What’s the worst thing you’ve witnessed in a Teams/Zoom meeting?

[purpleroses2]

I am ultra paranoid about online meetings, as I’ve witnessed a few mishaps:

1. A woman took a personal phone call and didn’t realise a colleague had left their mic on. She started slagging the whole team off and we could hear every word.
2. A man left his mic on and went to the toilet
3. Not me personally - but a friend was in a meeting where a woman left her cam on by accident and she had just got out of the shower. She then got dressed in full view of everyone on the meeting.

I wouldn’t dare do any of those things even near my laptop, just incase of an accident occurring.

I manage a big team and have never minded things like this! My own manager was amazing when my kids were ill (before WFh was the norm) and I like to pay it forward

I’m a lecturer and do one WFH day a week where I do a short group tutorial on Teams. I work at the kitchen table and our cat generally waits until he hears me open the class/meeting and ask how everyone is before having a good dig in his litter tray, then do a big smelly poo, then a load more digging about half a meter away from my seat. He will often come in specifically to do this, then go straight back out.

I've also seen this...from a member of senior management 😅 he also likes a little dig in his ear too.

On one meeting you could briefly get a elan screaming 'You little bastard!' and I really hope it wasn't at a small child 😢

Another one a lady on a big meeting obviously didn't realise her phone camera was on and quite clearly went to the loo, though thank God the camera was evidently face up on a sink edge or something while she did it!

One guy who was “off camera” but forgot to unmute. He was basically being an Uber driver and we heard his conversation. Was a big investigation after that.

I recently watched back a meeting that had been recorded as I had been on leave when it happened. Minuted governance meeting of senior people. I got a phone call as it was finishing, and then when I hung up realised that there was 20min still to go and still two people on screen. They hadn't realised it kept recording after the host had left and were going into the most vicious character dissection of loads of staff members, some who they were the line managers of. And really unprofessional stuff like who they wanted to sideline because "she's just got married and she's 32, let's face it covering mat leave will be a nightmare". So disappointing as they're women themselves. I sent it on to my own line manager and HR but nothing seems to have been done. Sigh.

Back in early days of covid, we were transulitionnjnv to teams calls. I was in.my kitchen with blank wall behind me. I also had a big sign on kitchen door warning kids to NOT come in.
My 4 Yr old silently sneaked in during 1 where I was presenting emergency plans to a government working group. I couldn't see my own face, just my slides.
I was in full flow.
My daughter danced behind me, very slowly Completely butt naked and j was only aware of her when she yelled "vulva flash" very loudly just behind me. I jumped and screamed as she dashed put of age room.
J had tk sit down and just continue like nothing had happened.
When i finished, A Govt Mjnister dryly said "very memorable".
I wanted to both cackle and cry.

I had one work meeting where I just could not keep awake. I tried so hard to stay awake and kept waking myself up when my head nodded forward. Everyone must have been able to see it but nobody said anything!

I've always been like this if there is a meeting and I have to just sit and listen. The voices tend to send me off to sleep.

When I worked in London, it became a thing where my friend at work used to sit opposite me in team meetings so that he could keep an eye and kick me under the table to wake me up if he saw me starting to nod off.

I even did it once sitting on the front row of a play with Michael Sheen in Frost Nixon. My other half was mortified because he said that Michael Sheen looked at me a few times.

Turns out it was a combination of sleep apnea and inattentive ADHD. So, by the time of the Teams meeting, I knew about the sleep apnea and was using the CPAP machine. I didn't know about the inattentive ADHD until about 6 months after that meeting.

I forgot to take my ADHD meds 3 days in a row last week and I slept for England. When I took them on the 4th day, my ability to function (get tasks done) and stay awake was palpable. My other half couldn't believe the difference in me!

Wow there are some mad ones on here! I've never seen anything on Teams apart from someone's cat (which I loved)

Reminds me of a colleague during covid. Their children had been using the PC for school stuff.
Colleague found themselves on zoom with a cartoon cat face and didnt know how to remove it and did the entire meeting as a cat.

I have huge respect for them in how they handled it. I still smile to myself whenever we do a zoom mtg with them.

I was supposed to be at home, but actually was in a hotel, was getting away with it until the fire alarm went off and evacuate tannoy etc...

I was on a teams call with my boss and some key stakeholders when he sort of slid down in his chair and then off screen. Turns out he was massively hung over from the night before!

Naked and half dressed people wandering past - the blur isn’t THAT effective folks and the backgrounds break up easily.

apart from that - I think the worst conduct I’ve experienced was when I was interviewing someone and one of the other panel members did a “BRB” half way through a question and went to answer the door for a parcel. So unprofessional.

My cat has screamed through a good few Teams calls. In our open plan old house it was a nightmare but even here where I can close him out, he's still audible - he's very vocal. And the other one has a knack for knocking the office door open with her head and then presenting her bumhole on camera, which people seem to find funny (or at least politely pretend to, bless them).

My favourite is seeing a fairly senior member of a big bank forget he was on camera and rip a massive vape with giant cloud on camera during Covid and then have to chip in to the meeting looking like he was on Stars in Your Eyes. He was mortified, everyone else really enjoyed it.

I was early for a teams meeting so started messing around with the maybelline make up filter, big sweeping eyelashes, rosy cheeks and red lipstick. Very fetching 😂 then the others turned up and I panicked and couldn’t work out how to remove it…spent the whole meeting admiring my new eyelashes!

Haha, that's hilarious 😂

I love the top hat, reminds me of the woman who got stuck as a potato and couldn't turn it off. The screenshot is AMAZING: theweek.com/odd-news/106442/boss-accidentally-turns-herself-into-potato-during-meeting

I also had a workplace earthquake call - my colleague was in Tokyo and the customer and I in the US. The Tokyo colleague said "Oh! Earthquake!" and when we said we'd end the call she refused and said it was fine... until about ten seconds later when she said "Actually it's still going, I'm going to get under the desk" and her phone cut out, which was very alarming. Thankfully she was fine but we had a stressful few minutes until we found that out.

Oh another one - the wife of a colleague has a habit of plonking herself down next to him during his work calls and joining in. She doesn’t work at the same company.

A couple spring to mind. One was a guy watching porn on a separate laptop. He did not realise we could see it and also at one stage it became un-muted. He left shortly afterwards. Second was a guy who was booming quite ill. He was leading the meeting and then became unconscious in full view of the screen. Head down and stopped talking. We had to call his family to go and check on him. He was thankfully ok. Several occasions when people were not muted when they thought they were. Heard one person during a HR presentation describe the HR team as "about as much use as a chocolate tea pot". They lived to regret that comment.

This has made my evening!

I was on a meeting ( can’t remember of it was Zoom or Teams) when I got a bit bored and started messing with the background. It went on for sometime and I must have had some weird setting on where I could change everyone’s view as the manager said ‘whoever keeps changing the background, do you mind stopping please’ I think I styled it out with a poker face, but possible not 😳

An eccentric colleague in Internal Audit used to regularly have her dog sitting next to her on Teams calls. She also noted she had ferret, so at the next meeting one of these made an appearance. She said this one had a bit of a rogue personality, which proved very true as he promptly bit her. You could see he was drawing blood. It took some minutes to get him off her finger and back in his cage.

Thank you this has made me literally laugh out loud 😂
similarly I was messing about pre meeting as I’d just discovered all the different backgrounds and put on a rainbow glittery thing, showed my boss/colleague then neither of us could work out how to get rid of it. I was joining an important meeting where it wouldn’t have been at all appropriate, we just about figured it out during the introductions 😬

Another Teams meeting - cat jumped on the lampshade on a standard lamp and fell onto the colleague’s head
Surely one of the best things you've seen?

Anyone else remember the US lawyer during lockdown who got stuck as a cat during court proceedings? "I AM NOT A CAT!"

Oh that reminds me - I was asked during the pandemic to step up to an organisation-wide leadership role.

I was being offered it on a Zoom call by the equivalent of deputy CEO of large organisation. I had hidden away in our bedroom to take it and DH meant to be minding kids downstairs.

All of a sudden, I heard a squawky little voice murmur, "ooh. Hello, penis."

And I realised then 2.5yo son had sneaked in, not visible to big cheese guy and removed his nappy, and about to practise his standing-up wees on the bedroom floor.

Big Cheese Guy was droning on about "very impressed....time for you to step up... blah responsibility...." and I was just thinking the carpet! The fucking carpet!