I was hired during the early stages of Covid Lockdown to DJ for one of the earlier Virtual Festivals. I’ve been playing for 20 years and have had plenty of horror stories involving poorly organized events. IDK if it was the fact that the idea of virtual festivals were new or if it was just a horribly unorganized group of promoters. This particular VF was chaos. The closer to event day I was encountering more and more stress.
This would be a good time to mention I have epilepsy which for the most part is manageable. The likelihood of me having a seizure seems to increase when I’m under increased stress.
The day of the event arrived and I couldn’t reach the organizers, I lacked the proper login information for the event, I couldn’t get anyone to respond to me to help explain logistics at all, and I felt my stress rising.
I was scheduled to play at 2 AM, but I got called up an hour and a half early. Still lacking any info. 15 mins into my DJ set I started noticing my aura which indicates a seizure approaching. In front of a global audience I collapsed. Breaking gear and tearing down my studio in process. I woke later in the hospital unsure of what exactly happened. I got to watch it on replay since my computer recorded it. I never heard back from VF promoters and never got paid.
What’s Your Biggest Work From Home Fail? (Contest!)
Was in a meeting messing around with zoom backgrounds smiling and giggling about them. Unbeknownst to me everyone could see my backgrounds without confirming. Got called out by someone saying, “are you having fun there?” I stopped immediately.
My biggest work from home fail was opening Zoom five times for a meeting and actually being in the meeting five times. It was hilarious because there was over 80 people in the meeting and when I talked it echoed so it was so embarrassing. I had to shut off my computer and start all over again just to get back in the meeting and prevent this from happening again! #AnkerWork
the constant battle with the mute button. on mute and talking away, not being on mute when you should be, telling people they are mute, the pauses while people are looking for the mute button…
During my Fantasy Football draft I changed my background image to one of my fellow league member’s mugshot from 20+ years ago. The next time I used Zoom was for a statewide meeting for First Responders to discuss Covid response. It took me a few minutes to remove it and in the mean time all of the participants were laughing and begging for an explanation.
In a Masters level Spiritual Direction certificate Zoom call we were sent to privately work for a bit before rejoining the discussion by muting our microphone and pausing our camera. Due to a quick mishap in which the prof muted and then unmuted the whole room while I stepped away, I didn’t know I was un-muted. I turned on our family mix Spotify playlist which includes some rap songs with explicit lyrics from my adult kids. It started off with a rather popular song about a body part, and within 20 seconds I had multiple people from class including the prof asking me to stop and mute while clutching their pearls. I didn’t get full participation points that day… #Fail
Welp, my biggest WFH fail isn’t the typical bathroom noise or pantsless partner story. Those have happened, but I think my biggest WFH fail was an actual, technical failure. We had ice storms a month or so ago that took out power for 10 full days. Of course, I didn’t work for the first few. Eventually, you get bored of doing nothing so I tried to get some work done. I ran a generator to charge a large battery which I then connected to the MacBook. I then charged my iPad to use as a hotspot so that I could get logged in. I was pretty proud of my power-outage WFH hack. What I didn’t anticipate was the fact that our Verizon tower was also offline from the ice. So I had a connection, but it was that dreaded 1x where the 4G LTE should be. Still determined, I tried logging in anyway. I spent an hour or so entering passwords, connecting to VPN, getting booted from VPN, rinse and repeat. End result, I gave up. Totally defeated by the ice storm, that was my biggest fail.
While I was on a video call, two of my kids started chasing each other behind me screaming, “Tra la la!” while wearing a cape and only their underwear. They were playing Captain Underpants. They got a good laugh out of it!
My son ran into my home office with no pants on. He yelled, “I pooped my pants and the dog pooped in the hall.” Luckily, I was only giving a client demo and only his shirt was seen in the camera.
Was talking in Teams about how big of a douche one of our coworkers was with one guy, wound up typing it and sending in a large group chat with him in it instead of to our private chat, oh and most of management too!
My biggest fail was because my camera was off, but I was not on mute. I called my spouse over to see the “Brady Bunch Rejects” and began to sing an x-rated version of the Brady theme song customized to my fellow co-workers. “here’s a story of an ugly manager, who was hooking up with three ugly girls. All of them are drinking wine, like their manager, the newest one has shine. Here’s the story of a (the rest is edited due to r-rated content)” … I was interrupted right after the profanity started! Thankfully the group had a sense of humor and didn’t take it personally and promised not to let HR know.
I’m a little deaf from 15 years of playing music, so my voice kind of carries outside of the house. One day I was doing a demo with a vendor and we were chatting as usual, and I had to excuse myself and walk outside because the gardeners out front were making too much noise.
As I get back to my desk, the vendor asks me out of the blue “do you live in x street, because I think you live right in front of me”. Turns out, not only was this person my neighbor, he also could hear his entire demo coming out of my (Soundcore!) speaker because I had to crank the volume way up. Small world.
My biggest work from home fail was thinking I closed out of a zoom meeting to get on another call. Not only did I not exit the zoom meeting ( which I thought I did) but I never muted myself after informing the clients I was leaving (thinking it was closed out). I was speaking on the second call with my iPhone at my desk and the client from my first call were able to hear me for the first 5 minutes and (to my horror) we’re exclaiming for me to hang up! I received a text from my manager of my disruption! The only silver lining was that I wasn’t on camera as well 
. Always double check the settings, never assume. #AnkerWork
The biggest fail is that I can’t make myself to work at home((((( My bed looks so cozy every single morning, and snack breaks are getting longer every single time 
While on a Teams call with my supervisor my wife yells at me from across the room, “forward your calls to your work cell and take me shopping! They won’t know your not working…”.
Uhmmmm, too late 
During a conference call, I generally keep myself muted. My son was going through potty training this last year. He said he needed to go to the bathroom while I was on a call and of course, insists on having some company.
Just before he started going, I unmuted myself to make a comment and mistakenly didn’t mute myself again. I always wait just outside the open bathroom door for my son to be done taking care of business. He likes to yell out “I’M DONE! CAN YOU WIPE MY BUTT?” and didn’t fail to do it that time. I paused while entering the bathroom because the call got a little quiet but paid no attention to it because, well, I thought I was muted so what does it have to do with me?
While I’m assisting my son with wiping he comments “I had a lot of poop daddy”. It was then that I hear some chuckling and the woman directing the meeting said “don’t worry, most of us have kids”. I was red in the face and have never apologized for anything so quickly in my life. We all laughed about it afterward.
It seems like I am always on a Zoom call or attending a webinar. My 96 pound black lab named Duke is an important part of the family and has the run of the house. He gets confused when I’m on a Zoom call and wearing my headset so as to not disturb my wife who is working in the next room. He thinks I am talking to him since he doesn’t hear the voices on the other end of Zoom. One time, while in the middle of a Zoom meeting, Duke jumped up into my lap. Did I mention that he weighs 96 pounds? I had my laptop on my lap and fortunately it was not crushed when he settled into the chair with me. Now when I have a virtual meeting, Duke gets a bone filled with peanut butter to keep him occupied and out of my lap.
I was on a webex call. Had 26 people on this call and we were all participating in a live video call. Had clients on, vendors and other co-workers. I had the video showing behind another window while listening and talking. At one point I stopped talking and was just listening while the video of all the participants was sitting behind another window. My son walks into the room with an ipad and says “look at all these piggies. Which piggy is yours daddy”? He was referring to the ipad game where they play with piggies as characters. I heard a gasp and a bunch of laughing but that laughter was not coming from the ipad. I immediately panicked as I realized I must not have muted. Brought the Webex window front and center and people were laughing their butts off. They thought my son was referring them as he was not in camera view on the angle he walked into the room. People on the call thought he was asking me which of the video participants was my piggy? Yeah we go a great laugh. Not sure it would have went over so well if the pandemic was not around.
I was on a conference call when my cat decided to jump up in my lap.
She was small, and the angle of the camera was just enough that you couldn’t make her body out - but you could see her tail on camera.
I was in the process of doing a training session with 8 other people, when her tail whipped up into the frame.
Someone immediately blurted out, “Are you being attacked by an octopus, or is that some sort of weird tentacle porn video???”
I lost all focus and we had to end training early.
#AnkerWork
Oh geez…
My office uses Microsoft Teams as our main communications tool for quick pings and check-ins. One of my favorite things about this tool, is that it works seamlessly on mobile, desktop, and browser… And nobody can tell what device you’re on. One day I woke up super late for my morning check-in with my managers, and decided that I’ve just grabbed my personal laptop and take the video call from there. I threw on a button down and was presentable from the waist up… meanwhile only in boxers. The problem, is that my personal computer has a camera on the back as well as the front. Halfway through the video call I accidentally switched the camera input…showing off my bare legs and feet. VERY thankful as the angle could’ve been worse…