Mine would probably me when my boy was waiting on Teams for his morning school registration and I was busy on a work phone call. I didn’t realise I was being so loud and when I came off the phone my boy told me the teacher could hear me and told him to mute and he missed his turn when the teacher went around the class asking them how their work had been the day before! He wasn’t happy with me but needless to say I always go into another room now when on a phone call!
What’s Your Biggest Work From Home Fail? (Contest!)
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Oh boy — I can only pick one? LOL!!!
I guess I’ll go with the most stressful — my set up includes 3 laptops, each with a dedicated purpose - 2 of which I had to drag from the edge of the electronics recycling bin early on & whose batteries aren’t functional… but they work soooo. Add 2 smartphones to the mix. I clerk public meetings & create the minutes so I have to be present & focused the entire time. About 1/2 way through a meeting, I put my feet to the sides on the floor to roll back for a quick stretch… when I stepped down, I accidently kicked the power strip under the baseboard heater & it hit the power switch! The sounds of powering down ensued as the Zoom meeting and associated documents went black. I was left with a Word document staring at me from the 3rd laptop looking at me wondering why I’d stopped my non-stop typing. Ackk!!! I commandeered my husband’s desktop computer while he was on it – logged back into the mtg, put my digital recorder on his desk & rebooted all… only the host knew I was missing as he had to let me back in LOL ---- I now have the power strip corralled but the threat always looms 
I was hosting our student talent show on zoom last fall and I was so nervous that my connection would stay strong, the videos would all play well & we would have an audience show up! All was great with those but I didn’t expect that my two dachshund pups would start to bark like crazy because it was windy outside & there were some noises of branches & items blowing around. So anytime I unmuted - there were dogs barking & I couldn’t get them to stop. My co-workers were texting me to have them stop barking & I had no way to get them to stop. They were completely content & quiet & have never had a barking session like they did during my hosting time of the talent show. I was so embarrassed that they would not stop barking & tried to be on mute & have others try to engage more so I could be on mute but I was the host & had all the intros for each of the talent acts. I even made a joke that they were part of the talent show & wanted to show off their barking talents. But my boss was not happy with the outcome either, however, this is the life of working from home & the uncertain things that pop-up when you least expect it.
My biggest work from home fail was in my second week of lockdown last April. I was lucky to order all new monitors, mechanical keyboard, mouse and mousepad as well as a new desk to create my perfect home office before the covid tech shortage started.
An then not even 10 full working days after everything was assembled, I managed to tip over my coffee mug during a Teams call…all over my new desk and equipment, as well as my mobile. The next 2 hours were spent moping up coffee, cleaning my desk and most important, taking my new expensive mechanical keyboard apart to clean out as much of the coffee as possible.
Some keys are still wonky and I had to re-seal my wood desk, but luckily all equipment still works. Coffee mugs are now banned from my desk and have to sit on my dining table.
My internet access went down for several days and I had to use my cell phone data until it was restored.
Wow this one I can relate to completely! My work from home fail is an all time epic adventure! I was on the usual morning team video chat, and paused myself so that I could use the restroom and then carry on as normal. Unfortunately, I accidentally hit the pause button again, unpausing myself, and gave the whole office a front and center view of myself using the ladies room. Complete embarrassment! #AnkerWork
I would have liked to have made a mistake in the home office, or even failed at my work … but, unfortunately, I’ve been sick at home for 15 months. But even if you are only at home, you can make mistakes. Since I work a lot on the computer, with Office, video editing and many other things, there are also errors there. For example, I pushed a few finished pictures onto a USB stick, and after a few days I needed this stick and forgot that there were important pictures on it … and formatted it without looking. Pictures gone … well, and there are also one or the other mistake …
I hope that everything was understandable so far, because my English is not that good. Greetings from Germany … I love your products.
I spilt tea all over my keyboard during a meeting while on video. Needless to say that keyboard no longer works.
My BIGGEST WFH fail was when I was presenting my teams work for the year during our departmental staff meeting. I just got a new puppy, an adorably sweet and energetic Chiweenie (chihuahua-dachshund mix). Just as my boss introduced me to the company of 1000+ people, my dog jumped up into my lap, and started kissing me all over my face. What I didn’t know is that she must’ve stepped on the keys to disconnect, and the only image that made it to everyone watching was a frozen frame of my dog’s booty (REALLY CLOSE UP 
). It literally became the BUTT of everyone’s jokes for the next month! I’ll never get the image out of my head! hahahaha 
After a couple of months under covid-19 restrictions, my Wfh routine was pretty much set in either pajamas or boxers for most of my day during calls and zoom/Teams meetings. On one if those meetings, my attention was drawn to my toddler hanging precariously over his crib on the nanny cam.
My natural instincts as a dad kicked in and I leapt to my feet to save him from falling. Safe to say I showed off more than I should to my colleagues and I stealthily went off video for the rest of the meeting. No one mentioned it either till after the meeting ended and I was the butt of jokes for a good week.
#AnkerWork
I’m studying social work and its my first semester.
I am sometimes a bit disorganized because I also work 30 hours on the side. For all those never studying: You need approximately 40 hours for Studys. Half Online or at the uni, half to learn yourself. So i worked 70 hours in a week for a half year. Thats the reason for my “home work fail”
it was one of those stressfull days. Work first and then zoom in on your mobile phone when you drive home so you don’t miss anything. Work first and then zoom in on your mobile phone when you drive home so you don’t miss anything.
The first time it was a bit embarrassing, but it happened to me a total of four times and always with this lecturer
During a boring meeting with my coworkers and my boss I googled recipes and saved them for later. A some point my boss asked if I would bring lunch for everyone on my next day at the office. Apparently I had accidentally shared my screen with more than 10 tabs open on cooking-websites.
Needless to say, I brought some snacks to work after that.
Zoom conferences? I hate them, but I can do them. Turn off the sound when my son runs in, ran with the laptop to his room when he is shouting from there because he hurt himself again, bring the laptop to the kitchen to make some food for him. Bad, but somehow possible. In the worst case you disconnect and apologise for internet connection problems, they are so common in Germany that everyone will understand. Learning from home is not nice either, as you don’t connect with others and it’s really hard to maintain motivation, but teaching is worse. When your students do not want to turn on the camera (and they have a legal right to it) you talk to a screen of black icons. For 2 hours. You send your energy into the computer screen and you get nothing back. It’s frustrating, but again, somehow possible, we all get it done n one way or another.
Now think about writing or even just reading a scientific article. Every interruption leads to starting over from the beginning of a thought or a paragraph. And they keep coming every couple of minutes. Frustration, no work is done, relationships suffer. You try to work after your child goes to bed, spending an unreasonable amount of time on each thing, because your brain is already off, blame yourself for not achieving anything, go to bed late only to start the same hell the next day. A conference, however bad it was, counts as your work, but interrupting writing is worth nothing. This whole year has been a failure for my carrier, for my relationship with my son, for my mental and physical health.
I was in an important video call with a client and I had to present some slides within approx. 30 minutes. Before I started, there were always messages in the chat that participants had to leave the meeting for a short time, and so on. I started with my part and was very focused because there were some very complex topics I had to present. After about 15 minutes I noticed the chat window and apparently the battery of the wireless headset ran out, so I talked for a long time without anyone being able to hear me or me being able to hear anyone and they could only see me through the webcam… A very embarrassing situation and therefore meetings only with plugged in headset
My biggest fail was during a Zoom meeting. I just recorded a voice message on WhatsApp and hit the space bar on the computer keyboard. So I unintentionally shared the voice message with the entire class. Fortunately, the content wasn’t of much interest .
After that, I deactivated the function of Zoom to temporarily unmute via space bar.
The day my cat took over my (home) office.
It was a regular Monday morning. I went to the kitchen to make coffee, put on a nice shirt and sat down on my kitchen counter to check Mails. I looked at the clock and still had a few minutes before the weekly catch-up Meeting with my team began. A pigeon had been flying from balcony to balcony in the courtyard that I share with my neighbours. This is something that had been keeping my cat, Carl, busy during the quarantine. He watches every move of this pigeon and sits patiently by the window while I go smoke a cigarette.
The meeting starts and everything goes as usual. Right as it is my turn to speak, I hear a loud screeching and watch Carl launch across the room. The pigeon had flown through the upper window that I opened to clear the room of smoke. The sound of panicked wings slicing through the air and Carl ferociously stretching his limbs to catch the bird fill the room.
At this point, everyone in the meeting looked aghast in complete silence. With feathers flying through the room, Carl screaming and the pigeon panicking, I picked up a ladder close to me and started running around, trying to point the bird to the exit. Atlas, the pigeon made its escape and I returned to my laptop. Drenched in sweat and covered in feathers, I nervously laughed and announced my tasks for the week.
My biggest fail was during a business meeting where I had to present something my computer crashed because I didn’t notice that the charging cable had come loose. By the time I got back to the meeting, my colleagues were already gone. They still tease me about it and say I left because I didn’t know what to do. 
Mine would have to be the day I was having a video conference with clients. I put on a nice shirt, but left my pajama bottoms with little snowmen on them so I could be comfortable. I then needed to refill my coffee, but forgot to turn my video off. I stood up and heard lots of laughter and then realized what I must look like. Embarrassing to say the least, but we did all have a good laugh about it.
So I have those smart Philips Hue lights in my room and also in the background of the camera pictures. Sometimes, I synchronize them to the screen content when watching movies.
I only put the PC in standby overnight and still had the sync on, when I turned it on in the morning. But as I was doing office work with all white and not much moving images, I didn’t immediately notice it.
When the video call started, one person started doing one of those “fancy” presentations with illustrations, colored backgrounds etcetera.
My lights behind me slowly changed colors as well, but as I had the presentation full screen, I did not see how this changed my cameras focus towards the background…
I have a big picture of heavy metal singer Ronnie James Dio hanging on the wall as I’m a fan of his music.
With the changed focus, Zoom decided to no longer blur the background, but instead blur me - and act like Dio was the main person to film here.
This alone let a coworker, which I knew was also into this kinda music, write me a WhatsApp message talking about this music, and we kinda got a conversation going about Black Sabbath and everything and totally drifted away from the meeting.
At one point, I decided to record a voice message, because our little discussion reached the point where typing everything would take a lot of time. As you might fear already, yes, my computer mic was still on, which I totally forgot.
I interrupted the others in the meeting by starting to talk about specific meanings of some songs and memories of listening to them on the radio. The others went quiet and this stop of conversation made me aware of what I just did.
I switched out of fullscreen mode to see the others and just did not know what to say.
These seconds felt very long, but this is not the end of the story.
I started my WhatsApp voice message with something like "(o)kay good, live at past was played by Black Sabbath, but… " and that apparently triggered my Google Assistant to play said album. I instantly muted the playback after like three seconds, but it was too late.
My coworkers heard some nice music and my lighting went full metal as well. I desperately looked for ways to stop the music while my coworkers could not stop laughing.
Fortunately, they took it with humor.
Since this day, I am known as the strobe lights party / metal guy and my coworker keeps calling me Dio. Which is, to be honest, kind of an honor to me. And I’m honestly impressed (but also a bit scared) how quick my smart home can turn into a rock show.
TLDR: My camera focused on a picture of Black Sabbath, my speakers played metal music and my lights went full party mode because I recorded a voice message while not being muted.
Tweet:
https://twitter.com/retaliodi/status/1376520590270595074?s=19