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: The Least Professional Moments of My Illustrious Career - Please Feel Free to Add Your Own
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Please reassure me I am not the only one to behave less than professionally occasionally. So far I have:
Called my boss 'Dad'.
I stood up in front of a major customer's supplier quality improvement conference and informed them, 40 other companies, and my boss ('Dad')that "Quality Improvement programs usually come in steps - ours is a 12 step program".
I started a new role in my company, went to a conference with representatives from all the company sites who were now relying on me to ensure the correct products reach them with the correct test reports, labels and packaging. I introducted myself by saying "Good morning, my name is Angela Hernandez". 30 faces went and a voice from the back went "No, it isn't". The real Angela Hernandez (our Quality Director), known to them all for the past 25 years looked very confused as to why I was apparently trying to impersonate her. Not so confused as I looked, obviously.
The head teacher once walked into the staffroom years ago, to find me on the floor, up to my elbows in fake blood, with a bloody and torn sheet spread out in front of me. I just said "Oh don't worry: the republic is safe now" and carried on tearing the sheet.
I got off the phone to DH once, and obviously still thinking about our conversation, shouted "Darling!" to get my boss's attention. In a sudden lull of trading floor noise
I fell asleep during a conference call to China. It was a video conference call I had to be prodded awake by the analyst next to me.
Lastly, when asked by our junior what I would like for breakfast, I called across the desk "Mine's a ginger muffin". I am a redhead.
janeite, did the teacher back slowly out of the room?
I was wearing a floaty dress to work one windy day. I was carrying a huge armful of manufacturing records across the site when the wind caught my skirt and blew it clean over my head in the alleyway between the Maintenance Department and the Men's Locker Room 5 minutes before shift change. A true quality professional would have gripped onto those manufacturing records like grim death and to hell with letting every male in the place see my knickers and thigh highs. As my heart is really in engineering I dropped the batch tickets and adjusted the skirt. The Site Engineer appeared about 2 seconds later. We spent the next half hour chasing manufacturing records across the Mojave desert.
LOL Littlelapin. I was once sat in a meeting with various senior people and a journalist and one of the VIPs started nodding off. It was horrible. And I was too far away to wake him up. Luckily the journalist didn't notice, but the other PR person and I were struggling not to laugh and/or cry throughout the presentation!
The 12 step program comment wouldn't have been so bad if my boss and I hadn't trawled about every bar in the city the night before, we were on a business trip. I think it was a Freudian slip myself.
My boss had just had a very fine antique table 'french polished' (whatever that is, I thought it was for nails) anyway, it cost him an arm and a leg. I made him a cup of tea and put it on his table... He tore me apart very unprofessionally infront of everyone. He beat about the bush so much and was so redfaced I didn't know what he was beefing about. Then he said ' I'm talking about the tea you put on my table!' and I said 'wasn't it sugared?'...
I once farted whilst standing in a quiet corridor showing a new member of staff around the building. It was loud and unannounced. I paused momentarily and having assessed the situation, carried on as if nothing had happened...
She certainly did. But the look of alarm on her face was worse when she found me in the corridor lying down pretending to be dead, whilst I waited for Year 8 to line up and shut up. It worked though!
I have posted this before, but I sat in a meeting to hear about a new project I was going to be working on. I was told to contact an American Engineer. I misheard his name as being Randy Beaver. I spent the next hour or so pretending to cough. There were only 3 of us in the meeting, I think they noticed.
Once arrived late in the midst of a cycling-to-work health drive, gasped down a can of Coke (so much for the health drive), answered the urgently ringing phone with a 'from the depths of hell' resonating belch, and hung up.
my very first business lunch.. with very important potential client.. I ordered pasta and slopped on my blouse.. I was soo embarrassed - felt like a child - but somehow managed to get the contract I think they took pity on me!
I was presenting a report to a tribunal. Everyone else had met the chair on previous occasions, so I was the only one who involuntarily snorted as she introduced herself as "Mrs. Gaylord".
Excused myself from a meeting to throw up - hangover.
I once met a really, really important client on a Saturday in a park and I had a TOTAL blank about who he was. he recognised me; I'd have walked straight past him. Thankfully he introduced himself to my dh so I didn't have to ask his name. I'd been in a meeting with him for five hours the day before
A long time ago, I was the only person in the office to do induction with a new staff member. Unfortunately I'd had one too many vodkas the night before, and couldn't move from the 'horizontal on the floor groaning' position until well past lunchtime. The new staff member is now much more successful and high-powered than me but I'm sure she still remembers!
I just went out to do some vox pop interviews with members of the public (don't ask) and during the first interview my pen ran out and the woman I was interviewing had to give me her pen as I had no money to buy another one. It's a very nice pen.
I also often call a colleague of mine by my 19 mo dd's name.
I over rehearsed my equal opportunities spiel for a job interview at a disability charity. I messed it up though and said 'I believe in equality of access for all life forms'.
I then imagined aliens using ramps to get into supermarkets and got the panic stricken giggles. You know the kind that comes out in a kind of blast? They looked generally unimpressed.
On my very first business trip with my new boss we went out to dinner. Unbeknown to me she was a heavy drinker. In an attempt to ingratiate myself I matched her drink for drink...... and never made the conference the following day because I couldn't stop throwing up. She was completely fine.
My dh once texted to me "Urgent, ring me now!" I panicked and rang him immediately, onlt to find it was a cunning plan to excuse him from a meeting so he could let rip an almighty fart!
On the first day of a new job, my new boss took me to lunch, and I, stupidly ordered chicken kiev.
As I put my knife into the chicken kiev, the butter just squirted out at him, onto his tie. It was awful.
Another one, from work experience when I was about 15. One of my front teeth was a crown then, and had a tendency to come out. I was taken to a meeting with some suppliers, who offered me a coffee, and as I took the first mouthful, my tooth fell out into the bottom of the mug. I had to try and drink the scalding hot coffee in record quick time, without letting anyone see, and then tip the mug really high to retrieve said tooth. I managed to get it back in without anyone noticing. I still die a little inside when I remember it.
I sat in another meeting, the tea trolley came around, I bought a juice box. The juice wasn't coming out. For some reason I thought I could look down the straw and see a blockage while it was still in the box. I gave the box a good squeeze and a jet of juice shot out and splashed all over my glasses. This struck me as so hysterically funny I was pretending to cough for another 30 minutes (once I start laughing I just can't stop). The other people in the meeting must have wondered what on earth was so amusing about carbon fibre computer board racks.
I have moments during every interview where I briefly stop listening to whoever is talking and get distracted by their big ears/facial moles/badly applied makeup. I then have to drag myself back and try and cobble together an answer to the question they have just asked. Think Spud in Trainspotting, but without the speed of course.
Boco - your life forms one reminds me of Simon Groom on Blue peter saying they were collecting money for "Blind dogs for the guides" - still makes me giggle!
Whilst working as a senior CSI I strode purposefully and professionally into a murder scene, tripped up over the body (that I hadn't noticed!)and ended up sprawled on the floor next to him.
i once sent a note to a colleague (a mate)asking for some text books. She sent the note back saying they were "not in hear". I sent it back saying" God you are shit at spelling"
probably not as career minded as many of you but in the throes of labour a male consultant was called who proceeded to examine me internally whilst explaining to s many students that would fit into the room how best to perform an epesiosotomy(sp) came to the head of the bed and in a shocked voice said 'oh its miss Dee ,my sons favourite nursery nurse'- he was very pleased to see me but despite seeing me several times a week hadnt realised i was pregnant!!-he told all my colleagues v proudly hed performed the epesiostomy too
SDD, I was still a smoker at uni in the States, and asked someone in a bar if I could "bum a fag". Definitely 2 nations separated by a common language!
igivein - is that really true? It's both hilariously funny and horrifying, all at the same time!!!! And I could totally see ithappening on CSI or something on the telly!
I once snorted really loudly in court as the witness explained how he had arrested a donkey and taken it into custody. Then tried to cover it up by pretending it was a coughing fit. Then got a terrible fit of the giggles and had to ask for a short adjourment to recover myself.
My professional lapses usually take place in the ladies' loo where I hide after a meeting has ended in order to let out gales of laughter at something that a client told me in a meeting, that at the time I addressed with my best "I'm an unshockable professional" face. In no particular order:
the time a gentleman told me that he had a penchant for vegetables as sex toys, then added that he ran a greengrocers' business
the time a woman told me that her husband would go out for beers every saturday night, then wake in the night and wee in the wardrobe. she cleaned it up. once a week for 9 years.
most embarrassingly, the time a particularly earnest german doctor told me that his christian name was herman and I got "Herman the German" stuck in my mind and had to fight off the giggles for the rest of the meeting. I don't know why, it's not really funny
I called my director "poppet' a few times (pet name for dd)-in front of his none too impressed wife once too! Also strode around the office productively for a whole morning once not realising one side of the slit in my skirt was tucked in my tights,
The thing that bothers me UnquietDad is not that you didn't get the 12 step reference, but that so many people supplying the aerospace industry obviously did.
I was at work with 3 year old at home. We had been enjoying Alladin at the weekend. I was lost in thought and sang very loudly the line "still I think he's raaathhheeeer tasty " with all the tuneless screeching from the original. Looked across to see five Nordic gentlemen looking at me very puzzled as I was supposed to be talking to them about Bank mergers.
Worst one I was involved with was waking up in my house and complaining to my flat mate about her shrieking, noisy, hee-haw sex that had disturbed my whole night. I hadn't realised donkey man was still there until my married boss sheepishly emerged from the room and mumbled good morning before fleeing.
I had to get some information from a colleague so went into his office. He immediately said "Have a bullseye". I stuffed one in my mouth, then realised his foul plan. I was now unable to talk until the bullseye was gone, and it was going to take a long, long time. I had to back out of his office with my jaws and mouth working and a frustrated and boggled stare. He found it very amusing.
Blinglovin - yes it really happened, I really am that much of an oaf. What was even worse it seemed to happen in slow motion, as I was heading for the floor I had this vision of landing on the poor dead bloke's chest (he was on his back)and the pressure making him fling his arms round me, which would have been really euwww,so I twisted myself round really awkwardly so that I'd land next to him rather than on top. This meant I twisted my ankle and was limping for days, people kept asking me how I'd hurt my leg...
I am notorious for my verbal gaffes at work. A lady phoned the bookshop and asked me if we had any self-help books on agoraphobia. I was running around the shelves, listing the titles and prices to her, and then said "do you know what? We've got loads, it's probably better if you come in and have a look"...
Please stop it. I am not supposed to be reading funny online things at work and it's hard to hide what I'm doing when I have visions of you falling into murdered chaps chest while hubnky police partner (there must have been some, right?!?!?!) stands by!!!
I will stop now cos I've got to go pick up ds, but I will say there were about 5 police officers and a doctor in the room, all male but non of them hunky. They all rushed gallantly to my aid (not) - they were too busy pissing themselves laughing
I was taken out for dinner by the board of directors (and their wives) of a company as part of the interview process. It was a very posh french restaurant (L'Escargot) in London. I was with 2 others they were considering for the position, one of whom I knew. I arranged to meet the other candidates before meeting the directors at the restaurant, so of course we downed a few bottles glasses. When we got to the restaurant I was fairly merry. I couldn't read the menu because I couldn't focus on it, and then proceeded to knock over a huge glass of red wine all over the MD's wife, who was wearing a white dress.
I was deeply concentrating on some work on my screen, with my back to the main part of the office.
A collegue walked up with my client (very senior) and spoke to me, it made me jump so much that I screamed. Which in turn made my collegue jump and he fell over backwards onto the (quite small female) client.
Having previously been very nervous about my annual staff assessment meeting, the following year I decided to take in a hipflask so I could have a quick glug for some Dutch courage.
As the time for me to be called in to the bosses office drew nigh I pretended to drop something and disappeared under my desk to 'retrieve' it and had a good swig of rum whilst I was under there.
I emerged to find my boss looming over my desk ! All he said was " Are we ready then ?" so I was never quite sure if he had seen me on my hands and knees, drinking under the desk. Needless to say it was the first and last time I did that.
When I was younger I jumped over the bar I worked in and Knocked out a customer. [blush} she had attacked the Managers husband and best friend.
O another job it went around the work place the boss looked like Kermit the frog I accidently called him it when he asked me a question I was a manager as well
I trapped the head of the Sales Director in my car boot. It was still attached to the neck and body of the Sales Director though - I didn't murder him or anything.
Was once in a language lab with a group of Year 9 boys in a posh boys' school. Something went wrong with the tape and I said "Oh shit!" really loudly, forgetting that I was speaking directly into the boys' headphones.
I looked up to twenty odd boys, wide-eyed and mouths gaping.
I was incredibly busy at work and a meeting was scheduled that I had to fly to. I took the red eye special down, arrived at the office, asked for the meeting, only to be told I had the wrong day and it was actually the day after.
As it was a risk meeting and no one else in the entire office, least of all my boss, was in the least bit interested in the outcomes, I slunk back on the next plane and teleconferenced in the following day
I'm guilty of being drunk and disorderly at many a company function in my younger days. Social functions that is...
I once received a text from a friend saying that John Taylor had died. I thought she meant my teen heartthrob from Duran Duran, so excused myself hurriedly from a very important client meeting to go and google it - she meant someone her husband played football with.
I turned up for a new job and asked the receptionist for my new manager, Cynthia Payne. Except that her name was Cynthia Brown (ie not a famous madam)
I delivered the same 45 minute lecture to the same group of women within 2 days. No one had told me that the same women met under a different name. I even added the jokes etc in the same place. Then I started to recognise faces....but I still had 35 minutes to go, knowing that every one of those women hated me.
Was once in a meeting with some German clients. The project manager said that we would start on a certain day and said 'OK, so we've got our D-Day then'.
It probably would have past unremarked if I hadn't been falling about laughing hysterically for 30 mins. (actually still makes me giggle now!)
Few years back was in staff meeting being told about new referral: homeless man with mental health problems who had dog and both were in a local hostel. So far so good. The meeting went downhill in terms of my behaviour when it was matter of factly reported that the hostel worker had done a routine room check and after knocking on the door and receiving no response had entered the room to be confronted with the sight of the man in flagrante delicto shagging the dog with gusto. As my concerned and dedicated colleagues earnestly discussed their theories about his mental health and social problems and wondered about an RSPCA referral, I suddenly utterly lost it. A massive snort of mirth escaped me and I started belly laughing uncontrollably. It was the thought of the poor hostel worker! Can you imagine the shock of doing a room check, thinking you are going to be looking at a more or less tidy empty room and tick all your health and safety boxes and instead eyeballing a man getting jiggy with his dog? I had to leave the room to pmsl.
I went for a job interview for a job that was very much wanted. I knew one of the interviewers as he was an ex client and mate. To get to the interview room i followed a corridor and turned left round a sharp corner, he was hiding there and jumped out at me causing me to scream.
When i came out, i hid outside the loos as he had followed me out for a comfort break and when "he" came out i jumped out and went "raaargh". It wasn't him. It was my brand new very distinguished and senior boss. I still work there. I have no idea how.
I walked around an exhibition at ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) with a long piece of loo roll trailing out of my pants. It was a corporate view which is usually fairly serious so I wondered why the suits behind me were laughing. I assumed it was at the poncy art .
The director of the publishing company where I worked once walked into my office to find three of us literally lying on the floor, completely helpless with laughter. It was about some funny picture we'd found during our researches - wasn't even that funny - you had to be there. We were embarrassed but just couldn't stop laughing so we carried on.
She was cool though (which was a huge surprise as she was known for her ballbreaking tendencies) and said "mind that plant, mike" or some such as my colleague thrashed around on the floor in his hysteria - then walked out.
right in the middle of a training session.. ( I was the trainer).. I'd left my phone on vibrate ( just in case of the dc's).. phone buzzed.. I looked to see who it was while explaining how being proffesional and competant was really important blah blah.. realised it was the school.. held my hand up to excuses myself taking the call.. ds1 needed to go to A+E.. so I dumped my notes on the most reliable sales rep..said take over.. I'm off to A+E
On a night out after a few drinkies, I told the nice lady from HR that she should really check a certain chap's pockets for Rohypnol. Reader, she was married to him.
OH another painful moment was the first day of a temp job - I took off my jacket and hadn't realised that where it had been thrown over the drying rail at home, some knickers were wedged in the arm. The knickers fell on the floor, where they stayed all morning, just behind me. It was a long thin office and I was on my own, but people walked through to use the photocopier. I didnt' understand why people kept walking through, squeaking to themselves at the photocopier, leaving and then joining a huddle of women outside the door to giggle and whisper. I started to get really paranoid. Then spotted the knickers, shrieked and stayed paranoid for the rest of the job.
I was giving a lecture once which included talking about the inert foam called Plastazote that you use for packing fragile objects in. I couldn't remember the name and was racking my brains and came out with 'zygote', which is actually the word for what an egg and sperm become just after fertilisation....
In my job we have some lovely old dears working as volunteers serving soft drinks to our clients. After many months of trying we finally got nice new shiny containers to serve juice. The refreshment area was really busy one day with both staff and clients and I walked up to a sweet little old lady and said " Oooh! Nice jugs!"
Being responsible for the IT system that sent a batch of prices to all the stores on a weekly basis when I worked for a well-known DIY chain. And sending prices from 18m before Only reason we weren't in lots of trouble with Trading Standards was because they prices on the shelf-edge were higher than people got charged so no-one complained. But company could have lost lots of money. Reversed the prices quite quickly but even so. Not good....
After the life forms incident, friends texted for weeks saying things like 'what about the amoeba?' 'what about the plankton?' 'snails, have they got access?'
I worked in a job for a while where we pre wrote copy before releasing it so we were ready to send as soon as we got confirmation. Hence we'd write two versions so we were ready for either outcome.
I once sent entirely the wrong thing to a fair number of regional newspapers and they went to print.
gosh-my previous jobs have not been anything like as illustrious as all yours sound. i think the worst thing i ever did was rush into an interview room with a woman who i believed had lost her husband. i sat down and went into my spiel about how sorry i was to hear that her husband had died, that i would try to make things as simple as possible for her, and would she like me to help her fill in her widows benefit claim form. to which she replied 'it's my mother who has died'
she was very
i the had to leave the room to get the correct forms and sear at the bastard who told me she was a widow.
<snorts tea through her nose all over the keyboard>
Boco - I can't get the image of aliens in wheelchairs using the ramps out of my head now.
Very, very funny thread.
When I was 17 I was working as a waitress and on one pretty awful day I referred to rather hirsute lady as sir (pity she was one of the bridesmaids), automatically reached down to retrieve a sausage off the lap of someone I had dropped it on with my spoon and fork only to grab a bit more than the sausage, and then slid on a piece of carrot on the dance floor, fell over with a crash carrying an armful of dirty plates and spend the rest of the night with bits of turkey hanging from my earrings.
There was a great thread on here from a woman who'd written silly sexy stuff on her husband's power point presentation. And he hadn't noticed and showed her embarrassing sexual nicknames for him to a high powered gathering... Was that real? T'was a hilarious thread.
I had to do some work once with a consultant called Mr Bunting. Of course, in my head, even before I'd met him, I was calling him "Baby". Did I manage to call him by his first name? Of course not. "Hi Baby" has never really cut it as a professional introduction though, has it?
When I was ordained I had to go away on a four-day retreat beforehand. During that time my husband looked after the boys, and used some pretty colourful language. My eldest interrupted my FIRST EVER SERVICE AT THE PARISH with sweet little cries of "f* it, f* it," as he banged his toy hammer on the church floor.
Fairly soon after going back to work post-DS, sneaking out of house trying not to wake anyone, got to work to find I had one black and one blue shoe on.
Not a funny one, and I still go hot and cold just thinking about it!
I once worked for a marketing company and was travelling to Nice for a major conference for our clients.
I was in charge of bringing the slides and video tapes (yes, this was about 20 years ago).
I got onto the plane and just as they had closed the plane doors, I realised that I had left them all in the airport .
I managed to persuade the airline to let me off the plane, even though all my bags were loaded on. (it would never happen now!)
I was taken back to the terminal, 5 airport staff helped me search for them and we eventally found them at the xray area. They then put me on the next plane out to Nice (First Class) where I arrived 7 hours late!
Once, after a particularly long and liquid lunch (I was a surveyor, FGS, it's part of the job description), I found myself the only back at the office on a Friday afternoon when the phone rang.
The voice that asked for my boss was spectacularly squeaky. Minnie Mouse on Helium. To my addled brain it was obviously someone having a lighthearted Friday afternoon jape, so I pitched my voice as squeakily as I could and responded:
'He's not in the office right now, he's on a cheese tour.'
My afternoon took a downward slide as SqueakyVoiceMan calmly asked for Boss's PA, in exactly the same tone. In desperation, I had to continue the squeaky tone throughout the rest of the conversation, which strained my voice for the next 24 hours, but at least ensured my anonymity.
That was 15 years ago and you lot are the first people I have ever told about that. <cold sweat>
I once got caught by the headteacher of my first school (when I was a teacher), pushing a wheeled drawer unit down the corridor, and flinging myself onto it to ride along, pretending to be an aeroplane.
It didn't help that the headteacher was showing round prosopective parents
Just in case anyone's worried - the children were all in assembly.
I've done the calling a boss 'dad' by mistake thing (never worked with my dad, no idea why it happened).
Even worse, years ago when I was very young, somehow found myself saying 'I love you' to one of my bosses. Not intentionally as a romantic declaration, just as I'd say it to a family member or really good friend. It came out of my mouth without my conscious mind actually intending it! Fortunately either he didn't hear or pretended he hadn't.
Take time out from your busy day with Good Earth – a range of organic premium teas which taste delicious and are blended to perfection to ensure you get a relaxing break. Flavours include Sweet Citrus White Tea, Cool Mint Herbal Tea, Jasmine Blossom Green Tea and Harvest Berries Red Tea. Click here for more information.
and a voice from the back went "No, it isn't". The real Angela Hernandez (our Quality Director), known to them all for the past 25 years looked very confused as to why I was apparently trying to impersonate her. Not so confused as I looked, obviously. 
I think they took pity on me! 
but in the throes of labour a male consultant was called who proceeded to examine me internally whilst explaining to s many students that would fit into the room how best to perform an epesiosotomy(sp) came to the head of the bed and in a shocked voice said 'oh its miss Dee ,my sons favourite nursery nurse'
.
