This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s Mortification Week at Ask a Manager and all week long we’ll be revisiting ways we’ve mortified ourselves at work. Here are 14 mortifying stories to kick off today.
1. The sweater
I flashed my coworkers during a video call. All men.
I was wearing a thick, flowy sort of sweater and sitting next to the fireplace with my work laptop facing me on an ottoman. The fire got a tad warm, so I grabbed the bottom hem of that sweater and fanned it up and out, as one does, which provided them a perfect – PERFECT – view of my entire torso. No bra (that sweater was thick! I thought it was safe!).
The whole scene unfolded in a half-second delay on my little video window. I saw it all. I saw what they saw. All three fannings. By that time, it was far too late. One man said, “WOAH.” Another made a “hehuh” sound. I scrambled out of frame and spent the rest of the time huddled on the floor, too mortified to even approach the keyboard to leave the meeting.
We’ve all (mostly) recovered and moved on from my full, authentic work self.
2. The insult
I loved Mad magazine growing up. They would list their contributors on the cover and end it with “the usual gang of idiots.” Fast forward to my first tech job out of college (early 90’s), and I responded to an email question about who was working on a ticket. I replied with “me, Bob, and the usual gang of idiots.” Let’s just say there weren’t any other Mad magazine readers in that group.
3. The terrible interview
I left grad school in the middle of the semester for health reasons and was also newly out as a trans man. I found a job teaching but needed work before the new semester started. It’s worth noting I was in a terrible headspace at the time.
I got an interview for a seasonal position at an upscale women’s business professional store. I got the time wrong and showed up ridiculously early, which already irritated the manager. I did well on most of the interview but was very flustered when asked to put together an outfit I would wear from the store. I showed up to the interview in a man’s suit but I was in a very awkward point in my transition where most people thought I was a poorly dressed butch lesbian. I panicked and threw together something hyper femme and then word vomited the whole saga of transitioning to the interviewer.
Then, when she told the hours and pay rate, I realized it would conflict with my more lucrative tutoring side gig, which I again proceeded to tell her (I still don’t know what robbed me of my mental filter) and then backed out of the interview altogether.
Reader, it gets worse. My partner gently chastised me about all this so I CALLED THE INTERVIEWER BACK and retracted my refusal of A POSITION THAT WAS NEVER OFFERED. To the surprise of absolutely no one, I never heard back and proceeded to get a seasonal job at another store in the same mall, where I told no one my pronouns and the staff debated my gender identity amongst each other all season without any clarification from me. I still shudder at the mere thought of those three months of my life.
4. The lettuce hater
At some point I put “Lettuce Hater” as my name on Zoom. It was a personal account. I forget why I ever did, an inside joke of some kind, but it was literally years ago. I was suddenly reminded when I used my personal account to attend an interview during Covid. “So, you hate lettuce?” was one of my interview questions.
We all laughed. I didn’t get the job, though I don’t know if it was my qualifications or my anti-lettuce stance.
5. The coloring page
I was working in a library, in a very wealthy town, and a particularly huffy resident came up to the desk. She loudly, obnoxiously went on a tirade at me and another librarian, detailing an incident that had happened a whole week before, in which her daughter didn’t get a coloring page because the desk had already closed when she came up to get one. That was literally this woman’s complaint: that a whole seven days ago, we closed the desk at closing time, and so her daughter couldn’t get a coloring page. This woman was screaming and finally said, “It was the WORST experience I’ve EVER had” before huffing angrily out of the library.
It became somewhat of an inside joke, that we all wished our WORST experience EVER was that we didn’t get a coloring page. The woman didn’t come to the library much after that, but about a month later, my coworker noticed her, turned to me and said (a bit louder than intended), “Well I’m about to have the WORST experience EVER,” only to turn back around and see that the woman was walking directly behind her. She definitely heard the comment, but just kept huffing to the exit. My coworker was mortified, but our manager, thankfully, was quite amused.
6. The fart
I farted in an interview and we just ignored it. I did get that job.
7. The good riddance
For the longest time, I thought “riddance” was derived from “ride” and would cheerfully say “good riddance” when wishing people a safe and pleasant ride home.
8. Tim Gunn
I once interviewed for a teaching position and one of the questions was essentially “tell us about a good teacher you had in the past and what you learned from them.” Again, this interview was *for a teaching position*, I absolutely should have been prepared for this kind of question, but every teacher I had ever had just completely flew out of my head. I had nothing. I talked about Tim Gunn on Project Runway. (Somewhat surprisingly I did get moved to the next round of interviews, although I did not get the job.)
9. The stolen lunch
I used to work in a department that had weekly events. For a young, broke person like myself, the best thing about the events was that there were always some snacks put out on a table in front of the room where they were held.
One day when I arrived for the event, I noticed the snacks were really paltry, but undaunted, I nudged behind the people who were standing in front of the table and started to rummage around anyway. Right as it dawned on me that something was terribly wrong, one of the women I’d squeezed past said, “What are you doing? That’s my lunch!” She seemed skeptical about my panicked explanation and just said, “Well, I guess you can have some if you really want…”
It turned out I’d missed the email cancelling the event that day.
10. The song
A few years ago, while working from home, I was playing phone tag with a longtime colleague who I’m friendly with, catching up about a case. I called her and left a voicemail, updating about the work related issue, and signed off with a cheery, “Thanks, talk to you soon!”
… and then I never hung up. I typed notes and emails for a bit and then, as I often find helps me focus at home, I started singing aloud. What did I sing this time? “I’ll Make A Man Out of You” from Mulan. My colleague was treated to the sounds of me singing, with verve, “Let’s get down to business! To defeat the Huns!”
I carried on for quite some time before I realized! I finally hung up several minutes later when she’d been treated to several minutes and the entirety of the song, including triumphant final note. I immediately messaged her, filled with embarrassment, and she thought it was one of the funniest things she’d ever heard. She saved the voicemail, but has had the good grace not to mention it again since!
11. The relief
It was one of those corporate town hall things and one of the speakers had just finished giving a very cohesive and articulate presentation. Immediately after she said “back to you, host!”, she immediately whipped off the blazer she was wearing over her t-shirt and let out a big “UGH MY GODDDDD, BLECHHH”. The host kindly reminded her that her video and sound were still on.
It’s fairly mellow, but that raw “I hate presentations” attitude was amazing.
So for awhile I worked somewhere in the education branch of a local tourist attraction where on our radios everyone was referred to with their department first and then their name (Education Liz or Maintenance Tom or what have you). We had a youth volunteer named Mike (education Mike on the radio) that everyone loved; he was friendly, hard-working, competent, and one of our best volunteers.
We also had an area where we had to give presentations to visitors over the sound system. Our bosses were frustrated because the microphone for our dept was broken and they couldn’t get it fixed (all microphones were the headset type so you couldn’t just share with someone else). They finally determined that they could no longer nudge it to work with duct tape and prayer, and wanted us to know it was completely broken.
So we all show up for work one morning and are met with the horrifying note on our whiteboard in the sign-in area: “EDUCATION MIKE IS DEAD!” We were shocked and taken aback both by the idea of this wonderful teen having somehow died, and then our bosses sharing it in such a callous way. A few minutes later they strolled in cheerily to give us morning announcements, including about the mealy microphone situation, to a room full of glum and sad employees. Thankfully it was cleared up quickly, but this still makes me laugh.
13. The duck face
Whilst waiting in the interview room for the hiring manager to arrive for our chat, I decided NOW would be the perfect time to practice my duck face (I was young, I was stupid, I’m sorry) – and then the door opened. Instead of returning to my normal, everyday expression, I continued to talk with my lips exaggeratedly pursed throughout the whole interview. Looking and probably sounding like a loon. I didn’t get the job.
14. The amigurumi
I like to crochet amigurumi and other 3D items, the splashiest of which is a very large and highly detailed penis and testicles. When I say highly detailed, I mean, our friend the urologist was so impressed he showed photos of it to the other urology residents. This decorative item is usually on display on top of a cabinet. However, I moved it to the top of a bookshelf while dusting, forgetting that said bookshelf is in the background of my husband’s Zoom calls.
He spent half of a Monday morning all-staff meeting cheerfully answering questions (he’s a VP) before realizing what was sitting in the background. Most of his coworkers are fairly conservative evangelical Christians. He video muted in horror and removed the offending objet d’art, hoping no one had noticed.
Later that day, a coworker who had recently turned in two weeks notice – and thus had nothing to lose – DMed him a screenshot of his video feed with the decorative penis and testicles circled and annotated with “????” My husband tried to pass it off as a butternut squash. Luckily no one told the CEO, or if they did, he wrote it off as an inevitable consequence of employing secular Brooklynites.
I now make sure to replace all decorative objects in their proper homes while dusting.
