I don’t have anything to tell.
What’s Your Biggest Work From Home Fail? (Contest!)
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I was in an important video call and someone knocked on the front door and my 2 dogs jumped up on to my lap
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Thanks Anker!
Never knowing when the camera is on. Wife would come over and hive me a sad Hug. I would always say hi everyone this is my wife!
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My family’s repeated Work From Home Fail falls on the shoulders of my youngest brother who repeatedly and absolutely is oblivious to our other brother’s working from home. Very often, he stops home for his lunch break which involves him slamming the door, calling out to the dog, and often singing or mock-singing some song or another at the top of his lungs…all while our brother is working from home and often in virtual meetings with several important work authority figures.
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Biggest WFH fail? I was co-running a workshop on resilience with my boss, actually.
We had about a dozen people on, and halfway through the workshop, my home Internet crashed, hard. I had to text my boss quickly, tell her what happened, and said “Keep going, I’ll be back on ASAP.” In the next few minutes, I loaded Webex on my phone, threw on my @AnkerOfficial Soundcore earbuds, and logged back in to the workshop using my phone & 4G data. I was able to see the content and still narrate my sections while waiting for my home internet to come back up. When it finally did, I managed to jump back into the workshop on my laptop without anyone noticing the transition.
As we wrapped up, I told everyone about what I’d done, and managed to turn it into a parable on resilience (“always have a plan B and maybe even plan C”), so in the end, it was a successful fail, but what a scramble.
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Nice contest !!
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Mine was actually a co-worker’s fail. I was pair programming with her and her husband walked behind her clad only in underwear. Oops!
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Thank you for this contest. The worst issue with a home office is the noise. Personally, I have in the background almost always a TV and a dog bark. With your kit, I can eliminate that problem forever, so my calls don’t be heard funny. Again, thanks a lot for save our offices!
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Just a couple - luckily not too overly embarrassing!
1 - First couple weeks of WFH, I had awful internet service. Before I could upgrade, had to virtually host a huge meeting that was supposed to be in person. We were using the type of service that if the host was no longer on, the meeting dropped because my internet went out. I think you can guess what happened next. In the middle of the presentation, the whole meeting dropped. Luckily the clients we were presenting to were very understanding and we were able to reschedule round 2 for the next week.
2 - Made the mistake of trying to toggle between two virtual meetings. One of which was a full company all-hands. Somehow, I became unmuted during the company meeting and started broadcasting the OTHER meeting I was trying to listen in on to the whole company. Thank goodness someone muted me pretty quickly.
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I would love to use a switch like that, but what kills me most is that I am constantly moving items between 2 rooms in my house and work since I am about 75% WFH and 25% in office. Ideally I do like the mini thunderbolt hub because it would be moveable between every room and my work if needed. Currently I just have a backpack sporting various cables, 2 chargers and 2-3 laptops depending on the day. When I worked in the office most of the time it wasnt as bad because I only really had my non-domain pc at home and could use usbA mainly. A hub would have sufficed then too I guess. Its just a wild world we live in right now I guess lol.
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This is going to be fun reading all the many work from home fails after submitting my own.
I can say I have had many such as the occasional mishap while on a video call such as dog barking, significant other walking in to ask me a question , and even the time when we had to have a tree cut down after a storm and the guy started RIGHT when I was on a call. We all get a chuckle in this new normal and move on.
But my most memorable fail was when I happened to be in a pretty high level meeting, and of course I was presenting. Well our loving dog, who was already spooked by thunder and hiding under my desk and I unknowingly rolled my chair over her tail. The next few seconds was a slow motion blur where the dog yelped, scaring me into a few explicit comments, she then ran out quickly taking out my surge protector, and a nest of cables with her, including the web cam and laptop.
I was told that the attendees only heard the yelp, and me partially shouting and then it looked like the room was hit by tornado. I was receiving calls and texts on my phone asking if we were ok since there were heavy storms in the area.
Good times… and thank you for allowing me to relive it but in a laughing manner now.
James Barger
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The most consistent work I’ve been able to find during the pandemic is as an online language tutor. One day my screen share wasn’t working properly and I absent mindedly swore as my students parent was walking by. I think they chose to ignore it, because they gave me a good review and are still paying me. 
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Hello,
My working from home depends mostly on good Internet, my Mac and attached devices. Once I was on a very important video call and the small, poor quality hub, failed on the middle of the call. Monitor, video camera and speakerphone attached to it gone!.. Luckily I had on my bag a travel hub from Anker, very quickly attached it and in few minutes I was up an running. This is now-a-days the one I use and depend on it!. Thanks @AnkerOfficial ! 
https://twitter.com/PitaFernando/status/1372953131496185856?s=19
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Thanks for the giveaway event!
The biggest work from home fail was spilling coffee on my keyboard during a presentation. I was sharing my screen and during a slide transition I had tipped over my cup of coffee as I was reaching for it onto my keyboard. My screen started going crazy and random action was happening even though I wasn’t touching anything. Thankfully I reacted fairly quickly and unplugged my keyboard from my laptop to stop it but had shared for 20 seconds of my screen going haywire. It was a crazy movie scene as I was trying to decide to save my keyboard from the liquid that got onto it, stop the coffee from spreading all over my desk/floor, or trying to save the presentation. Overall super embarrassing as I had to ask my coworker to share and go clean up the giant mess on my desk (my keyboard was not saved).
#AnkerWork
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I work as a Campus Production Coordinator at our church ensuring that all of our services are streamed and recorded. This past weekend was time change (and not the fun one where you get an extra hour of sleep). I was worried that my Sunday morning team would oversleep, but thankfully they all made it to our church services on time.
But Sunday evening was a different story. I stayed home and two of the other guys were going to handle the sound upstairs and our broadcast downstairs. As I’m in the middle of hanging out with my family I get a call from one of our volunteers 15 minutes before the start of the service asking if we are streaming and recording tonight. Of course we were and I asked why he thought we weren’t. He said our entire broadcast room was dark and there was no sign of the guy in charge. I called my coworker and found out his computer hadn’t updated its time and he thought he had a whole extra hour before he had to be there. While I was still on the phone with him, he rushed out the door, got to his car, and realized he forgot his keys inside; locking him out of his house and his car!!
So from my home, I logged in remotely, started the recordings, made sure the streaming was active, and then FaceTimed with the volunteer and walked him through how to switch cameras and kept on the phone with him until help arrived. It was a pretty hectic time, but we managed to limp by. It just showed me how I really need to “up” my work from home setup!!
Shared on social:
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Thanks for the laugh! I hope your dog was ok!
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WFH Fail: Wearing a green sleeved shirt while using a virtual background. I had floating hands! Could’ve been worse, thankfully only the sleeves were green, otherwise I would’ve had a floating head! 
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It’s really been a blessing having our dogs with us everyday during lockdown. Friends who don’t tire of us who are always ready to play and make us smile.
These friends at home do have boundary issues and never understand what it means when the light next to the webcam turns on…
Sam & Echo are each great motion detectors and keep us up to date on all traffic in front of the house, often prompting a quick ad-lib when a bark detected. “Yes, that’s an excellent color choice!” or “I absolutely agree.” That works fine most days.
I had forgotten to charge my bluetooth headset and was cautiously working with a desktop microphone and speakers. As the UPS driver pulled up across the street breaks squeeking Sam let out a single bark to challenge the intruder. Suddenly my client’s otherwise silent and invisible dog had to respond to defend his reputation as brave protector. Our girl Echo jumped in as backup to her tiny brother and the competition was on! After a couple back and forth volleys of bark bark bark I found my microphone and speaker mute buttons, calmed my friends and reactivated all my audio to find silence.
“Who won that round?”, I asked. Happily everyone laughed as my client’s told everyone that their dog doesn’t like the Amazon driver either since he never brings enough treats.
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@ktkundy My family thinks Zoom meetings are an invitation to say hi too! Good stories, thanks for the laughs. I’ve been on the other side of a student not being able to submit an exam and losing their work,…must have been horrifying!
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My new boss joined the company, and was using his new office-issued computer. I was using my own personal gaming PC with multiple monitors. In our meetings I would often have the video chat on one monitor, so I could still see my colleagues while I shared my second screen to demonstrate something. However, in Slack, when someone else is screen sharing, by default the video window, including your own webcam video preview, disappears. I had forgotten this, and during a meeting when my boss was sharing his screen, I went for a good old nose pick. Like, really getting in there, going for gold, while he was talking to me. I was even talking to him while my finger was relieving the scratch in my nasal cavity.
Well, next meeting he casually mentioned he has multiple monitors, which means he probably saw the whole thing, though he never mentioned it. I was mortified. Lesson learned, I always turn off my webcam when someone else shares their screen, I can scratch, eat, and nose-pick to my heart’s content. Not at the same time though.
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