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.

My favourite is the "Tony we can see your pants" teams meeting. It cracks me up every time, mostly because of his colleagues reaction. It's in the middle of this montage of teams/zoom fails.

During Covid I told my son off for his untidy room and called him a “little shit” not knowing he was on a massive chat with his his school friends. I was all of their Head of Year at time.

I once murmured "for fuck's sake" in the preamble as I was trying to get something to work

I did apologise profusely when I realised I'd been heard 😳but it was only a small call and I think my colleagues mostly found it amusing (I'm generally considered one of the more - ah, genteel members of the team)

In the middle of a much larger call someone suddenly swore very loudly. Never did find out who it was...

This made me laugh so much.

Loving this thread!! I don’t have anything other than ‘you’re on mute’ and the random cat bums/ dogs. Thankfully I now work in a sector where it is the norm to leave the camera off, so I can look like a sloth on WFH days

These are great 😂

I can't believe that I have 4 or 5 Teams calls a day and have never witnessed anything more than the odd cat walking across a laptop 😯

One of my clients sent me a meeting link via Google Meet, to introduce me to some colleagues I'd be working with. One of them commented "Oh, interesting name" and I realised my Google sign-in uses a name along the lines of "Wanker" 😬

Not a bad thing as such, but I was on a Teams call with two colleagues and one of their dogs appeared as a 'photo bomb' in front of him; we were admiring the dog and this got my dog's attention - same breed of dog - and he jumped up and appeared behind my shoulder - then third colleague's cat popped up to join the party. We were all laughing! This was during COVID when WFH was still a novelty.

That’s the best. Thank you 😀

Awesome 🤩. As a parent id have laughed and loved you for this xx

That's bonkers. It was simply so that I had my hands free to take notes and turn the pages of the claim form etc. There was noone there. Literally noone could overheard it, but it wouldn't have mattered if they could because, as I said, pre hearings (in most cases) are public anyway. If they are in person, you can walk in off the street and sit in on them.

No idea what you mean about "tone can change meaning", only the people there needed to know anything about it. Everything isn't written either verbatim or not - there's no note taker at them, you just get the judgment either at the end or a day or so later.

It was a very straightforward pre hearing to decide if my client was the correct respondent. They weren't. I had spoken to the correct respondent in advance, they were also on the call and knew they were the correct respondent, so it was a very simple pre hearing to get my client dismissed from the proceedings. It was about fifteen minutes.

The judge was male in this case. I have, of course, often had female judges, but this was a man.

was once on a teams training call, various people involved and all had cameras on. One guy was a larger man in a white shirt. The training leader said she was going to separate us into breakout rooms, one person had their mic on accidentally and said “god I hope I don’t get put with Peter Griffin over there how embarrassing to be willing to present yourself in that state”. The poor guy he was referring to was clearly quite hurt and the rest of the call was so awkward. Training leader didn’t even address it either so it was just really awful

In a group meeting, my co-worker announced my pregnancy by saying something like: "I guess everyone knows DearHorse is pregnant"

I had only told her from that group!

Exactly.

It was not a "public place" in the slightest.

Not that it would have mattered, such hearings are public anyway, and not at all "confidential".

Justice must be seen to be done - hence most hearings are public.

Poor guy, but says so much about the person making that comment.

This is wonderful. I'm going to insist we all wear virtual top hats at our next Teams.

Oh no, how awful for everyone involved. I hope the person recovered OK.

Back when Zoom was new, I was on a training course and accidentally shared my screen with the entire group. I had no idea that was even possible as an attendee.

Manged to screen share In a meeting where I had left a chat window open with a colleague. Nothing too bad said, but it was still embarrassing. That was in person.

Recently I was a attendee at a tribunal held by HMCTS. We kept on breaking up into sub rooms and was altra paranoid I hadn't disconnected from the call with the judge as it was recorded. I told my representative that the judge was a right bitch. But she was. Would be embarrassing if that was recorded.

Another team are running a company-wide project. The project leader is the most boring man in the civilised world. He runs hour long meetings for every team.

Because of my role, he wants me to attend. He explains my role incorrectly despite repeated corrections. He explains the tasks badly.

He talks for a LONG time before anyone else can speak (his PB is 37m).

He overruns his meetings and sends messages to waiting teams 90m later saying, "oh, I'll reschedule".

He drove his own team mate (who understands the details of the project and systems involved intimately) BONKERS by giving him the same spiel as he was giving the ordinary staff.

He leaves his camera on in all-hands meetings (just him and the presenters on camera, 300 people camera off).

He will send a message to a group chat saying, "can we have a chat?" - that's what the fucking Schedule Invitation function is for!

Eventually, he sort of twigged that my colleague and I weren't vibing with his tedium, and outright asked us how to improve his meetings (I had already fed back on this when we were planning the meetings). Now I actually have a good reputation for making dull content interesting in the org. I had already given him good advice. I repeated it.

And it was ignoooooooooored.

Our line manager released my colleague and I from the obligation of attending the meetings!

This happened to my husband when he was in a Teams meeting which included the full board, bloody cat started being loudly sick right behind him. 😆

Perfect, I've filed that away for future use (just kidding, I'm a woman so I never fart 😂)

I remember reading a great post on here once where someone had let out a massive one in a Teams call thinking she was on mute and it turned out she wasn't, apparently it was very obvious from the reactions of others that it'd been heard. Nightmare! I think she said she had to manage some of these people as well. 😂

In one Zoom call at our place with various associates, a rather crusty older lady seemed to be having some trouble with her setup and the whole call heard her mutter 'fuck's sake'. I wasn't sure whether she didn't realise her mic was on, or didn't care - she was pretty cool so I'm leaning towards the latter 😂

Same, same! 🤣

🤣🤣🤣

The 🎩 wins. 🤣

This otherwise would be mildly amusing, but the fact it was during a child protection conference makes it hilarious!