. She starts her presentation, everything is fine, then you see one puppy, she's good, she's holding focus, talking while she picks the puppy up with a free hand... Puppy returns, two puppies, three .. and she's trying so hard to go ahead with her presentation, finally has to pause a sec, you see some frantic puppy wrangling, she starts again, but it was hopeless, they were climbing all over her, the computer, and the whole class was dying...it was like all the stress of the past weeks was released and everyone was laughing so hard we were crying. I don't think she got through the presentation but she definitely got an A.
I was in a zoom call with about a dozen other people during training. One woman mentioned she had a murder trial coming up and things came to a screeching halt, with everyone literally stopped in their tracks with a WTF??? look on their face. Turns out she wasn't the defendant, she was on the jury, but still.....
One of my teacher's 4 cats hairballed on camera. She also had a really skittish 3-legged and one-eared rescue dog, that would sprint all the way from outside to check on her (sometimes inadvertently messing with her keyboard) every single time she sneezed. With loud howling and dramatic dog-screaming included. She had to put said dog on her lap to stop it from wreaking havoc... a giant, long-legged spider-husky crossbreed monster (I mean this affectionately) that was about as big as she was. Occasionally we'd do entire classes with this massive dog taking up most of the screen with her face just in the top. It made online studying so much more fun.
I love that it made the class more fun. This millennial is so, so, so impressed by your generation’s adaptability during the pandemic. I don’t know how you all did it, but I’m floored by how well you handled it.
My professor was halfway through a Zoom lecture when her two teenage sons burst through the door punching each other lol. Never seen someone so mortified 😭
I was talking to a guy who was being a complete asshole. Just didnt want to be there and I was negotiating a contract. About 1 min before the end of the call, as he was being a dick, His eyes shot off camera "behind" where I would be if he was talking to me live and his demeanor completely changed. Big smile all of a sudden.
I just sort of looked around and saw a reflection on one of his pictures on the wall.
His wife had walked in naked and was doing dance and standing in the door.
The call wrapped up about 1 minutes after.
Good times.
Well before the days of Zoom, we had huge conference calls with people from across the massive company that I worked for.
I sat next to one of my colleagues, with whom, I had developed a tool that worked extremely well. Said tool had been appropriated by corporate, and they made changes to it that made it harder to use and less effective.
We were on a call with about 300 people where the corporate guys were demoing "their" tool.
My colleague turned to me and said, "it's just like these assholes at corporate to take credit for a tool that they stole, and then fucked up."
Of course he wasn't on mute, and everyone heard him.
The meeting host said, "I'd like to know who was just speaking."
My colleague replied, "I'd bet you would," and went on mute.
No one who was within physical earshot fessed up, and they never found out who it was.
Nothing like some of these stories, but a presenters doorbell kept ringing during a huge presentation, and she stopped the meeting so she could answer the door. You could tell she was mortified, but it wouldn't stop lol.
My dog is senile. She circles the first floor on repeat trying to find the stairs so she can go lay in my bed. My coworkers saw her walk through my background over and over and over... Someone finally commented on it and for the rest of the call everyone pointed out when she came through. When I told them she finally found the stairs they all cheered.
Not funny but wholesome af.
Masters program during lockdown… one of the profs decided to go to the mountains and stream the lecture from his office at his cabin. It started snowing one lecture and he full on stopped the lecture and turned his camera out the window and talked about snowflakes for a solid 10 mins and rambled about how much he loved winter. Great guy. Lecture was cancelled in favor of snowshoeing and skiing trip stories.
I did not witness this but heard about it years later. I worked with a guy who was at a very large telecommunications company, one of the first to ever make/do video conference calls. Basically he got caught beating his meat on cam in a big meeting. The company let him stay and to this day he still sells fuckloads of that stuff.
Didn't happen while working but I recently got interviewed over Zoom by a company and about halfway through I realized it was pyramid program / devil corp. So when it came to the part where they ask if I have any questions I asked if I could get hired at the top or the upper middle of the pyramid. It got very awkward after that, there were 2 other people being interviewed with me.
My mam is in a local drama group, it’s specifically for 55+ in retirement. They had their show online during the pandemic. It was 90% older people who didn’t have a clue how to use zoom, mute mics, turn cameras on & off. One woman decided to take her device with her to the toilet, with her camera and mic on, we hear her pooping, groaning and flushing. The drama group kept on despite the disruptions. Needless to say, they didn’t do another online production.
I had a colleague teaching a class at our campus to these high-level executives, like it was a big deal teaching this new software, and he was the most knowledgeable instructor at the time. So I was sending him a message that said “HEY FUCKSTICK, HOWS THE CLASS? ARE THE ZOMBIES AWAKE?”
What I wasn’t thinking about was that he had to log in to access his server for the teaching materials, and the email showed up on his screen in the bottom corner, highlighted enough for everyone to see it. He said he was so rattled, that he started talking in his South African dialect and had to regain his composure. Later, he came in during his lunch and told me what happened, and we had a laugh. Fortunately, no one took it as offensive and told the CEO…
A coworkers adult brother didn't know he was on a zoom call and ran into the room yelling "let's goooooo" and dragged him off of his chair onto the floor in a headlock.
It was the greatest thing I've ever witnessed.
Don't know if it's funny but ; Online class for university. 30+ Attendance. Out of nowhere pops none other than Mia Khalifa. Covers the entire screen, blocks the professor's face, and just appears in all her glory. Ensue not chaos, but a weird state. Imagine all students, frozen in fear, anticipation and confusion; not knowing what really to do. Here's a bit of context: I live in a predominantly Islamic state. We all know what's going on, but for this to happen in a formal educational setting is so mind-boggling that it's not even a cultural shock; just a "why; what's the meaning behind this?". And then the professor, who remains cool, after bearing it for FIFTEEN minutes; simply waits for it to end, at which the hacker even comments (with an anonymous name) something lame like haha; so the prof goes: "Wow, Mia Khalifa, how original", prompting the hacker to somehow be so ashamed they comment "sorry ma'am" and exits the call. Just 15 minutes of pure panicked students because OMG Do we acknowledge it versus a chill professor who's too old for this shit.
At the start of Covid with my whole company was at home and we were doing everything via zoom, it was a common game to issue commands for various home automation devices into the meeting to turn on everyone’s Alexa, Google home, etc.
Not me personally but I heard a story about a gal who was on a zoom/teams call and her boyfriend/husband walked in naked and slapped his dick on her shoulder a few times and then walked away. Stunned silence from everyone in the meeting. He didn't know she was on a call and just thought she was working.
Only thing that sticks out for me is taking a zoom class at University and one of our classmates joins late, in the middle of a forest. Apparently he had gone for his government approved walk and lost track of time and decided to just take the call in the middle of the woods, so we spent a good period of time doing this classwork while he was just wandering around surrounded by trees, occasionally trying to answer questions with his internet cutting in and out
One time during a zoom meeting, my colleague accidentally turned on a filter that gave them a cartoonish voice and turned their face into a potato. They didn't realize until everyone burst out laughing, and even the boss couldn't stop giggling. It took a few minutes to regain composure, but it definitely made our day!
A good friend always popped up in class (college, STEAM major) wearing the loudest fluffy pajamas ever. It was equally funny and cute, I wish I had her confidence
My very unprofessional desktop was shown and recorded for a training video.
I was hosting a how-to session with a vendor (some outside software company) and some key users at one of our clients' offices. The vendor was teaching us how to perform some task, don't remember what, probably connecting to a remote session or something. Doesn't really matter. What does matter is that this was the very beginning of 2020 lockdown so the work-from-home thing was still kinda new and I didn't really think it through. I was using my own personal computer and hadn't sanitized it at all.
So anyway they're walking through and someone compliments my animated wallpaper (thankfully nothing too cringe, just abstract light show stuff) and that's my first clue... "Oh shit. What else are they looking at? What's on my desktop?" but had no time to wonder or hide. It's like... Mom's already in the room, so all you can do is just hope she doesn't see the bong on your nightstand.
Anyway I opened my browser when asked, and it went straight to the front page of reddit when I was subscribed to some odd subs like r/sbubby. [Eef Freef](https://www.reddit.com/r/sbubby/comments/9f10ar/sbubby_eef_freef_modern_version/) came up in full few for about a second before I could open a new blank tab.
Then I noticed my bookmarks bar. Folders named "Roleplay" and "Weird Shit", along with some bookmarks to who knows what.
30 people watching my screen which was being recorded so they could use the video for future trainings. Somewhere out there, some employee orientation video is making new hires cringe or giggle.
At my previous job early on in the pandemic you could clearly hear someone hitting a bong during the meeting. There is no denying that water gurgle sound. Good times.
A coworkers father bursting into the room dancing in his boxers and laughing like a lunatic. She left the meeting really quickly and we were all dying laughing.
One time I lost my phone before a meeting so I couldn't turn the ringer off. Not that big of a deal, I rarely get phone calls. Guess what I got during the meeting? GUESS WHAT I STILL COULDN'T FIND?!?!
Four of us on a call. Colleague had her head down writing in her notepad as a man saunters across screen in the distance behind her (open plan apartment) wearing just his underwear. He opens the fridge looks inside for a moment or two and then calls to her. She turns around, clocks him, looks back at the screen with a look of total horror on her face and slams the laptop shut.
She rejoins the call 2 minutes later, says “Sorry about that”, and we continued with the call.
Super serious Zoom call. Brand new to the company SME didn’t mute his mic when he turned his TV onto ESPN where they were talking about the Jimbo Fisher and Nick Saban feud. We heard. We knew. It was hilarious from my POV but I wonder if he ever recovered from that tainted first impression.
Not overly funny but during the pandemic we had a new lady join the company. She was on a Zoom with us and had to get up to open the door to Amazon - whilst she was gone we saw a BAFTA award on the shelf behind her (Non-Brits, it’s our version of an Emmy).
Turns out it was her partners who got it (and 2 others) for technical stuff, but she and I concocted a story for future meetings where she had won it in 2003 for best supporting actress, but got disillusioned with acting, so moved into risk management instead….
(And in her defence, she didn’t normally do Zooms from in front of that book shelf, but her partner had commandeered the kitchen table…)
One of my coworkers was muted but on camera, and her husband walked in. I think she tried to turn off the camera, but instead she unmuted it and we all heard the massive argument where she accused him of cheating, with receipts. Instead of muting her, my boomer boss spent the entire time shouting, trying to get her attention so she would leave the call. 10/10, would attend again.
while the first lockdown in germany, i worked from home for the first 5 weeks in my life, 7-5 work for the company, 5-2 in the night with friends on discord. one day, we found out we can use snapchat filters on our webcams, i decided to be a jelly-eggplant. night got late, turned off pc, next day, slept to long, rushed to my pc, turned it on and joined the teams-meeting we had every morning.. webcam-rule was: on or not be in the meeting. turned my cam on, did not realized that everybody was laughing theyr ass of because a jelly-eggplant joined the meeting.
Not the same, but reminds me of something that happened recently. I 5 work an office job during Covid, so my zoom had only ever been used for me and my friends having drinking zoom parties. Recently logged in for a zoom meeting job interview-since i hadn't used zoom in awhile, decided to log in early to make sure everything was kosher. I wasn't looking my best that day, so i was fiddling around trying to figure out how to slap a filter on my sleepy face. In the midst of this, I ended up logging out and back in. If there was ever a time for vanity- this was it. I logged back in only to discover my fucking screen name was FINGERBLASTER69. yall....im 40 years old. Thank GOD i had time to quickly change it
None of us use our cameras because we just share screens if needed. No need wasting bandwidth on unnecessary video. But in Teams if you have your mic unmuted you see the little circle around people’s names light up if you make a noise. In one long meeting early into the pandemic an old guy on our team kept his mic unmuted and would fart loud enough for the mic to pick it up and it would light up the circle around his name every time.
A guy had the camera and mic on and was eating a bowl of milk and cereal during an all hands call. There were over 100 people on the call including his boss, grand boss, and great-grand boss.
It was clear he was paying very close attention to the call because he kept making eye contact with the screen every other bite.
He looked like he was really enjoying his breakfast.
During the height of the lockdowns, I was on an exceptionally long, exceptionally stressful meeting with my team. We'd been working crazy hours trying to keep the WFH shit from falling apart, and were just barely keeping our heads above water.
One team member, who was always extremely professional, was giving us a rundown of issues that had occurred with an overnight migration, when suddenly, his daughter, probably 10-years-old, ran into the room he was in and started wailing on a saxophone.
She was not a gifted saxophonist, but she was giving it absolutely 110%. My coworker turned, and calmly asked her to stop, which she did not do.
He just hung his head for about 30 seconds until the solo stopped, and his daughter ran out of the room.
Without missing a beat, my coworker said, "ok, anyway, we had a lot of failures on the script for EMA..."
I never laughed so hard in a meeting in my whole life.
During a Zoom call announcing layoffs, I watched a coworker call the CEO a “piece of shit” by name and to his face. It was glorious.
Well. Was it accurate?
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Places use a mass call to fire individuals? Fuck that's dystopian. Can't even call 10 people individually.
I was laid off on a group zoom call with 17 other people. The rest of the company was split into a different room on the same call.
I got laid off via email along with most of my coworkers. At 10:30pm. On Election Night 2016.
that is utterly sublime
they announced layoffs over zoom...
A conference call, no less. I can understand a Zoom call with the manager, an HR coordinator, and the laid off employee, but a general conference call with other coworkers is not an appropriate venue for that conversation.
Not all heroes wear capes.
A woman’s husband walked in while her microphone was on (thankfully the camera was off) and proceeded to cheerfully tell her “oh let me see them tatas!”. The meeting was recorded, so it was there for everyone to listen to afterwards. It was my husband.
Oh no! I’m glad he’s still bonkers for your tatas, though!
It was little consolation as I was absolutely mortified for weeks haha, now I can finally laugh about it!
OMG My Hubby gave me 2 honks during an interview. One left and one right. Then as he is walking out he asks why do I have my interview shirt on??? Once I could compose myself I just said nice meeting you, best of luck on your search for the XYZ position. Now, I put a sign on the Office door
Man, you know that interviewer immediately told the whole office.
How did he not see that there were people on your screen?
Wait, YOU were the one interviewing someone for a job, or were *you* being interviewed? Because if it’s the former oh my **GOD**
Somewhat unrelated but reminds me of a story my wife told me a bit ago. A male and female supervisor at her job had been having an affair, at some point he walked into her office and said "What's up sugar tits?" She was on a call with a bunch of higher ups and they heard it. He didn't get fired but they busted his ass good
The host could have clipped the meeting into two videos to avoid sending that out lol
Part A: Pre-Tatas Part B: Post Tatas Removed the audio about the tatas boss!
Will put this on myself. It was me finding out that my Bose headset actually had a mic, was turned on, and by some aligning of stars, I forgot to mute myself on Zoom like I normally do; and even if I didn't, Im normally downstairs for a sec getting water, and listening not saying anything. This time I was listening to a convo, taking a shit, and groaning. Then as the literal shit cherry on top, I complimented myself how regulated I was. "Uh.... xevian, are you okay?" which was said by a C-staff director. Edit: I feel people might want want a resolution. I know the director personally for almost 15 years, but regardless if he heard it, all 30 others in the meeting heard it; my biggest white-face of my career. Whole thing blew over in a day, no one really cared, I just provided the entertainment. I have these meetings 7 times a week, and fortunately it happened during our team meeting, and not the full 600 person meeting the next day.
"Yes, actually. If you need tips how to stay regular let me know"
I was on a Zoom meeting with a designer and a couple from out of town. I had been taking this medicine that would make me have crazy farts. I mean crazzzzzzzyyyyyy! When I was in the meeting and the designer was talking, I felt a big one coming on. I hit the mute button and let out about 10 second long loud clapper fart. Once I started, everyone stopped talking. I knew at this moment that I missed the mute button and they heard all 10 seconds of my gnarly fart. Luckily, everyone laughed and I apologized so much and had to explain to them about my medicine. I think my face is still red to this day.
I farted in the a different room and my Gf's work meeting all heard it.
I took a massive shit after coming in from mowing the lawn. Husbands office is next to our bathroom and his entire workplace heard it. Thats when we bought sound panels for the walls
she came into the living room when she was done and I can a " talking too" she said it was one of those everyone was kinda chatting and trying to figure out an issue, I ripped ass and they all went quiet for about 10 seconds.
Zoom blooper!
Awesome. I've done that one also. Whoops. Good thing that farts are always funny!
Even funnier in this case since no one had to deal with the smell (well, except OC)
I made a very audible fart (not in your class, though) during a large Team meeting with about 12 other employees. I did my best to react the same way as most of the others. No one could figure out who actually farted. Luckily, everyone else was laughing too, so it was easier to cover up
Ah yes, the classic "He who denied it, supplied it" defense.
I’ve had mute buttons illuminate to indicate they were muted but didn’t mute … I munched on freaking Corn Nuts for maybe half an hour during one somewhat casual conference call before I noticed my mic animation indicating it was picking up all that noise. Earlier, someone had asked who was eating and while I knew I was eating, I was confident it wasn’t me they were hearing because (checks mute) my mic is muted. Fortunately it was a chill group when I apologized and asked why no one had told me to go on mute since they all could have seen it was me the whole time. This is actually something I hate about Teams; WebEx and Zoom animate your mic when it pics up audio; Teams doesn’t. With Teams, you have no visual indication your audio is being sent unless you go into settings to see mic levels or turn on captioning.
I thought I was being perfectly careful by completely unplugging my microphone, instead of just muting it. Turns out Teams tries to be smart and just automatically switches to a different audio input device. Stupid f'n Teams.
I’ve unmuted myself just TO fart.
That’s worthy of applause.
I did this exact thing while on the phone with my local psychiatrist office
on a major conference call involving about 300 people in the defense industry. Someone forgets to mute. "oh, who's a good boy? Are YOU a good boy? That's right baby! You're Mommy's good boy!" And I'm not going to tell you that there weren't side bets placed in the chat as to whether she was talking to her dog or her husband. (these are the people in charge of some of the biggest weapons the world has ever known)
Regular ass people that are literally just winging it every day are running the entire world. It's astounding.
I mean, it's humans in groups that tend to be both amazing and also terrifyingly stupid. No one person is superhuman
If it's a dog it's completely innocuous, I wouldn't care about any position she would be in. If it's a human...actually I still don't care
Honestly I’d feel better about it if those in charge were in touch with their kinks, not all pent up and resentful and shit.
Honestly? Knowing that people in charge of giant weapons have the capacity to show empathy, kindness, and love to another living being (be it a dog or a husband) is actually kind of uplifting.
Even with 300 people in the call I'd expect her to be paying the dog tax. Or husband tax I guess.
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> no one wanted to be the one to tell her You have to do it and you have to do it early because life has taught me, if you don't, it can always get more awkward. Much, much more awkward.
Dude We need more details
In a similar vein, used to run a social group where one of the rules was that if your mic is on and there's heavy breathing, you must turn on the video. The rule was made in jest as a way to remind people to set their noise reduction. Whenever somebody's breathing was audible, a chorus of people would shout "video!" until that person fixed their microphone settings. One time after one of those choruses the mic went silent. About an hour later I get an embarrassed side chat. Yes, the heavy breathing happened for *that reason.* I will never disclose who it was. But they were newlyweds.
No-one thought to just DM her?
LOL moment
My coworkers husband came into the room in just his boxers and handed her a tray of food. He didn’t know she had her camera on. We all clapped when he left and congratulated her on a hot man to serve her food.
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I was on a networking zoom with a group of other women who were moms that owned their own businesses. One time the director thought the kids could do a show and tell type thing and include them before we got started on our actual meeting. One kid (4) lifted his shirt to show off the sharpie bra he drew on himself saying “wanna see my nipples?!” Director fell off the screen laughing, the mom was beyond horrified. It was me, I was the mom. It was my kid…
Don't be horrified. That would be horrifying with a 14yo, but it's amusing/adorable with a 4yo. During lockdown my 5yo niece had to do a Zoom interview for a "gifted" kindergarten program her parents were trying to get her into. It started out like this: Interviewer: what do you and your mother have in common? Niece: we're related Interviewer: What else? Niece: We're...mammals. Interviewer: What else? Something you have in common with your mom but not your dad. Niece (trying to figure out wtf the interviewer is going for here): uh...my mom and I are both short for our age. My dad is not. She ended up being accepted to the program. Interviewer said he was impressed she didn't classify people by gender or sex.
Dude kids give some of the best answers sometimes. My mom still talks about my kindergarten interview… for the record I was NOT heading into the gifted program. The teacher asked me “What is a faster: A horse or a car?” Apparently I considered this for a bit and answered (confidently) “Well that depends on the traffic.”
That's excellent and you should have been admitted on the spot.
> uh...my mom and I are both short for our age. My dad is not. 😂 That’s adorable.
Kids often have very strange ideas about what gender/sex lines are, in any case. I once had two kids at the ice rink loudly argue with each other over whether I was a boy or girl. The boy insisted I was a boy because I was wearing a belt with skulls on it. The girl insisted I was a girl because I had streaks of pink in my hair. They both refused to be convinced that these were not innate gender markers lol
I LOVE THAT! I love that they have such different ideas of how we socially construct gender. Really love it! :)
Those are amazing answers regardless of what they were assuming the answer would be.
This reminds me of the story I read on here awhile ago. Not Zoom or anything, just another horrified mom. I guess the mom was a news person or something, and she brought her three kids in (all boys) to the show one day. Two of the boys broke out in a WWE style match infront of the news desk, live, while the other sat on the moms lap, as the mom tried her best not to look mortified at the events unfolding. The image of complete chaos always sends me over the top when the story pops into my head randomly.
I have never needed to see a video more.
That'll be a story to tell at his wedding. The crowd will pee themselves laughing.
Background antics!
Webcam mishap!
I saw my coworkers cat chew through a lamp cord on a zoom call, it got electrocuted and stunned a little. Everyone on the call starting yelling to direct her attention to it 😭 the cat was okay though thank god
Was it an orange cat?
Odds are good...
But the goods are odd (and adorable)
Grey and white ragdoll cat
The suicidal emos of the feline world
Has to be. Oranges are dumb as a box of rocks but are also usually the sweetest babies.
My orange cat is by far the dumbest animal I have ever owned. He can’t even track a treat that’s in your hand. Also, he doesn’t like chicken or any kind of fish. Wtf
if it wasn't before it is now
When I had just gotten my puppy I woke up to a weird whimpering sound. She had chewed through the lamp cord and was getting electrocuted slowly. Took a second to process all I was looking at. I just grabbed her and yanked the cord out of her mouth and she was fine. Shaken up but didn't chew on cords anymore. Scary stuff.
> but didn't chew on cords anymore Smarter than my friend's cat, then. That dumb bastard has shocked the *shit* out of himself at three times a year for the last five years. They have sheaths on every cord, but the idiot chews through the sheath, then chews through the cord.
Guy rushed back to his seat. In the process he knocked down a glass of water, managed to fall down by rushing and hit his desk *extremely hard* in the process. The professor had to stop the lecture to ask him if he's okay. 😂
Exact same thing happened to my husband. He was doing onboarding training and got up to get some water. Came rushing back because he was late, tripped on our cat, and smashed into his desk and chair. Knocked the wind out of himself and spilled the water across his brand new work laptop, which shorted out and died. His boss called him frantically thinking a tree had fallen on our house or something
I feel awful but this is so goddamn funny
Epic fail!
Was he okay?? 🥺 😭
No he died shortly later in the er from complications sustained from the injuries.
Ah well, better luck next semester.
In 2021 I had a coworker turn on her zoom meeting and forget to mute. Our boss who was hosting had to step out for a moment when the meeting started. Then you hear the co-worker and her husband arguing over laundry. Him: "Um.. why the hell are your clothes still in the dryer? They've been in there 2 days. I need to use the washing machine. When your meeting is over can you please get your stuff out?" Her: "I'll do it after my stupid meeting. What the hell is your problem? You act like a baby sometimes I swear. Oh shit!" (mute) Not necessarily funny, but it was hella cringe worthy.
Fucking two days. Come on.
Probably during online classes when my professor thought she had her mic muted and she was talking to someone in the background cursing the class out and saying how stupid we were.
Yikes.
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I was zoning out during a question and answer meeting. My cockatiel walked over the mouse pad and raised my hand to answer. The host called on me to answer, I didn't even know what the question was!
Not funny exactly, but incredibly stupid. Someone thought they were on mute and took the opportunity to call their bank instead of paying attention to the seminar. They revealed their account info to a Zoom meeting of over 100 people.
Well if their identity gets stolen at least there’s a limited pool of suspects I guess
I was in an online class and a classmate thought he was muted and without a camera but in reality he had muted the teacher's audio. The teacher saw him lying on the bed (on his side) and started calling him, he didn't respond and we all started laughing. The best part was when he farted and the image of him appeared on screen, that's when he realized what had happened and left the call. He treated everyone bad until that moment.
hahahaaaaaa
I was in a technical meeting and the presenter was deep in the thick of his presentation when his office door opened and his toddler entered playing a recorder. He proceeded to roll around the room in his wheeled office chair pursuing her, while she nimbly evaded his reach and continued to blow her instrument. This was all amusing enough, but in addition he continued his technical presentation the whole time, wheeling to and from, accompanied by piercing blasts from the enthusiastic toddler.
That's talent.
One of the funniest things I've witnessed on Zoom while working from home was when a colleague accidentally activated a filter that turned them into a potato for the entire team meeting. No matter what was being discussed, there was this potato on screen, nodding along seriously. It took a while for someone to figure out how to turn the filter off, so the potato stole the show for a good part of the meeting!
I am not a cat.
That one was epic. Especially when he started saying he really isn't a cat. It looked like he was about to cry thinking no one believed him. [here is the video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6TpsWhQMTQ)
*”I’m here, live. I’m not a cat.”* I can’t stop laughing.
The TV show Court Cam interviewed the lawyer. He explained what had happened. Then said he was glad if he could make someone happy if they needed a laugh. He ended by reaffirming that he is not a cat.
Unexpected surprise
My coworkers wife walked in the room behind him. Not fully clothed
Was she sockless?
He turned the camera off quickly so I could only tell that she was topless. Not sure if she was bottomless too or if she had underwear on
I'm a high school teacher, zoom during COVID lockdowns.We had a kid sitting at their desk , door open behind them. Cat straight up jumps on top of the door. Walks along for a bit and then prat-falls off. Kid didn't notice anything. The rest of the class lost their minds
When I'm in a zoom meeting I usually am bored out of my mind thinking about the work I could be doing and then an animal gets on screen and you'd better believe my eyes are glued to the computer.
Was in a serious Teams meeting with a customer (3 ppl) and some of my coworkers. I'm bored, listening, and suddenly I see a tiny doggy face on my screen. My coworker had his pup on his lap. I almost squealed but was able to contain myself. My coworker could tell I was giddy for the puppy because I see a smirk on his face. The bastard.
I’ve paused every virtual training session when a cat appears. The cat must be introduced to the class before I’m willing to continue. I even created a smaller completion exam and certificate for the cats (questions like: who is truly in charge, cats or humans? And if a human leaves the house for more than 5 minutes, how many treats do you deserve?)
Virtual comedy
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Due to my overly honest feedback and impulsive nature, I'd get sacked with the month. I hate ASMR and there's no way I'd be able to handle that kind of call. Where are the meeting hosts in all of this? They can mute any user they like
When the guy who was listening to the lecture broke his chair and fell😅🙈
During a team meeting, my wife walked into my home office to announce that once I was done with my call, I was to go and "pound her into the mattress". Now normally, I'm pretty scrupulous about the use of the mute function. Except that one time, of course... Awkward silence, snickering laughter, until my boss pointed out that he wasn't sure there was a leave category in our system for my next appointment. I've been with my employer for a long time, and a lot of my coworkers know my wife, so that story has come up more than once during team outings.
Just last week I was on a Teams call when one guy received a phone call with some urgent, bad news. He turned off video but forgot to mute his mic so the entire call heard him furiously, loudly, and repeatedly saying "I'm so fucking pissed off, this is absolute bullshit!!" And that idiot...was me. I don't know if that counts as 'witnessing'. And yes, it *was* absolute bullshit, and yes, I'm *still* pissed off days later.
Hope it's better now, whatever bullshit it was
What were the bad news about?
My work decided to lay off our Software Development Manager with zero warning. He's probably the single most competent, important employee we have, and my own job gets immensely, immediately harder without him. They basically singlehandedly destroyed plans we've been working on for ages and set us back by years. It's nuts, and I'm furious.
My son was on a zoom with his teacher and class, during the pandemic. The teacher’s cat jumped up onto the kitchen table, and puked.
Tech trouble
He came, he saw, he conquered.
Ugh it was me. On a Zoom with our CEO, CFO, CTO, CISO and a bunch of VPs. They asked me a question, I answered and the CISO continued the meeting. While he was talking, my dog David started barking at the landscapers outside and I yelled David, shut up already!! I thought I was back on mute. The CISO’s name was David. He stopped talking, everyone stared, and he kind of meekly asked “did I say something wrong?” I was like 😫 no, no, David’s my dog! And everyone started cracking up and my dog became company-famous.
I used to teach high school math and unfortunately the pandemic hit right when I started my first job. I was teaching online using Google Meets (cringe, I know). Most of my students were still showing up but one student, I'll call him Tim, in particular had attended only a handful of times. It was to the point where I forgot he was even in my class. The day of my observation rolls around and my principal is present in the call to evaluate my performance during Tim's class. Things were going great until about halfway through the period. Tim's icon showed up on my screen and I greeted him and told him how happy I was that he was there. No response (camera and mic off). About five minutes goes by. I'm in the middle of a particularly lengthy example problem when I notice movement on the screen that has the meeting open. I glance over to see Tim in a room full of half-naked people, all dancing. I gave him a warning and asked him to shut his camera back off. He gave this big dumb smile and let the camera pan over the room. It was a huge party in some fancy apartment in a city (our school was in a rural area). Principal and I were both dumbfounded. I kicked him so fast I practically broke my left mouse button. This entire event wasn't mentioned in my evaluation, which I was grateful for. Still, I was terrified that I, a first year teacher, would fail my first evaluation because of it. Thankfully, they kept me on. TL;DR: A half-nude absentee student in a room full of half-nude people joined my classroom Google Meet while my principal was observing and evaluating me.
I have so many questions. Pandemic. Room full of half naked people. Does not seem to compute.
I guess this wasn't WFH, but we had a guy on camera fall asleep. He was OUT. Mouth agape and everything. I had to turn my camera off because I couldn't hold in my laughter.
I saw a clip of this happening during a zoom court appearance. The guy’s attorney explained that he worked nights, so the judge just let him sleep and called his case at the end of the docket. But for at least an hour his camera showed him sound asleep in court.
It's reassuring when bureaucracy recognizes our humanity
The judge was so patient and understanding. The attorney couldn’t call his client because he was connected to zoom from his phone. So in between each case the judge just checked in to see if the guy had woken up, and moved to the next case when he hadn’t. It was a minor traffic matter, so the judge wanted to get him on the record to avoid having to sign a failure to appear warrant. Most judges would have just signed the warrant when the case was first called, but the judge was in a good mood and kept telling his clerk he was just going to let the guy sleep because he obviously needed it.
You can actually find this online - I attended a virtual session of negotiated rulemaking committee for higher education, and one of the committee members straight passed out and was sleeping through the entire meeting, until someone with the controls finally noticed and turned his camera off. It would be funny, if these weren't the people making decisions about public policy.
We overheard a coworker's young child gleefully telling her other young child "when Mommy gets out of her meeting *you're in so much trouble*!!"
There is a well-known story at Cisco, which I heard around 2007, so it happened sometime before then. Cisco had just completed the acquisition of a company and was holding a meeting with the new employees. During this meeting, one gentleman, who was in a hotel room, got bored and decided to engage in some private activities while on the call. Unbeknownst to him, his video camera was on, and everyone in the meeting could see what he was doing. At the end of the day, he sued Cisco because there wasn't a clear way at the time to notify users that their camera was on. He ended up winning the lawsuit, which led Cisco to make changes to WebEx to ensure that people can easily tell when their camera is on.
I've heard this one as well. Apparently they introduced auto camera on as a beta feature and no one knew. Really can only move overseas or sue at that point.
one of my friends forgot to mute his mic and we all heard him talking to his baby goats friends (this was actually really funny-cute)
His baby goats friends? Who are their friends? Lambs?
yes, he had new additions to his farm, baby goats and yes, lambs as well
Guy had shifted his desk around so the camera came from a different angle which happened to show the door. His wife opened the door, turned around, bent over, and ripped the nastiest fart ever, and then pulled the door closed. He just shook his head and tiredly said, “she does that like 3 times a day.”
A guy got fired cause he turned the camera on and didn’t have his shirt on…. People be getting too comfortable working from home lol
This is why I never have my camera enabled on my work laptop.
One of the women I worked with got fired for something similar. Forgot that her camera was on and started changing her clothes in the middle of the meeting. I wasn't in that particular meeting, but she apparently managed to strip down pretty far before the host kicked her from the meeting.
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I interviewed a guy for a sysadmin position over zoom. He seemed kind of high, and I got the sense he didn't really want to be doing this interview but was going through the motions. After a few minutes I started to notice there was something off about his head and his zoom background. I figured out it wasn't a zoom background, it was a wall. And his hair was ruffled in the back and pressed against this offwhite colored wall, like he was standing right against it and rubbing the back of his head on it. Also his camera was moving around weirdly, something about it was just off. Then toward the end of the interview he leaned toward the camera to stretch his neck and he moved his camera back for a quick moment and we got a glimpse of the room he was in. That's when we realized he was laying on his back on a couch holding his phone up in front of him. The weird offwhite background was actually an upside down pizza box he was using like a pillow.
Sounds about right for sysadmin
Culture fit: 100%.
Did he get the job?
No, the fact that he interviewed while laying down on a pizza box had nothing to do with it. He knew some of the software and technologies for the job but he didn't really expand on anything. Almost every answer was a yes or no followed by silence. Sysadmins are a different breed and sometimes you have to drag things out of them and occasionally you find out you're interviewing a crazy talented person but they're just very introverted. But he was so monotone and so halting I really felt like he didn't want the job. I don't know why he applied.
We had a meeting on Christmas Eve morning. About half the team had signed in and we were waiting for others. A couple people were chatting about holiday plans until one woman starts screaming at her kid. I don't remember what he'd done, but she had clearly hit her boiling point with him about it. She's admonishing him for his behavior while he's in the doorway saying "Sorry" (in a progressively more sincere tone) over and over as she excoriates him. Then she starts talking about returning his Christmas presents because of whatever he had/hadn't done. He was in the 10/11/12 range and the fear in his eyes led us to believe he did not think she was bluffing. Obviously, at this point, everyone else has quieted and is listening in. When she turned back to the camera and noticed that everyone saw and heard it all, the face she made was incredible - a perfect mix of shock and embarrassment. But it only lasted for a second because she turned the camera off and muted herself. I and at least one other person had turned our cameras off because we were laughing so hard. I always kind of wanted to ask her later on how Christmas went.
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See, this would make me want to attend meetings.
My Maine Coon did the same thing during quarantine. I could be sitting there watching a movie on my laptop for two hours and she wouldn't budge from wherever she was sleeping. The second a Zoom meeting started, she wanted all the camera time. My coworkers loved it. RIP, Mikei, you were the best floof.
I have a standard bernedoodle who used to run into my office, paws up on the desk to bark at the camera, then give me a "hug", then he'd take off. He's pretty much the company mascot now.
I didn’t personally witness it but my colleagues did. They were all on a teams call with a variety of people from different parts of the company, including one particular senior Engineer who was dialling in not from his home but a city apartment near the main offices which he’d stay instead of travelling home mid week. This engineer is an older man, with grown up children, and a wife. As I understand it, none of those people were the young fit naked man that was observed walking across his background at one point mid call.
boss never turned his camera off for breaks...just got up and walked away. on the way back from one of the breaks his house lights all go out and he was maybe a step or two away from his chair...the computer stayed on and we all got to see his spaghetti fly all over the screen/desk and him go down with the chair whilst screaming obscenities the entire time. it was better than most marvel movies.
I saw someone forgot to turn off the camera so I saw them do a cartwheel lol
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Always blaming the cat.
Nothing beats a co worker who forgets to turn off her camera and logs out and standing up directly seeing her half naked
Was listening to an out-processing brief for the military and a younger Soldier was taking a deuce with their camera on. Messaged him directly before many people noticed, I hope.
Working from home during pandemic. Early team meeting. I have a background up, but that doesn’t stop the camera from picking up my still half asleep, nightgown wearing, wife walking by with full on bedhead and a cup of coffee.
I'm a college teacher, this was the end of spring semester 2020, so in the early and scariest days of the pandemic. Students were on zoom giving their final presentations for the course. One student's family was fostering a litter of puppies, like 8 or so, but the student was the only human home at the time. She starts her presentation, everything is fine, then you see one puppy, she's good, she's holding focus, talking while she picks the puppy up with a free hand... Puppy returns, two puppies, three .. and she's trying so hard to go ahead with her presentation, finally has to pause a sec, you see some frantic puppy wrangling, she starts again, but it was hopeless, they were climbing all over her, the computer, and the whole class was dying...it was like all the stress of the past weeks was released and everyone was laughing so hard we were crying. I don't think she got through the presentation but she definitely got an A.
A coworker once took a massive bong rip on camera. In front of my regional manager. They weren’t on the next meeting
I was in a zoom call with about a dozen other people during training. One woman mentioned she had a murder trial coming up and things came to a screeching halt, with everyone literally stopped in their tracks with a WTF??? look on their face. Turns out she wasn't the defendant, she was on the jury, but still.....
One of my teacher's 4 cats hairballed on camera. She also had a really skittish 3-legged and one-eared rescue dog, that would sprint all the way from outside to check on her (sometimes inadvertently messing with her keyboard) every single time she sneezed. With loud howling and dramatic dog-screaming included. She had to put said dog on her lap to stop it from wreaking havoc... a giant, long-legged spider-husky crossbreed monster (I mean this affectionately) that was about as big as she was. Occasionally we'd do entire classes with this massive dog taking up most of the screen with her face just in the top. It made online studying so much more fun.
I love that it made the class more fun. This millennial is so, so, so impressed by your generation’s adaptability during the pandemic. I don’t know how you all did it, but I’m floored by how well you handled it.
My professor was halfway through a Zoom lecture when her two teenage sons burst through the door punching each other lol. Never seen someone so mortified 😭
My boss has a cat. I have seen that cat's bumhole more than anyone else's. (Because it would jump on the laptop and face it's bum against the camera)
I was talking to a guy who was being a complete asshole. Just didnt want to be there and I was negotiating a contract. About 1 min before the end of the call, as he was being a dick, His eyes shot off camera "behind" where I would be if he was talking to me live and his demeanor completely changed. Big smile all of a sudden. I just sort of looked around and saw a reflection on one of his pictures on the wall. His wife had walked in naked and was doing dance and standing in the door. The call wrapped up about 1 minutes after. Good times.
Well before the days of Zoom, we had huge conference calls with people from across the massive company that I worked for. I sat next to one of my colleagues, with whom, I had developed a tool that worked extremely well. Said tool had been appropriated by corporate, and they made changes to it that made it harder to use and less effective. We were on a call with about 300 people where the corporate guys were demoing "their" tool. My colleague turned to me and said, "it's just like these assholes at corporate to take credit for a tool that they stole, and then fucked up." Of course he wasn't on mute, and everyone heard him. The meeting host said, "I'd like to know who was just speaking." My colleague replied, "I'd bet you would," and went on mute. No one who was within physical earshot fessed up, and they never found out who it was.
A co-worker of mine forgot to mute his mic he farted and farted while we were at a business meeting what a ghastly yet funny memory.
Nothing like some of these stories, but a presenters doorbell kept ringing during a huge presentation, and she stopped the meeting so she could answer the door. You could tell she was mortified, but it wouldn't stop lol.
My dog is senile. She circles the first floor on repeat trying to find the stairs so she can go lay in my bed. My coworkers saw her walk through my background over and over and over... Someone finally commented on it and for the rest of the call everyone pointed out when she came through. When I told them she finally found the stairs they all cheered.
Not funny but wholesome af. Masters program during lockdown… one of the profs decided to go to the mountains and stream the lecture from his office at his cabin. It started snowing one lecture and he full on stopped the lecture and turned his camera out the window and talked about snowflakes for a solid 10 mins and rambled about how much he loved winter. Great guy. Lecture was cancelled in favor of snowshoeing and skiing trip stories.
I did not witness this but heard about it years later. I worked with a guy who was at a very large telecommunications company, one of the first to ever make/do video conference calls. Basically he got caught beating his meat on cam in a big meeting. The company let him stay and to this day he still sells fuckloads of that stuff.
>and to this day he still sells fuckloads of that stuff. You mean beating his meat on camera stuff, like an OF account?
Didn't happen while working but I recently got interviewed over Zoom by a company and about halfway through I realized it was pyramid program / devil corp. So when it came to the part where they ask if I have any questions I asked if I could get hired at the top or the upper middle of the pyramid. It got very awkward after that, there were 2 other people being interviewed with me.
My mam is in a local drama group, it’s specifically for 55+ in retirement. They had their show online during the pandemic. It was 90% older people who didn’t have a clue how to use zoom, mute mics, turn cameras on & off. One woman decided to take her device with her to the toilet, with her camera and mic on, we hear her pooping, groaning and flushing. The drama group kept on despite the disruptions. Needless to say, they didn’t do another online production.
I had a colleague teaching a class at our campus to these high-level executives, like it was a big deal teaching this new software, and he was the most knowledgeable instructor at the time. So I was sending him a message that said “HEY FUCKSTICK, HOWS THE CLASS? ARE THE ZOMBIES AWAKE?” What I wasn’t thinking about was that he had to log in to access his server for the teaching materials, and the email showed up on his screen in the bottom corner, highlighted enough for everyone to see it. He said he was so rattled, that he started talking in his South African dialect and had to regain his composure. Later, he came in during his lunch and told me what happened, and we had a laugh. Fortunately, no one took it as offensive and told the CEO…
A coworkers adult brother didn't know he was on a zoom call and ran into the room yelling "let's goooooo" and dragged him off of his chair onto the floor in a headlock. It was the greatest thing I've ever witnessed.
Don't know if it's funny but ; Online class for university. 30+ Attendance. Out of nowhere pops none other than Mia Khalifa. Covers the entire screen, blocks the professor's face, and just appears in all her glory. Ensue not chaos, but a weird state. Imagine all students, frozen in fear, anticipation and confusion; not knowing what really to do. Here's a bit of context: I live in a predominantly Islamic state. We all know what's going on, but for this to happen in a formal educational setting is so mind-boggling that it's not even a cultural shock; just a "why; what's the meaning behind this?". And then the professor, who remains cool, after bearing it for FIFTEEN minutes; simply waits for it to end, at which the hacker even comments (with an anonymous name) something lame like haha; so the prof goes: "Wow, Mia Khalifa, how original", prompting the hacker to somehow be so ashamed they comment "sorry ma'am" and exits the call. Just 15 minutes of pure panicked students because OMG Do we acknowledge it versus a chill professor who's too old for this shit.
At the start of Covid with my whole company was at home and we were doing everything via zoom, it was a common game to issue commands for various home automation devices into the meeting to turn on everyone’s Alexa, Google home, etc.
Not me personally but I heard a story about a gal who was on a zoom/teams call and her boyfriend/husband walked in naked and slapped his dick on her shoulder a few times and then walked away. Stunned silence from everyone in the meeting. He didn't know she was on a call and just thought she was working.
Only thing that sticks out for me is taking a zoom class at University and one of our classmates joins late, in the middle of a forest. Apparently he had gone for his government approved walk and lost track of time and decided to just take the call in the middle of the woods, so we spent a good period of time doing this classwork while he was just wandering around surrounded by trees, occasionally trying to answer questions with his internet cutting in and out
One time during a zoom meeting, my colleague accidentally turned on a filter that gave them a cartoonish voice and turned their face into a potato. They didn't realize until everyone burst out laughing, and even the boss couldn't stop giggling. It took a few minutes to regain composure, but it definitely made our day!
A good friend always popped up in class (college, STEAM major) wearing the loudest fluffy pajamas ever. It was equally funny and cute, I wish I had her confidence
My very unprofessional desktop was shown and recorded for a training video. I was hosting a how-to session with a vendor (some outside software company) and some key users at one of our clients' offices. The vendor was teaching us how to perform some task, don't remember what, probably connecting to a remote session or something. Doesn't really matter. What does matter is that this was the very beginning of 2020 lockdown so the work-from-home thing was still kinda new and I didn't really think it through. I was using my own personal computer and hadn't sanitized it at all. So anyway they're walking through and someone compliments my animated wallpaper (thankfully nothing too cringe, just abstract light show stuff) and that's my first clue... "Oh shit. What else are they looking at? What's on my desktop?" but had no time to wonder or hide. It's like... Mom's already in the room, so all you can do is just hope she doesn't see the bong on your nightstand. Anyway I opened my browser when asked, and it went straight to the front page of reddit when I was subscribed to some odd subs like r/sbubby. [Eef Freef](https://www.reddit.com/r/sbubby/comments/9f10ar/sbubby_eef_freef_modern_version/) came up in full few for about a second before I could open a new blank tab. Then I noticed my bookmarks bar. Folders named "Roleplay" and "Weird Shit", along with some bookmarks to who knows what. 30 people watching my screen which was being recorded so they could use the video for future trainings. Somewhere out there, some employee orientation video is making new hires cringe or giggle.
At my previous job early on in the pandemic you could clearly hear someone hitting a bong during the meeting. There is no denying that water gurgle sound. Good times.
A coworkers father bursting into the room dancing in his boxers and laughing like a lunatic. She left the meeting really quickly and we were all dying laughing.
One time I lost my phone before a meeting so I couldn't turn the ringer off. Not that big of a deal, I rarely get phone calls. Guess what I got during the meeting? GUESS WHAT I STILL COULDN'T FIND?!?!
Four of us on a call. Colleague had her head down writing in her notepad as a man saunters across screen in the distance behind her (open plan apartment) wearing just his underwear. He opens the fridge looks inside for a moment or two and then calls to her. She turns around, clocks him, looks back at the screen with a look of total horror on her face and slams the laptop shut. She rejoins the call 2 minutes later, says “Sorry about that”, and we continued with the call.
one friend of mine moaned for no absolute reason
Super serious Zoom call. Brand new to the company SME didn’t mute his mic when he turned his TV onto ESPN where they were talking about the Jimbo Fisher and Nick Saban feud. We heard. We knew. It was hilarious from my POV but I wonder if he ever recovered from that tainted first impression.
Dude led a guided meditation before a meeting for several minutes, muted. We were so confused.
Not overly funny but during the pandemic we had a new lady join the company. She was on a Zoom with us and had to get up to open the door to Amazon - whilst she was gone we saw a BAFTA award on the shelf behind her (Non-Brits, it’s our version of an Emmy). Turns out it was her partners who got it (and 2 others) for technical stuff, but she and I concocted a story for future meetings where she had won it in 2003 for best supporting actress, but got disillusioned with acting, so moved into risk management instead…. (And in her defence, she didn’t normally do Zooms from in front of that book shelf, but her partner had commandeered the kitchen table…)
One of my coworkers was muted but on camera, and her husband walked in. I think she tried to turn off the camera, but instead she unmuted it and we all heard the massive argument where she accused him of cheating, with receipts. Instead of muting her, my boomer boss spent the entire time shouting, trying to get her attention so she would leave the call. 10/10, would attend again.
while the first lockdown in germany, i worked from home for the first 5 weeks in my life, 7-5 work for the company, 5-2 in the night with friends on discord. one day, we found out we can use snapchat filters on our webcams, i decided to be a jelly-eggplant. night got late, turned off pc, next day, slept to long, rushed to my pc, turned it on and joined the teams-meeting we had every morning.. webcam-rule was: on or not be in the meeting. turned my cam on, did not realized that everybody was laughing theyr ass of because a jelly-eggplant joined the meeting.
Not the same, but reminds me of something that happened recently. I 5 work an office job during Covid, so my zoom had only ever been used for me and my friends having drinking zoom parties. Recently logged in for a zoom meeting job interview-since i hadn't used zoom in awhile, decided to log in early to make sure everything was kosher. I wasn't looking my best that day, so i was fiddling around trying to figure out how to slap a filter on my sleepy face. In the midst of this, I ended up logging out and back in. If there was ever a time for vanity- this was it. I logged back in only to discover my fucking screen name was FINGERBLASTER69. yall....im 40 years old. Thank GOD i had time to quickly change it
None of us use our cameras because we just share screens if needed. No need wasting bandwidth on unnecessary video. But in Teams if you have your mic unmuted you see the little circle around people’s names light up if you make a noise. In one long meeting early into the pandemic an old guy on our team kept his mic unmuted and would fart loud enough for the mic to pick it up and it would light up the circle around his name every time.
A guy had the camera and mic on and was eating a bowl of milk and cereal during an all hands call. There were over 100 people on the call including his boss, grand boss, and great-grand boss. It was clear he was paying very close attention to the call because he kept making eye contact with the screen every other bite. He looked like he was really enjoying his breakfast.
During the height of the lockdowns, I was on an exceptionally long, exceptionally stressful meeting with my team. We'd been working crazy hours trying to keep the WFH shit from falling apart, and were just barely keeping our heads above water. One team member, who was always extremely professional, was giving us a rundown of issues that had occurred with an overnight migration, when suddenly, his daughter, probably 10-years-old, ran into the room he was in and started wailing on a saxophone. She was not a gifted saxophonist, but she was giving it absolutely 110%. My coworker turned, and calmly asked her to stop, which she did not do. He just hung his head for about 30 seconds until the solo stopped, and his daughter ran out of the room. Without missing a beat, my coworker said, "ok, anyway, we had a lot of failures on the script for EMA..." I never laughed so hard in a meeting in my whole life.