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

When Covid first started here in the US, the company I work for decided to put most of our work/activities on hold for 2 weeks. However we had to attend mandatory Zoom meetings for news regarding when we could come back and stuff like that.
In one of those meetings, I had my sister and 2 nieces over at my place since I was gonna watch my nieces for the rest of the afternoon.
Anyway, my sister was feeding my youngest niece and she made a mess so she decided she was gonna give her a bath. I was in the living room on the Zoom call when all of the sudden here comes my little niece running and screaming “Nooooooo!” because she didn’t want to take a bath.
She was so loud that my supervisor stopped talking and asked “Is everything ok ikari04warrior?” :rofl::rofl:

It was a bit embarrassing but pretty funny lol

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Easily the biggest work from home fail of the last year was when I was on a video call with my boss and a customer. My boss was the one speaking and I was on mute when my 3 year old daughter decided to come down the stairs that are directly in front of where our office and my desk is facing. Sure enough, she stumbles and falls face first down the stairs - while my boss is talking to the customer my face apparently has gone into shock on the video call and my boss had no idea what was going on. I didn’t get up from my desk because Mom was able to attend to my daughter quickly but for a solid minute or two my boss said my face was sheer fright and it created an awkward moment of what was going on.

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Come on @Chiquinho.

You may be a pensioner but you can not tell me that your wife never asked you to some work from home (or a honey do list ) where you had a fail. :wink:

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I was on a ZOOM call with my team that had dragged on and on and on. Finally I started saying “I gotta pee” over and over. Imagine my horror after I realize that my mic wasn’t MUTED! Luckily the ZOOM call ended shortly after.

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In some things I fail daily, but I will not tell in public! :rofl::rofl:

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My WFH fail was an offspring and pet tag team disaster… having learned over several virtual meetings to prep and ensure good knowledge of how not to turn oneself into a baked potato (courtesy of others’ dastardly disasters), end a meeting accidentally or send a non-work related chat message to the entire group that was meant for only one individual - I was fairly confident that I could hold my own when it came to participating in a meeting with seniors from my organisation. What I hadn’t banked on were the external factors, namely children and pets. I’d done the hard work of ensuring my youngest was having his afternoon nap so I could undertake said meeting without distraction. All was well until our two cats decided a little playtime chasing around the kitchen was fair game. Initially, this seemed amusing to the other people in the meeting, if not mildly annoying for myself, as they both wizzed on and off camera. It all ended in me wearing my (thankfully only warm) beverage and some remnant of soggy cornflakes from my rushed pre-meeting breakfast. Shoeing the feline critters away, I’d managed to contain my disdain and slight embarrassment. Or so I thought. A wee little flatulence emitted from somewhere (I can’t say where) and my immediate seeking of reassurance that my mic was muted. Relief ensued following confirmation of muted status. At this point, I came into the meeting conversation to inform colleagues that all was well despite a little chaos. Stage Enter my youngest, who had woken from his slumber and must have been loitering for some time. Announcing his apparent observations, he shouted “Daddy, you farted!”. Microphone definitely not muted this time, some of the faces on screen apparently showing some amusement. My Son’s follow up comment then tickled the entire meeting when he shouted “You poo’d the bath…”. Quite ironic as it was he who had performed that particular feat the night before. Anyhow, mic safely re-muted, I then (very nearly) proceeded to get up to attend to environmental matters, suddenly realising that my lower attire may have pushed the situation to critical levels. I made the executive decision that boxer shorts should not be part of any professional meeting and proceeded to excuse myself from the it entirely. What a day of learning.

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My biggest work from home fail is when we lost power during a storm that downed this tree and others, and interestingly it also struck a Spectrum van which services Spectrum Internet in the area :upside_down_face:

https://twitter.com/DezSantanaPhoto/status/1373245679871594496?s=20

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I had a cat sleeping on my lap during a zoom meeting when she was startled by my other cat. Of course she had to jump to get away, but unfortunately dug her nails into my legs (upper inner thigh). I screamed loud enough that everyone on the call went silent to see what happened. I knew who owned cats after explaining the “Series of Unfortunate Events”.

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Thank you @AnkerOfficial for this fun event!

First of all, for context I’m a college student that’s been stuck in the midst of doing all of my classes online. For hours each day I find myself sitting in front of my laptop aimlessly typing away at my assignments. A true “college experience” if I do say so myself!

For the most part, things have been going quite well, even though not ideal. But most definitely my biggest fail came for my organic chemistry class! I know what you’re thinking, a failed exam isn’t a “fail” like this but I assure you it’s much worse than you think! Anyways, I’m studying away trying to prepare the best that I can for this scam, even though I’m still certain I’m not going to do as well as I would like. About a half hour before the exam opens (it’s through an online website my university uses) I get a call from the electric company. Apparently, they just have to fix something something with one of the lines and my entire neighborhood will be without power for the next few hours, starting AT THE SAME TIME MY EXAM STARTS! Obviously at this point panic sets in. If I don’t have power, I don’t have internet. If I don’t have interent, I don’t take exam! The exam is only open for an hour for us to take so taking it later isn’t much of an option as the professors are very picky about timing! So what do I do? Throw everything I possibly can into a bookbag and quickly head into town! The only place that I could think of that would have public interent (I live too far away from the university to go there) was a local Burger King! So I frantically grab my bag, run into the restaurant and explain to the manager my situation. Thankfully, she was more than understanding and let me take my exam in the lobby! She even gave me a free drink, a sandwhich and wished me luck! How kind! I was thankfully able to log on and begin to get set up with just minutes to spare before the exam begun. In the end, I did much better on the exam than I had thought! So I guess everything worked out, but it definitely was an experience!

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There are some really funny stories here, keep them coming guys

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Reaching for my coffee but instead I grabbed my pin needle cactus with full force. Easy mistake.
My coworkers did not get a quick explanation as to why I was screaming and dancing around. Not my favorite way to wake up in the morning.

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I’ve got a simple one.
I thought my mic was off and my stomach was just being noisy. I knew why and so I let one rip. Everyone got quiet. I left the meeting and apologized later. We luagh about it now but when they said that people forget those moments I know that my group hasn’t forgotten it. I now use an in line mic mute button.

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i was on the phone with an architect about a project we were posting online and my son ran into the room and said he had to go poop. i so hope he didnt hear that in the background. lol

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Between working from home and homeschooling most of the past year, there have been several fails between me and my wife.
My wife was on a morning Zoom call and our daughter was supposed to be getting dressed and ready for her own 1st grade class Zoom meetup. I was in the kitchen and hear my wife talking them hear our daughter complain that she doesn’t have any clothes she wants to wear. I go to help and see that she wandered out in the middle of my wife talking on her Zoom call in nothing but her underwear. 🤦 Fun times.

Thanks for having this giveaway and for others sharing fail experiences.
Shared: https://mobile.twitter.com/courtenay27/status/1373665282275880962

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#AnkerWork
My biggest work from home fail was that I had a sudden power failure due to a circuit breaker popping, causing my laptop & all the device attached to that surge protector to go off. My network closet was also on that same breaker, so everything went down at once.
I wish there was a power delivery device that includes a battery backup like a UPS to keep your devices powered during a sudden outage.

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Great contest! :clap:

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Good luck to everyone that enters. :crossed_fingers:t2:

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Worked from home for a selling platform, one seller was a class A egotist ass. Other sellers hated him too, and as a former seller myself I already had his number from other venues. He wrote the CEO a long email about how underserved he was. CEO forwarded it to me. I didn’t notice the jerk was cc’ed when I replied exactly what a selfish ass this guy was in that he didn’t understand that unlike the other venues we had a flat fee, so he wasn’t our most important client since we made the exact same amount of money off him so him throwing out how much he sold really didn’t matter. We had 200k sellers who were just as equally important. He might have been a big fish on our competitors, but to us he was just another guy.

I was notified he was in on my reply when he replied snippily back.

Oops.

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Biggest work from home fail? Not sure it big, but it is embarrassing I used to work in the kitchen at the kitchen table. We have 'Solar Dancers" in the kitchen window that move in various ways while being in the sun. They’re quite noisy - click clacking about. During one morning conference call meeting, my boss stopped the meeting and asked “what is that noise?” I sheepishly said I work under a large clock. After that, I removed the window things putting them out of the sunlight (in timeout) whenever we had conference calls. Since Covid, I have taken on a different room in the house and the Solar Dancers are free to move about as needed.

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In the news recently, we saw a piece about a lawyer calling into court with a Cat filter on his webcam. My son was curious to find a cat filter to use on the next zoom call with his grandparents, but didnt have much luck.

Next work call I got on, I caused quite a stir - no cat filter, but my kid had set up a filter on my webcam that showed me with a ton of lipstick marks all over my face! I am still trying to live that down!!!

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