Mortifying incident at work today - help!

[LeevMarie]

OK, I'll have to be a little careful here in case it's outing. . .

Large Teams call today with whole department. At the end of the call, everyone starts saying bye and I'm sitting in the living room with my husband when I make a remark to him about the person leading the meeting (who just happens to be a senior leader . . .). What I said wasn't very polite, but not necessarily unpleasant. I said something along the lines of, 'politicians answers' and laughed a little.

Immediately I realise that I'm not on mute. I'm horrified.

DH thinks I can legitimately claim that this was not directed at the person speaking, but I think I need to own up.

WWYD:
YABU - Ignore and hope nobody has heard
YANBU - Own the faux pas, speak to the person I directed the comment at.

Please feel free to tell me your Teams indiscretions to make me feel better if you like!

This. At my work it would be considered extremely unprofessional and possibly a breach of GDPR or market abuse regs to have a spouse in the room whilst on a call.

Can't believe people are shocked about your Dh being able to hear the meeting. During covid all sorts of meetings were done in living rooms, I lived with a civil servant and heard all sorts from the gov comms department! I thoroughly enjoyed it 🤣 (no for some reason she didn't use headphones)

Exactly what I was going to suggest.

Yes this. I would pretend I was talking to someone else about something else. Claim he had just shown you a text from his brother or something, about some ongoing family drama.

The secret with lying convincingly is to invent a full blown scenario, then start to actually believe it yourself

I'd say nothing , unless something is said to you and blag it that 'oh no I really wouldnt have said that , I don't recall saying that at all' , say you will watch the recording back ... then go back ten mins later and laugh it off say you were talking to dh or as another poster said responding to the radio .. get your acting skills in here 🤣

My manager thought he was messaging someone directly on a teams meeting , calling them a knob , actually posted it on the teams chat!! Now that was taken further 😂

I also find it quite odd you’re having teams meeting and your husband is effectively sitting in and you’re conversing with him. That’s really weird.

id say nothing, even if people watch it back, who is really going to listen to the goodbyes at the end? If someone does say something laugh and claim you were answering your DH about something. I think if you admitted it and said said sorry i was talking to my husband (admitting you were referring to the senior person) you’d look far worse for discussing the call with your DH as it looks like he was listening in then.

Fair point. It's tricky at home right now because we're getting work done. I had headphones on., but you're right.

I think you have a far bigger issue that you allow your DH to listen in on your Teams Meetings. I get very annoyed with my team members when they do that. Really unprofessional and breaking a lot of confidentiality rules.

Would it be so terrible to say ‘yes, sorry, I was frustrated that you didn’t answer the question’

If it’s true, it’s true 🤷‍♀️

I had headphones on.

Thanks everyone - I'll keep quiet for now!

Absolutely do not say anything. If someone does have the front to mention it say you were responding to your husband who had been listening to an interview on the radio etc of some politician. Smile. It's not a big deal

I wouldn’t mention it, no one will have noticed.

My sister on a large teams call with social workers, police etc (on mute and camera off) started a voice note to her friend along the lines of ‘EUGHHH im so done with this job cannot wait to start my new one it’s to tedious). Cue the head of safeguarding for the police kindly saying ‘NCLCsister so sorry to hear you aren’t happy, we didn’t realise you’re leaving tell us about your new job’

she. was. mortified

Either nothing or this ^

People can leave and then rejoin to listen too 😉 so always be wary!

Were you making comments that are private?

My manager used to work next to her partner, I found it unusual but she had headphones on and was saying things like 'has the project code been opened yet' so when I thought it through it didn't matter.

In my work it seems the norm is you only have to be completely private if the topic is private. I am very careful with my screen as you can see people's names but my verbal contributions are banal/generic usually.

My husband said 'fucking deluded' in similar circumstances! 🤣

During teams meeting with a consultant, a coworker messaged the colleague who has sharing his screen with everyone something among the lines of "good god will he stop bullshitting us already?!" obviously referencing the consultant and it showed up on screen. No one acknowledged it.

I would keep quiet but prepare a plausible lie in case it's brought up.

Keep quiet and don’t say anything to anyone. Don’t mention your husband if it does get brought up.

I would go for Braverman over Hancock - could easily be discussing any of the headlines about the home sec and your husband could have just ‘shown you an article something on his phone’

maybe call someone else on the call about something else and see if they say anything.

Realistically, is anyone going to listen to the entire recording?

My mortifying Zoom story (I think I shared this before under a different user name): working from home, on a call with a colleague, and I was talking him through something we were working on. It involved him running a bit of code, which was going to take 30 seconds or so, so we were both sitting quietly reading some notes on screen while we waited.

I'd had a curry the night before and had been farting like an elephant all morning. The office stank. Like, really stank. DH comes in with a cup of tea for me, doesn't realise I'm on a call because colleague and I are sitting in silence. DH breathes in, dramatically coughs, yells "IT REEKS IN HERE OH OH OH THAT'S AWFUL!! HAVE YOU BEEN SITTING IN HERE FARTING ALL MORNING?! THAT IS FOUL!" and then dramatically pretends to choke, fake gagging, collapses on the floor and crawls out.

I pretended to the colleague that this was a joke DH plays when he sees I'm on a call, but I'm not sure whether he believed me!

@JustKeepSlimming sorry, but that's HILARIOUS 😂

Surely you were just muttering to yourself about a message you had just read on your phone from a family member about another family members behaviour at dinner last night 🤷‍♀️

Matt Hancock = jungle probelm solved?!!

DH laughed so hard he almost choked for real when I told him that I'd been on a call.

My manager recently had a "challenging" conversation with someone from another department - immediately posted a message about said person in the Slack chat, WITH the person in it. Never seen anything deleted so quickly in my life