I didn’t realize my husband had taken a new virtual substitute teaching job and when I walked into the office not quite appropriately dressed, I had to stop, drop and combat crawl my way out! Lesson learned!
What’s Your Biggest Work From Home Fail? (Contest!)
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What’s Your Biggest Work From Home Fail? (Contest!)
I had an early morning class I volunteered to do for a non-profit. It started 9am Eastern Time, so that’s 6am my time. Thing is, I forgot about it until like 2-3am in the morning when I was casually doing my late night emails. I had nothing setup. No lights, no camera, no background (messy). So I spent three hours setting up and going over the class materials. I work in the TV/film world prior to the pandemic and switched to corporate esports stage management when COVID shutdown the TV/film industry. Sufffice to say I have a high personal standard for how I like my lights setup and how my stream looks like as I’m usually working in a professional video studio. I had an awesome looping-video for my background. It showed a huge, modern beachhouse with an animated fire cracking in the fireplace while lazy beach weaves can be seen through the open patio doors. When the class started, it was perfect. It showed me sitting in this fancy room with perfect lighting. 6am is right before sunrise so it was still dark outside. The class was to go for three hours before breaking for lunch and as the sun rose it managed to fight its way through my closed window blinds. It was enough to cause half my face to start changing exposure and cause problems with the “greenscreen” software that was cutting me out and dropping me into the video background. To adjust, I had to turn my head so the uneven light from the window hit me at the back of my head. So for the next few hours until my lunch break where I could make adjustments, I did this class with my head slightly turned to one side which I had to turn more and more to adjust for the light coming from outside which was getting hotter and hotter until I was teaching this class turned almost sideways. My neck started to hurt so I tried to nonchalantly put my fist under my chin. I was teaching this class looking like I was posing for an 80’s highschool yearbook picture. I don’t think anyone caught on to it, or at least they showed little care about it which – thinking back on it – made it even more absurd that I did it.
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OMG my biggest fail was my five year old granddaughter on Zoom in my bedroom when I told her to either turn the laptop the other way, or turn off video. She thought she turned off video and I thought it was safe to walk by in my towel after a shower. Holy crap, never trust a five year old to think they’ve turned off video!! I was so embarrassed!!! Thank god the important parts were covered, but there was enough fat, wet legs showing to probably traumatize every kindergartner in the class!!
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Unfortunately I have the gassiest dog I have ever met. She will let one rip and it doesn’t even phase her, she just goes about her day. I was running a meeting and off mute when she let one go under my desk, it was too loud for anyone not to hear. I spent a few seconds explaining that it was my dog and not me! #AnkerWork
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I have 2 work from home fails. The first, I needed a sit to stand desk but did not have the money to purchase one. So, I used an ironing board… long story short, I was using it as my desk and it collapsed on me one day… my work papers and everything went everywhere. I’ve attached a photo from when I first thought of it… before my fail LOL
My second work from home fail is thinking I can get all my work done at home. It NEVER happens!!! Too many distractions all the time.
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My biggest WFH Fail is that I didn’t have a desk in my one bedroom apt so I borrowed a rickety, old, little card table and folding chair that I had to stick in the living room of my tiny apartment. I tripped over that dang table multiple times but the worst was when I was running for the door and took the whole thing down with me! Thankfully nothing broke but my pride! I finally had to invest in a proper desk and find a new spot for it!
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Biggest fail today was when I had the kids watch a school related video in connection with their history on mythological Greek Gods. This video was on how the Trojan War started. As the video ended, I looked over and found my daughter asleep. And here I thought supplementing historical discussions in relation to our reading would be an awesome way to get them interested in history. Epic fail today. Has that happened in any of your work setting?
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#AnkerWork I was doing a training remotely. I had already told my kids i would be in a training and would not be available to talk and to please be quiet when coming out of their rooms. Well in the middle of the training my son decided to use the restroom without closing the door. and yes you guessed it, you could hear the water flow very clear and loud. I lost my train of thought and had to ignore the sound and continue my training as if no one was peeing in the background.
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Inventive! Hope the laptop either survived the fall or was in another location at the time 
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My biggest work from home fail actually involves one of your products (not the products s fault!).
My son does remote school in the same room that I work in, at opposite ends of the room. We both use Soundcore Life Q30 headphones. At some point we had both been in between calls/classes and he left his headphones on the table I work at. You can probably see where this is heading… I’m sitting at my computer and connected with my next zoom, he gets in his next class, they eventually start - I’m looking at my colleagues but they can’t hear me, I unmute etc., when I hear what I thought was a colleague talking about current political events, and commenting sharply. Seemed like a questionable topic for a work meeting, so I message him that I think we should start the meeting or at least change the subject. After several confused messages back and forth, I look up to notice my son, headphones in his hand, reaching to hand them to me and I realized what was up. We got our headphones switched up and didn’t realize. Explained to my colleague and we had a good laugh!
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My biggest fail comes in the form of the old “I was in my underwear and didn’t know my wife was in a zoom meeting” gaffe. I mean, there really needs to be one of those “On Air” signs above her head. Actually, I might do that!
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My biggest work fail is still ongoing! I’ve got such a mish-mash of equipment. The microphone in my headset doesn’t work, and the audio jacks in the front of my computer are busted. So I have to always wear 2 headsets in my meetings, one for listening, and one for the microphone. Everyone always asks about it…
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My partner came through the front door while shouting that she had “99 problems but a …… ain’t one”after leaving her car.
I was listening to the MD’s Christmas speech and my mic was still on.
Never will I make that mistake again
Although I still got my Christmas bonus 
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I was working in my florida room with a view of the pool. What I didn’t know is my neighbor had been sneaking in my backyard to use my pool when I’m not home and she strolled through my gate buck naked and everyone in the Zoom meeting got to see the show.
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Such an embarrassing moment for you and the neighbor lol
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My WFH fail was actually my interview for my current job. Being the COVID times, my interview was to be via ZOOM. I showered and shaved, styled my hair, put on a tie, and even wore pants, just in case.
At the appointed time, I signed on to the call, which was with the entire team. After a few moments, I realized that I was the only one showing my video! Naturally, I didn’t want to be the only one on camera, so I switched it off before anyone began speaking. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize my ZOOM photo defaulted to my Google pic, which was a headshot of myself wearing goofy sunglasses. It was too late to change it now, so I powered through with all the confidence of someone who chose their photo on purpose.
Guess it worked out OK, since I’m currently working that job from home. I learned that no one on the team ever uses video during our calls, which is fine with me. I don’t even have to wear pants.
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Im a Realtor, and prior to COVID, did most of my business in person, on the telephone, or by email.
So when our lockdown began, my clients needed to sign all the documents for escrow via a zoom meeting. I’d done this a few times in my office, so I double checked that there would be enough light in my home office at that time of the day, straightened up the bookcase that would be in the visible behind me, and warned my husband that he’d need to be really quiet for about 30 minutes.
At the appointed time, I went to my PC, and turned it on to begin the meeting. Too late, I realized that when I’d bought a new monitor a few months earlier, I’d bought one with no microphone or camera, since I never needed one at home. By the time I downloaded zoom on my cell phone, the document signing was done. Good thing, this was the last step in my client’s transaction!
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I not long ago started working from home work for a customer services company, a new experience for me that I have come to enjoy greatly.
During one of our training days, whilst waiting for the trainer to start, there was a bit of music playing that turnout to be one of my all time favourite tunes.
Out of habit I started belting out the lyrics as if I was a work at home rock god. Turns out not only can I not sing (at all) but also that everyone one of the 120 folks that were training could hear me too. Even now (6 months on) I still reminded on a war daily basis that I will never have a singing career.
Fingers crossed my work from home fail will have some good come of it 
My social share of the comp is here:
https://twitter.com/jimdhope/status/1375014750313193474?s=21
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My biggest work from home fail is an ongoing one. Poor camera quality with the camera facing the window so it completely washes me out during the day so I look like a blurry mess surrounded by light.
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What a competition.
I am sure everyone had some working from home fails. I had a few fails. The biggest fail was when my bluetooth speaker started to glitch and the voice came out from my laptop and then the speaker. The change of the output made me not understanding the meeting so I needed to disconnect my speaker from my laptop. Imagine when you need to follow up and explain that you had a fail on your speaker. Since then I am not using a speaker during my meetings. Another time I had kids outside of my window. One of them started to shout loudly some offensive words. During the meeting everybody froze for a second and then asked me if I am alright. This was particularly disturbing during a high level meeting. Luckily I just needed to shot my window. I am sure that we all had issues with our internet connection, even if we have a high speed router. I had a few webcam issues before when I either froze, either disappeared. Those funny moments when someone froze in a particular way. 
I would say these were my biggest IT fails. Let’s not talk about the every day fails such as food and drinks all over on your keyboard or laptop or both… '
Hope I will win something which will make my life easier. Good luck to everyone!
#AnkerWork #WorkFromHomeFails
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