What’s Your Biggest Work From Home Fail? (Contest!)

#21

I think my biggest WFH fail was a series of events when teaching my class.
10 minutes before class my PC which is an old gaming PC started to get buggy so I restarted it. I use my PC for screen sharing as I have 3 monitors. It decided to install an update that was not in the notifications upon restarting. No big deal I said I’ll just wait for it. The install decided to freeze and I had to restart again.
I started class and started to stall when my mouse died. The screen reading of 90% went down to 5% then to 0% in a matter of seconds.
At this point my bluetooth headphones warned me of a low battery. I had apparently not plugged it in the entire way the morning of and they never charged.
I ended up continuing class with just my laptop screen and was in the middle of explaining a topic and getting through at least 5 minutes of material until I realized that I had been frozen due to Zoom/internet issues.

It was a tank of a day and when I came back most of my students were still there! They were smiling and although it was probably my biggest fail of the year it was a somewhat smooth class period and the students showed a great deal of empathy which I was extremely thankful for!

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#22

Move everything which can go to 5GHz.

There’s not enough Wifi channels to keep that many connected concurrently.

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#23

Biggest work from home fail…

wondering why I couldnt get into any internal company apps… spent an hour troubleshooting internet connections… passwords… etc…

turns out I forgot to activate the VPN…

sigh.

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#24

In quarantine I did 2 major things, adopted a kitten, and began live streaming both personally and working for a small company doing game presentations. During one of my first solo presentations, my explorative kitten decided she wanted to see what all the fuss was about. This time unlike any previous times she had visited me at my computer however she tried something different and aimed a bit higher. In the middle of my sentence live streamed in front of my building audience I was cut off by a sudden scream of pain, as my 10 month old kitten dug her little needle claws into my back and began to use the as cleats to climb up my back and perch on my shoulder like a parrot. The little beast is lucky I love her, and the audience did too. I mean how can you not with a face like that

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#25

I hate to say I have done this as well, but thankfully only in an internal team meeting.

“Did someone drink a lot of water this afternoon…?”

Immediately mute and pretend it never happened

Also doesn’t help that one of my Teams backgrounds is

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#26

connection
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Nightmare or dream? :rofl:

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#27

Since working from home I’ve had a number of fails (cat knocking the webcam askew, green screen falling & exposing everybody else to the mess that is my home office!), but the biggest was when I’d been up all night working on a project and went to bed around 10 AM.

Around 3 PM I get this persistent call on my smartphone – I finally answer it, grumpily, only to discover it’s the Zoom meeting for the project I was working all night on, and they’re all looking at me, in bed, with no shirt! Much embarrassment (from me) and laughter (from the other participants) ensues as I ask them to give me five minutes to brush my teeth and put on some clothes so I can call them back and present … :astonished: :flushed: :roll_eyes:

PS: I live in Upstate NY & my VPN’s routed through Dallas, TX – I have no idea WHY Anker thinks I live in The Netherlands. Not that it isn’t a lovely country and there are times I’d prefer to live there…

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#28

Hard not to love a kitten…

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#29

I though that my microphone was muted in fact the video conference app said that my microphone was muted. Anyway my wife came up to talk to me while I was in the meeting. This wasn’t a conversation that I would normally share with those on the meeting so when I was informed that I was not on mute and that everyone on the call had heard my wife and I’s conversation I was greatly embarrassed.

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#30

My biggest fail was when my cat jumped up onto the window shelf that I installed so she could join my video calls and proceeded to lick her but facing the camera.

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#31

Biggest fail was being told off by my daughter’s teacher for being too loud on my call while my daughter was on her school zoom call on the other side of the apartment.

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#32

My work from home fail came early in my WFH experience and has been consistent. We have some chickens and they often will congregate near my window when they hear me talking. It can escalate into what sounds like kids screaming in pain. Luckily people have thought it is unique and funny compared to the kids or dogs who often are overheard on meetings.

Now I just have to close all windows before my meetings or conversations.Dominique-hen

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#33

Since Covid, my wife have been working from home with me, we have 2 cats and we have a habit of calling each other cute nick names like bunny :rabbit2:, but every so often we would pet each under the chin as if we were actually cats, and we would purr :cat2:. But other times our actions may appear violent, but it actually is playful.

One day when my wife was teaching virtually in front 25 students, a day where she just so happens to be observed by her boss. I accidentally playfully slapped her across the face :smiling_imp: and even made the sound affect of someone being slapped :see_no_evil:, and she yelled at me. And had to explain that her boss was also in the meeting. And that’s when I learned to flip her webcam in an upwards position towards the ceiling anytime I do something like that… Let’s just say my day didn’t end well and I ended up getting slapped across my beautiful face for real. :rofl:

Just kidding… she didn’t slap me… but I did receive an earful :disappointed_relieved:

Extra: her boss and children thought she really got slapped and asked if she was okay so she had to explain that it was fake. Thankfully she didn’t get in trouble :rofl::rofl:

Link shared https://twitter.com/Kewonzor/status/1372664734646870016?s=20

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#34

I am not entering, but to those who do, please post a photo if it is funny and possible. Also…

Good Luck!

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#35

Usually it’s the daily “you’re on mute” or “who’s got loudspeaker on?” but over the last 12 months, the most popular fail which happens on a regular basis is when one of my cats jumps on my laptop!
Usually when I’m not at my desk, but sometimes whilst I’m in the middle of something, it’s even better when they manage to type (smash paws against the keyboard) and then post a message to someone!

It’s always fun to explain why the cat is sending messages on my behalf!!

https://twitter.com/roblawton/status/1372657872413323269?s=20

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#36

My biggest WFH failure was that while on a Teams call with one of a male co-workers, I removed my background to show him the room I was working in. I had done laundry and was drying some underwear on a coat rack behind me :bikini:. Totally forgot that my hanging underwear was visible! I was alike woops! Good thing it wasn’t my boss! :see_no_evil:

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#37

Oh my… I have a list., but this was the worst.

I work for a large state university’s fundraising foundation.

I am very fortunate to have a small balcony. Last summer I decided I would just use my phone for my video and my laptop for a presentation. My phone had been propped up on a planter cage and the railing. I was using one of those cheap plastic Adirondack chairs knowing it already had a crack on it. My camera was apparently pointing to my side enough that one of the FIFTY PEOPLE on the call could see my 13yo dog vomited. I began hearing the few unmuted people making some noise, but I am a “professional” (more on that in a moment) so I stuck to my death-by-power point presentation. Pablo vomiting was odd thing, but not actually embarrassing. That is not why they alerted me. Someone said “your dog”. They alerted me because my dog was eating his own sick. This is STILL not the embarrassing point. As I pulled up the video on my laptop , trying to be subtle, I saw him doing it. Que the drama. I sat my laptop down and tried to quickly stand up, I broke the chair. I scramble to try and get up, and hit my head of the glass door. My work now has an image of my backside which I had been wearing TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLE PANTS and my dog eating his own vomit.

I am now called a different name for each call… Sometimes Leonardo, sometimes Michaelangelo…

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https://twitter.com/engagedtomed/status/1372659214573830144?s=20

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#38

Thanks @AnkerOfficial

My biggest work from home fail is pretty tame: I simply forgot to mute myself during a conference call. So will waiting to a party to join in a different time zone, I ahem had to make a pit stop. All joined parties heard the swoosh and started asking who the guilty party was. I now make sure I’m 100% ready for conference calls and video meetings, and take absolutely nothing for granted.

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#39

One of the funniest occasions was when I was on a call using a program that I couldn’t blur my background and as I was talking, my daughter woke up from the bed which was behind me and started stretching and moving back and forth in the background. All I could do was move around and try to angle the camera at a different angle so that she wouldn’t be seen. Thankfully the other people on the call were pretty professional and didn’t say anything.

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#40

My most embarrassing WFH fail was a simple sneeze. No big deal, right? I was in the middle of a presentation to a large group and had to sneeze. I said “hold on” clicked the mute button on my headset (not the zoom mute, the physical mute on my device) and heard part of “Mute On” before I let out a completely over-the-top ridiculous ACHOOOOOOO. Then I heard laughing. It was that day that I learned my mic doesn’t mute until after it’s done saying Mute On, and even then doesn’t cut off my nose trumpet fast enough. So I double downed and apologized, and when someone said bless you I said “yeah, bless me!” At that point my wife was on the ground laughing in the other room and refused to stop saying “Bless Me!”

TLDR: mute wasn’t fast enough and I ended up blessing myself after a stupidly loud sneeze.

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