the fancy chocolates, the misdirected chat, and other stories to cringe over

by Alison Green on August 6, 2025

It’s Mortification Week at Ask a Manager and all week long we’ve been revisiting ways we’ve mortified ourselves at work. Here are 15 more mortifying stories people have shared here over the years.

1. The title misunderstanding

At my very first office job, my manager left her position. I thought that you automatically move up once the person above you leaves. I changed my signature to the next highest position and started sending emails with this new title. I expected my other colleague (senior to me) to do the same. It was only after he confronted me that I realized that this is not how the working world works.

2. The misdirected chat

During a long boring meeting with several people from leadership each giving their life stories, advice, blah blah to us newish hires, I sent a Teams chat to a friend, while one of the ladies was speaking, saying, “OMG is she ALWAYS like this?” A beat later, the lady in question looks up, looks at me and says, “Yes, I am.”

3. The nerves

A friend was applying for a job after undergrad. For some reason, she wasn’t prepared to hear the company’s voicemail and instead of hanging up, she blurted out, “I’m calling about the interview? Uh, I can’t remember my name right now, but I’ll call you right back.” Reader, she in fact did call back and leave her name. She didn’t get the interview.

4. The fancy chocolates

A colleague of mine commented on “the fancy-looking chocolates” in our investor’s bathroom that he had never seen before. They were not chocolates. They were tampons.

5. The speed walker

As an expediting clerk, I was taking some orders down to our shipping department and I was running late so I was really walking fast. A group of guys was chatting in the walkway, and they stepped back against the walls on either side to let me through.

I was swinging my arms as I went, and I “connected” right into a guy’s crotch. Reader, I felt the poor man’s nuts! My eyes went wide and my face turned bright red but I just. kept. going. (Faster, even.) I have no idea what chaos I left in my wake, but that poor man high-tailed it the other direction every time he saw me, for as long as I worked there.

6. The flat denial

I had a sweet cat with constipation issues, which led to her sometimes pooping on the carpet.

I was unmuted, about ready to speak on a Zoom call, when my husband yells, “There’s a giant turd on the floor.”

I was mortified, especially from the wording “turd”! My coworker was so disgusted — I could tell it from her tone — and said, “What did you just say?”

I said I didn’t say anything. She asked if I heard anything, and I just said no. I’m sure it was very obvious I was lying, but the meeting just continued.

7. The terrible example

I had recently started a job in local government that involved going to all our facilities and training staff on a new program the county was using. One point I always had to belabor was that all files from this program had to be saved to a shared location, as they were considered public records and the laws were very strict.

So one day I’m at a new facility working with the staff there, and I said what I always said when someone challenged me about the shared server thing: “Well, if you got hit by a bus and died, no one would be able to access your files, and that would be a big problem!” Absolute silence followed, and the staff didn’t engage with me at all for the rest of the training.

When I mentioned this at the home office, my supervisor stared at me in horror and then carefully explained that the manager of that facility had died three months earlier – his car had been hit by a bus.

…They assigned a different trainer to that facility and I never went back there again.

8. The cut-off audio

My company is mostly an in-office work environment, but one weekend we were doing an IT upgrade and had to have many scheduled calls with executives to provide an update on how things were going. Our poor project manager who was leading the meetings had a lot of background noise of dogs barking, and he tried to apologize to the group by saying, “I’m sorry for the noise, everyone. My wife and I are doing doggie day care for our kid’s pets this weekend.” Quite unfortunately for everyone, his audio cut out after the word “doggie.”

There was about 10 seconds of silence, followed by an eruption of laughter and some comments that seemed to forget how many senior executives were on the call. Definitely lightened the mood from a very stressful weekend, though!

9. The typo

I once sent an email where, instead of using the word assisted, I said that the users had been assassinated.

10. The background visual

It was a windy day. I was taking the mail out to the box in front of the building when the wind blew the door open on me and banged it against the wall. I had to fight to get it closed again, and dropped some of the mail as I did so. Naturally, it started blowing away too, so I had to chase it down and try to grab it. Oh, yeah, and I’m a complete klutz.

I finally got it all back and headed for the mailbox when I saw that my boss was giving an interview about something very important to the local news and the camera had been pointed right at me the whole time. So I walked to the mailbox with as much dignity as I could, with my hair and jacket flapping around, and went back in. Of course, the door blew open again.

I watched the news that evening because I HAD TO KNOW. Thankfully they just used voice clips and still shots of the building instead of my clown college dropout routine.

11. The group leader

At a team building retreat with my old company, we were instructed to break into groups and come up with a list of “things you need for communication.” Not only did I, the most junior employee, appoint myself group leader, but for some reason I was determined to figure out how this was a trick question. Like I wanted our group to be the one that figured out what they were really getting at instead of giving the obvious answers. So I basically railroaded everyone else’s suggestions (great teamwork, right?). I don’t remember everything on our list, and some of it was probably normal, but I do remember INSISTING that the first thing needed for communication was “more than one person.”

As other groups presented their lists, it dawned on me how crazy I’d been. When it was our group’s turn, the guy presenting (of course I didn’t step up for that role) did his best to quickly move past “more than one person” in favor of the more normal answers. I did hear someone in another group mumble, “More than one person? That’s kind of low-hanging fruit.”

12. The Myers-Briggs type

At a former small, nonprofit workplace, the CEO decided it would be a good idea to have everyone complete the Myers-Briggs inventory with a facilitator to discuss how to communicate better in a three-hour mandatory meeting. One of the pairs is J (judging) vs. P (perceiving). Supposedly, one of the key characteristics of a type P is messiness.

We finished the meeting and then a group of us went out to lunch, and, naturally, conversation centered around the Myers-Briggs stuff. One of the younger, female coworkers at some point said, “I just can’t stop thinking about Joe’s P-ness.” The table of about 10 people fell absolutely silent. She seemed confused by this response, and followed up with, “You know, like in his office. His P-ness.” One of the other coworkers said “His P-ness?!?!” The younger coworker finally heard what she had been saying, flushed completely red and started stammering about he’s definitely a P not a J, based on how messy his office is.

Younger coworker was never able to completely live that one down.

13. The account name

I use my Zoom account to play Dungeons & Dragons on the weekends, so sometimes have to scramble on a work-related call when I realize I’ve shown up as Cairora Whisperwind.

14. The valentines

When I was just starting my first job out of college, on Valentine’s Day I gave all the members of my training class little kids’ Disney Princess valentines. I gave our manager the teacher card!

15. The meow

It’s a (bad) habit I got into at home: the cats meow at me and my partner > we meow at the cats > we meow at each other. One day, I was sitting in a conference room waiting for my colleague to arrive for a meeting, and I was kind of distracted. She walked in and said hello, and I … meowed. She said, “Did you just meow at me??” and I stammered, “Uhhh, it’s been kind of a weird day.” (It had been a very normal day.) We went on with the meeting and never mentioned it again.

You may also like:
{ 257 comments }

{ 257 comments… read them below }

  1. Dust Bunny*

    14. My office does low-key parties for random things, just for fun. This year they gave everyone a blank box and invited them to decorate it for Valentine’s Day.

    Y’all . . . my coworkers have some seriously intimidating craft skills (our jobs are not at all craft-associated). And I think pretty much everyone decorated their box. The box display was impressive.

    We are also not afraid of little kids’ Valentines.

    1. Lab Boss*

      I love to hand out the little kit valentines that have some kind of activity- a sticker, a temporary tattoo, or (my favorite so far) a little scratch board panel so you can complete a drawing of an animal. Those were years ago and there’s a few people at work who who still have little scratch-board animal pictures on their bulletin boards.

      1. Dust Bunny*

        I like those! One of my coworker gave us Dora the Explorer ones with tiny magnifying glasses.

      2. March*

        #7 I’m really sorry for everyone involved here, but I’m also convinced that this is squarely on them. Somebody should have informed you about this facility’s recent bereavement, if nothing else. That example you used is common enough that nobody could reasonably suspect malice or even exceptional gaucheness.

        #10, thank you so much for the glorious phrase “clown college dropout routine”. Permission to use it, as a fellow klutz?

      1. Dust Bunny*

        It was fun. It’s very, very, optional and they gave us the boxes weeks ahead of time. My first idea was a disaster so I had to attempt to rescue it with a very different idea at the 11th hour, but whatever. There were snacks and punch.

    3. Peanut Hamper*

      At my last job, I bought some Hello Kitty valentines on clearance after Valentine’s Day (they are ridiculously cheap then–like a buck a box) because they had Hello Kitty erasers.

      I spent the next two years secretly placing Hello Kitty erasers where people would find them: on top of the coffee filters, on their desks, in files, etc. Nobody ever figured out it was me even though it took me almost two years to use the all up.

      1. Dek*

        This past year, one of the nicest of our coworkers came around with little valentines for everyone. You could pick one or two based on what came with them. I got a fun little fidget-spinner soccer ball that is, in fact, very soothing to hold.

    1. Lab Boss*

      Shades of the movie “Super Troopers.”

      “Did I say meow? Do I look like a cat to ya? Am I jumpin’ around all nimbly-bimbly from tree to tree? Am I drinkin’ milk from a saucer? Do ya see me eatin’ mice?”

    2. Dust Bunny*

      I once (unthinkingly) slow-blinked to try to soothe my fussy infant nibling.

      It didn’t work.

      1. Skippy*

        My husband slow-blinked at a small child… and “mow” is the most common word in our house, not even counting the cats!

      2. Anonymous Demi ISFJ*

        A couple years ago I had a coworker who was on maternity leave, and my boss had her come for a visit so we could all meet the baby. I got to hold the baby for a bit, and the first gurgle she made when I was holding her, I meowed back without thinking…

      3. Ally McBeal*

        In high school I worked at a daycare and got to work with the babies under 1 year old. One day during naptime, a kid who was about to graduate into the 1-year-olds class didn’t want to nap so he stood up in his crib and yelled “yah!!” into the air every other minute or so. This obviously was starting to wake up the other babies and no amount of shushing or patting his back would stop him… so at my wits end, the next time he did it, I whipped MY head around, made eye contact (wide eyes, not mad eyes), and yelled “yah!!” right back at him. He was so surprised sat right down and barely made a peep until we turned the lights back on for enrichment time.

        Now, being childless, I meow loudly at my cat when she won’t shut up.

        2. Dust Bunny*

          My older cat fought me for ownership of the sewing table. The only thing that got her to back down was when I cat-hissed back at her. (Yes, I tried the squirt bottle. She attacked me. This cat is her own entity.)

      5. Grimalkin*

        Reminds me of a story fit for mortification week:
        Applied to work at a daycare, in the middle of a “trial period” for like, half an hour or something? (Probably should’ve been paid but it wasn’t a long trial period at least.)
        I want the kids to come over to me/pay attention to me, so I unthinkingly… make kissy noises at them like I would do with my pets at home for the same purpose.
        Yeah, I didn’t get that job.

      6. Cedrus Libani*

        I recently had a baby, and for the first couple of weeks, I caught myself slow-blinking at the baby all the time. It’s small, it’s mewling, of course that’s what you do…

        Now I’m catching myself singing and making silly faces at the cats.

        1. Boof*

          Speaking of animal cross species communications… once we had a shared apartment that included ferrets and a kitten. At some point the kitten started to “boing boing boing” like the ferrets!

          1. Dust Bunny*

            A friend of mine had four cats and a small dog. The dog would sleep on the back of the sofa and roll around in catnip on the rug, just like the cats.

            We had a dog for many years who had zero tolerance for other dogs but adored cats. She was rescued at 3-4 years old and I would desperately like to know what her background was (she was friendly but completely untrained when we got her, so I doubt she was in a proper home, but who knows).

        2. Dr. QT*

          I have slow-blinked babies and I also used to “bounce and sway” instinctively when holding the cats when my kid was younger.

      7. CeeDoo*

        Whenever anyone comments on something I’m eating or drinking, I offer to let them sniff it.

      8. Ineffable Bastard*

        It does not work with my cat, either. Meow or slow blink and she looks bemused. Talk, and she meows back. Blow her a kiss and she slow blinks.

        I don’t know, maybe she does not get our accent and performance.

    5. Dasein9*

      A kid tried to snatch my lunch bag as we passed each other on the sidewalk one day. Without thinking, I responded as I do when my cats misbehave: I hissed at him.

      Before that, I thought the phrase “turned white as a sheet” was just poetic license.
      Nope, it can be literal.

      2. a perfectly normal-sized space bird*

        Somewhere along the way, my niece learned to hiss when she didn’t like something. It was adorable when she was little and hilarious when she was a teenager. Her parents responded to teenage hisses with yowls when they were tired of whatever shenanigans she got caught doing. She still hisses her displeasure but has since learned when it’s not appropriate.

        Meanwhile, spouse and I have entire conversations consisting of cat noises. I’m sure our cats think we’re completely bananapants.

        1. On Fire*

          The cats to each other: “Did you *hear* that grammar? What do they think they’re saying?!” :-P

          1. Marion Ravenwood*

            Either that or they’re clutching their little kitty pearls because the humans said something *unspeakably* rude!

      3. Chas*

        Reminds me of the poor university student who tried to hand me a leaflet or something while I was leaving the building early because of a sore throat:
        Him: *Tries to begin spiel as I walk past him*
        Me: (Barely audible, just trying to get past him) “No thanks.”
        Him: *Chases after me and tries repeat spiel*
        Me: Turns and glares at him and in a voice so gravelly it sounds like a demon possessed me snaps “I SAID NO!”
        Poor dude actually backed away from me and went back to his spot.

      4. Selina Luna*

        I unironically hiss at my high school students when they try to touch my chocolate or my caffeine. They mostly think it’s funny, but they also leave my stuff alone. Usually, they’re more just doing that unthinking “looking with their hands” thing, not trying to steal anything.

    6. Princess Sparklepony*

      I want to say that there is a letter where someone got meowed at by a co-worker. Could this be the other side of that? That might have been on Smoosh though…

  3. Fluff*

    OP 1 – This cracked me up.

    Kind of like Klingon workplace culture. Kill your boss and step into the position. I wonder if the other Klingons could advance kind of like you thought since a spot opened up in the hierarchy.

        1. Curious*

          Yes! In TOS “Mirror, Mirror,” where Chekov said “So you die, Captain, and we all move up in rank!”

  4. CXasaurusrex*

    D&D display name of “Chickadee Jones” and “Zinc Gadinka” (including a fantastical background) have accidentally appeared more than one in a work zoom meeting after a night of online gaming. I think it is secretly a great way to expose a excellent level of nerdiness and attract the right work friends without having to say much.

      1. Anka*

        I think the real question is, why are they still using Zoom for D&D? Discord is superior in every respect! (But yes I’m guilty of this one. My Bible study group leader wouldn’t let me in to the meeting because my Zoom name was Anka, which is in fact my half-elf name)

        1. MigraineMonth*

          My workplace actually uses Discord. I made a separate account for work, but I’m guessing my coworkers CritStab and DestroyerOfToilets did not.

          1. Katie Impact*

            I also use Discord for both work and tabletop RPGs, but Discord allows server-specific usernames and profiles on a single account so I just handle it that way.

        2. Sopranoh*

          My group overwhelmingly prefers zoom for our video sessions, but all of our notes are in discord. I’m not one who really notices such things, but they all think the picture quality is vastly superior in zoom.

      2. Stunt Apple Breeder*

        I once logged into a Zoom interview with a fake name…I chose a random, normal name to sign into a recorded webinar and forgot to change it back!

      3. Sopranoh*

        I would absolutely do this if I my work laptop wasn’t, due to regulations, strictly for work. My coworkers would probably enjoy my background of Billy Strings and his band dressed as LOTR characters though.

    3. FanciestCat*

      I was taking a remote class during the pandemic on Zoom when the professor was like, “It looks like Seraphina has a question” and I panicked because 1) I thought it was displaying my D&D name again and 2) I didn’t not have a question. But it turned out there was actually a real Seraphina in the class lol.

    4. Personal Space Invader*

      I’m nonbinary and out at work, but still using my very femme birth name. Every time Zoom displays my DnD characters name, people wonder if I’ve finally gotten around to changing my name. Alas, I wish I could think of a name for myself that is as cool as my DnD character’s!

    8. EvilQueenRegina*

      Years ago, my uncle set his Skype name to one of Kenny Everett’s comedy characters. One time, he and his wife were having a consultation with some medical specialist, and while they were having some difficulties connecting, they thought they were signed in to her account (in her actual name)…until the specialist asked “Who’s Gizzard Puke?”

    9. M*

      So is everyone on this thread using their personal computers for work? (Or their work computers for D&D?)

      I just always figured work-from-home meant the compamy would supply you with a work laptop. For security reasons and also because it’s the employer’s job to provide the tech you use for work.

      1. Christine*

        When I was hired at my community college, the laptop they gave me was so clunky, I never used it.
        Everything is on the cloud now, so I can work reasonably securely from any computer. I use my laptop at home and whatever station is available at work in the classrooms and labs.

      2. Katie Impact*

        In my case, I’m self-employed, so the employer providing me with the tech I use for work is me. In general, I do think employers should provide employees with the tools they need to do their job, but it’s unfortunately not rare that they don’t.

    10. Dek*

      A couple months into my first campaign (I just started this past year. We just finished up. I am Not Okay and I already miss playing my character. I HAD SO MUCH COOL STUFF I NEVER GOT TO USE!) I dropped by the restaurant where one of the players is a cook. He was there that day, so I asked the waitress to please say hi for me. Specifically I told her “Tell him Weasel says hi!”

      Later he told me she seemed very confused.

    11. E. Chauvelin*

      I’m in the Society for Creative Anachronism. For some reason, Webex on my home laptop won’t allow me to update my display name until I’m actually in the meeting. During the first year of Covid when there were a lot of online SCA activities and our union meetings were virtual only, I’d always wind up having to text the union VP to ask him to let my pseudonym into the room so I could change it.

  5. Myrin*

    I wonder what kind of tampons those were where someone could reasonably mistake them for chocolates!

      1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        I’m imaging long, thin wrapper that plausibly looks like a Cadbury Flake or somesuch.

      2. Lily Rowan*

        I’ve seen some natural or other upscale ones that are wrapped in rich colors, but the shape! I am assuming that male coworker was generally unfamiliar with tampons.

        2. Certaintroublemaker*

          They’ve made tampons so pretty so that it’s not immediately apparent/ embarrassing when they fall out of a purse. But if guys are mistaking them for chocolate, now I’m worried they’ll start stealing them out of purses!

          1. Dek*

            “Y’know, I think your chocolate’s gone off. It’s awfully dry, even with all the extra wrapping.”

      1. Super*

        Both of my exact questions! What tampons look fancy enough and are shaped like chocolates?!

        Who expects to see fancy candy in the bathroom?!

        1. Silver Robin*

          I do not think he expected to see either in the bathroom and his brain went to “must be a hospitality thing…chocolates?”. And that kind of miscalculation can happen instantaneously for something so low stakes; his more conscious brain might not have had a chance to go, “wait…chocolates? In a bathroom? No, you dolt, those are menstrual products.”

          I bet he is going to be kicking himself about this for *years* afterwards because once it was either explained to him or just occurred to him, he is going to realize how silly it was.

    3. misselphaba*

      I was thinking the small ones that have the expandable applicator or maybe the applicator-free ones?

    4. Nina*

      I’m assuming non-applicator like Kotex – they usually come shrink-wrapped in bright colours (inside an opaque box), and are about the size of the first two joints of my middle finger. I can see someone who doesn’t often see tampons outside the box being confused.

    5. Popinki*

      I don’t know what brand it is, but I see them all the time because the pickup line at my local CVS runs right through the period supplies aisle.

      They’re tampons that come packed in a clear plastic jar with a golden lid and fancy label on the front. The tampons themselves are wrapped in pretty patterned wrappers. They do look very “not tampons”.

  6. PanDaMonium*

    7: I usually go with, “What if you were struck by a meteor?” or something similarly silly.

    1. Eldritch Office Worker*

      I’ve had to switch to “if you win the lottery and we never hear from you again” because WHEW too many close calls with people who I could’ve offended but lucked out they were cool.

      1. HigherEdEscapee*

        I use “abducted by aliens” when talking about things like bc/dr because I was told that hit by a bus was too morbid. The lottery one also works well, but I don’t get as many giggles as I do with aliens.

        3. Eldritch Office Worker*

          I am morbid! That’s my thing! (Apparently that’s not an excuse you can use at work lol)

        5. Phony Genius*

          I recently changed it to “beamed up by a UFO” to avoid any possibility saying it to an abduction victim or family member and avoid any possible negative connotation of the word “alien.”

          1. Benihana scene stealer*

            Are you saying there’s no possibility of one of your colleagues being a UFO abduction victim?

            1. Katie Impact*

              I think the concern is that someone might be a regular, non-UFO abduction victim and the language could be close enough to cause distress.

      2. Judge Judy and Executioner*

        I’ve switched to the lottery as well, but it is incredible how “hit by a bus” has become such a common saying.

        1. Eldritch Office Worker*

          I used the lottery one on someone and they said “I’d still answer my phone” (lie) and all I could come back with was “okay but they won’t let me say hit by a bus anymore”

          Maybe hypotheticals just aren’t my thing lol

          1. Wellie*

            I used win the lottery on one guy, and he quite sincerely said if he won the lottery he would still come to work (not a lie). I internally rolled my eyes and decided to use hit by a bus with him.

            1. Linden*

              I can’t use win the lottery, because one of my coworkers (in another office, so not someone I knew well) really did win the lottery and kept on working for us for another year or two, at which point he retired at the same time he woul have anyway.

              1. Chas*

                Yeah, I have to admit that I feel like my work is worthwhile enough that if I won the lottery then at the very least I would probably stick around long enough to do a proper knowledge transfer, or maybe even just carry on working the least number of hours necessary to get the parts of my job I actually care about done.

                I think in order for the hypothetical to work it has to be something sudden that renders the person *unable* to work/answer questions, otherwise there’s always the assumption of “well, they wouldn’t REALLY leave us in the lurch like that, right?”

        2. GovSysadmin*

          I found the “won the lottery” thing to also feel a bit cliche, so I’ve started going with “if you get hit by a lottery”.

      3. Elizabeth West*

        Yeah, I switched to “win the lottery and move to the south of France” because being hit by a bus in a large city is a very real possibility. And children do unfortunately get hit by school buses. :(

      6. Troubadour*

        I have a very literal colleague who a) asks “why is it always ‘hit by a bus’?” but b) if I say “if you won the lottery” she insists she’d keep working anyway because this is her dream job so that kind of answers a).

        But I should switch to a meteor or aliens because yeah the bus one is potentially a bit too real. :-/

      7. Sedna*

        Yeah, I’ve used the “hit by a bus” and “won the lottery and moved to a tropical island” lines, but I’m going to be seriously re-thinking the bus one now. WHEW

      8. HalloQueen*

        YES! Because when you just say “win the lottery” when talking about this kind of planning…I’ve had a strangely high number of people tell me “but I’d keep working, I love my job!” Like…not the point of what I’m trying to talk about here, but if you WANT me to put negative energy for you into the Universe like that…

    2. Spreadsheet Queen*

      I guess I’m going to have to remove “hit by bus” from my repertoire, although it’s been mostly references to myself not needing to be a single point of failure.

      If I were talking about a shared server, I’m going to be more into someone being able to perform the required duties if the regular person has an unexpected medical event, a longer vacation, or that sort of thing.

      I think the bus example tends to get used BECAUSE it could happen AND that it’s also fairly unlikely to happen. (Like you wouldn’t say “hit by a car” because that happens pretty frequently.) I turns out people HAVE been hit by meteorites. But the only recorded death was in 1888. So maybe that’s a good one. Could happen, but really REALLY unlikely.

      1. Frosty*

        I work for a transit authority and there are literally hundreds of buses everywhere we look. We all still say “in case you’re hit by a bus” because it’s more likely for us than for most people. A real scenario!

        1. Transit Worker*

          I also work for a transit agency and we say it, too, though we also then joke about how we need a different phrase. Same when we speak of a meeting or project being derailed.

      2. KTM*

        As someone who had two family members die in a single tragic car/truck accident, I can first hand tell you that the phrase “hit by a bus” lands for me differently now (and I used to use the phrase myself!) My brain doesn’t differentiate between ‘bus’ or ‘car’ when someone says that at work. It just triggers the memory that people do actually die from vehicular accidents and it’s not an abstract or theoretical thing for me. I don’t mention it to people though because it is a common saying and I don’t want to be a debbie downer… I use “win the lottery” personally. I like the UFO options above too!

    3. arachnophilia*

      We had a beloved employee hit by a UPS truck while biking home from work. I have not been able to use “hit by a [thing]” since that happens – I too, use “win the lottery” or “decide you’re done with this role” or “inherit a bazillion dollars from an unknown relative.” When our colleague died, my typical “hit by a truck/bus/whatever” just made me sad, and I wish I’d realized that before my late 40s that others might have had that same reaction.

    4. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      I’m on my 3rd employer where the answer to “what if I were to be hit by a bus” is “séance.”

      At one, the message was definitely “even death won’t get you out of your responsibilities.” The other two were more “we can be clever, too.”

      I’ve had better luck with “what if the single point of failure goes to our competition?”

      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        Ha, seance is a good answer. My mother would use “What if that person wins a trip to Hawaii?” when she was working and I have taken to using that as well.

      1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        Oof- I hope I’m never in a meeting with you. I would refrain from religious talk in that context.

        1. Super*

          I think rapturing is hilarious in an obviously non-religious context. My shoes always look like I was raptured away while wearing them, just pointing in every which way.

          1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

            Religion is a bit of a tricky subject for me. Probably if I knew the person well enough, I wouldn’t be offended. I probably would still prefer that wasn’t the example though. The older I get and the more I learn about evangelicalism, the less amused I am by joking around about it.

        2. MigraineMonth*

          Speaking of religious talk in a work context, I once helped a woman who was having a technical issue. She was effusively grateful and told me I was “going to heaven”.

          I still don’t know what I was thinking, but what came out of my mouth was, “Not according to the world’s major religions.”

          1. BritGirl*

            a guy came to fix my washing machine and when I thanked him he said ‘don’t thank me, thank Jesus’. Was so uncomfortable.

            1. Kevin Sours*

              Unless Jesus was the name of his assistant who did most of the work… yeah that’s weird.

      2. Rachel*

        I’ve obviously lived in the US South for long enough in my life that I would never ever ever ever go there, and I haven’t for twenty years.

        This is such a “know your audience” thing. I wouldn’t risk it.

      3. Dek*

        lol that was actually where my mind went. But…yeah, while not as dicey as “if you were disappeared by the government” (the other unfortunate place my mind went), still risky.

      4. NotAnotherManager!*

        If the rapture comes, I’m going to be one of the people stuck on earth trying to keep things moving without those who ascended.

    6. Nomic*

      As someone who was hit by a train while driving, I absolutely live (pun intended) for being able to respond, “I have!”

    7. KeyLimeLaCroix*

      I heard someone use “What if you fell of a cliff?” and adopted that because it seemed obviously hyperbolic (and I have a pretty morbid sense of humor), but then a close friend of mine died from falling off a cliff! If I heard it now, I wouldn’t be angry or offended, but it would be jarring for me–it did make me rethink the turns of phrase we use lightly!

      Related: I was in a Monday morning meeting once that included a sweet older guy who I didn’t work with closely. When I asked him how his weekend was, he responded “Alright, at least nothing burned down!” My parents’ house had, actually, burned down over the weekend. I managed to laugh it off and mostly keep a straight face, but another coworker–who knew what had happened–couldn’t help herself and exclaimed “KeyLime’s parents’ house burned down this weekend!” The poor guy felt so bad and apologized profusely, to which I responded that he couldn’t possibly have known.

    8. Ostrich Herder*

      Yeah, I work for a very small company and used to use “If I get hit by a bus tomorrow…” often to either justify cross-training someone, mark information as important for everyone to know/understand, or argue against something that would be overly reliant on me managing it day-to-day.

      Then a very dear friend of the owner was struck and killed by a bus.

      I’ve since switched to “If I win the lottery tomorrow and you never see me again…”

    9. Advanced Car-noodling*

      We just use, “if your not available.”

      Because our policy is. If your out of the office, You are.
      doesn’t matter how big the fire is, your on vacation, it’s our issue.

    10. Lab Snep*

      I used to use hit by a bus/don’t come in and nobody can contact you.

      But the latter happened. The coworker was murdered.*

      I use “if it is your day off or you go on a surprise vacation, or get a dream job and quit, people need to be able to follow your documentation”

      *it was awful. We still have a little shrine for her :(

      1. Lab Snep*

        To add to this, I worked in another place where someone didn’t come in and we couldn’t contact her. She had moved to another province to be with her boyfriend and didn’t tell anyone.

    11. AndHisHorse*

      I learned the name “bus factor” for how many people on the project can get hit by a bus before total failure (a bus factor of 1 means there’s 1 person whom losing immediately would be project-ending), but I’ve since heard the alternative (which keeps the name) that someone could suddenly _get on_ a bus out of town.

    12. Sophronisba*

      7: I always say, “retire to the South of France” because if I retired to the South of France I would definitely not be taking calls from my previous employer about how to access files.

    14. Former Admin Turned PM*

      I started changing over from the bus analogy to “moved to a private island after getting a monetary windfall”

      There is some duplication at my job, but bringing in the reinforcements when I got knocked down with COVID for a solid week while my counterpart was out on maternity leave in 2022 was a wake up call for a lot of people.

  7. Snarkus Aurelius*

    How does one mistake tampons for chocolate? I’m really trying to understand this error. Did he just see the size of the box? Was it a single tampon? Even if you pick either one up, neither are heavy enough to be candy.

    1. Unauthorized Plants*

      My only answer doesn’t work here: just this morning my daughter found one in a hot pink package in my beach bag and definitely thought it was some sort of candy and I barely stopped her from opening/wasting it and confused disappointment. But since she’s 5 [and a half! as she will insist on disclosing, like you do when you are 5.5] this makes way more sense than the story shared! It did lead to a good, informative chat, though one we wouldn’t expect/want in an office setting.

      1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        When I was 19 and in the hospital getting apheresis, I asked my mom to get something out of my purse. Imagine the scene: youngster Resident, hooked up to a machine that circulated my blood out of my body and put it back clean, two registered nurses making sure said machine didn’t murder me, and my mother. My mother digs through my purse and, completely scandalized, exclaims, “You have a condom in here!”

        The nurses spin around and I perk up (hard to do, machine and drugs on board) and yell, “I DO?!”

        Readers, it was tea packet. Stash Tea’s Exotica line. Osmanthus, to be exact. It did, in fact, look kind of like a condom, but as I’ve never carried condoms before or since, I had a panicked moment of, “How did that get in there?”

        1. Fluff*

          This needs to be added to the Mortification Week archives. I too have had tea packets be so falsely accused.

    2. Popinki*

      There’s some brand of tampons that comes in a clear plastic jar with a golden lid and fancy label, and the tampons are wrapped in fancy flowered wrappers. Definitely the classiest tampon packaging I’ve ever seen. I can see them being placed in an investor’s bathroom instead of plain old box of Tampax, and someone unfamiliar with tampons not realizing what they were without closer inspection.

      Lord, I’ve never typed the word tampon so much in my life…

    3. Jamjari*

      Sometimes tampons aren’t left in their box – they’re put in some sort of caddy thing. But usually when I’ve see that, it been beside pads and other bathroom related things.

  9. Hlao-roo*

    11. The group leader: I love the “more than one person” answer! And I totally get how the kinds of questions at a corporate team-building retreat can tip a person into the “this is so easy/obvious it must be a trick” headspace.

  10. costume teapot*

    Ooof! I’ve done something, not nearly as on-the-nose as #7, but close (with the same example.) I now use “win the lottery and retire to Tahiti.” Then usually someone comments with another beautiful, remote, unreachable location they would like to retire to, and we all think about drinks with tiny umbrellas for a moment, and far less awkward feelings.

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      I just said in another thread that my mom would always say “What if they win a trip to Hawaii?” I like Tahiti even better, though! (I mean, not in a Hawaii vs Tahiti competition – I’ve never been to either place – but just as the thought of a very faraway place that’s hard to contact.)

  12. Anon for this*

    A professional group I work with once did the MBTI as part of a group project. One of my closest friends was very far over on the Perceiving scale. He’s a man, I’m a woman (this is relevant) and we had talked about our spouses over the years. Over drinks that evening he said he’d realized that a lot of the issues in his marriage were due to his P-ness. And of course that was one of those moments when the chatter in the bar died away and everyone could hear him.

    1. Anon and still mortified*

      We did MBTI in my grad school cohort of ~50 Js and exactly two Ps. One of the Ps was one of the 4 men in the cohort (this is relevant here, too). The same week we did the MBTI exercise, there was a social event at a bar for students and their families. Also over drinks, I was talking to the male P AND HIS WIFE, and directly told him how much I appreciated his P-ness and what it brought to our class environment. He stammered, I froze, and his lovely wife laughed and said, “I appreciate it too!” Bless that woman.

  13. Seven If You Count Bad John*

    “More than one person” is absolutely sending me. I’m crying laughing at my desk!

    1. BritGirl*

      ironically given the meowing in this thread it seems like lots of one person –> animal communication is going on

  14. Fluff*

    The Meows – perfect.

    Anyone watch the youtube channel Mr. Max? He is a big cockatoo who loves to say “Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.” It is very distinct.

    I was on a webex with a coworker who also is a fan of Max. We were early and were doing our best Hi’s. Unbeknowest to us – because we shrunk down the webex – the grand bosses and great grand bosses came on way early for the meeting to hear us “Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing back and forth trying for the longest hi.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW2toNc6Zug

    (Mr. Max TV – safe for work – just not on full volume)

    1. hypoglycemic rage*

      I have no idea who Max is, but this story is hilarious and I will def be checking out the channel.

  15. i bet you think this song is about you*

    This literally just happened to me so I guess I’ll share as it’s so well timed.

    We had company headshots done last week and they sent me over the best five shots to choose between- we have a fairly public facing website so I’m like great, let me make sure I pick the best one. Realizing it’s time to hop on a client call, I stop midway through this process and think nothing of it. Until, of course, I need to screen share and accidentally select “show whole screen” instead of “show window”. It’s IMMEDIATELY apparent that I have been occupying myself by perusing a lookbook of photographs of myself in different poses, in one case zoomed in really closely on my own eyes (so I could check I didn’t have a makeup smudge! I swear!). Will be thinking about this one at 3am this morning!

    1. ALoafer*

      Oh noooo! I’m so sorry for the mortification, but this is such a funny image! Thanks for sharing!

  16. The Bones Are Their Money*

    The pet ones are getting to me. When we were moving into my house I was on a division wide Zoom. My dog, bored, starts barking at me. I go to turn off my camera so I can get him to stop but instead unmute myself while the director is talking, so everyone gets a few woofs before I can hide and mute myself.

    We lost him just last week. RIP Jasper, a true 15/10.

    2. allathian*

      I’m so sorry for your loss.

      That said, I can’t think of any meeting that wouldn’t be improved by a few woofs…

      A highlight of this week was when I went out on my lunchtime walk and got to pat a neighbor’s tiny poodle puppy (10 weeks). So soft and woolly, utterly adorable.

  17. BrunetteBubbly*

    #1 is so simple, but so, so hysterically wrong.

    #14 reminds me of the letter about the woman who wore a princess costume and handed out Halloween candy to executives.

  18. Eldritch Office Worker*

    I wish I could blame my messiness on my Meyers-Briggs profile but alas I am a J. Damn.

  19. ABitofWhimsey*

    I’m 10+ years into my career and if anyone wants to give me a little kid’s Valentine’s day card, I would love that. I’d probably put it on my whiteboard for at least a month.

      1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

        Happened! I got a little valentine and a packet of smarties left on my desk a few years ago :)

    2. Desert Rat*

      Small instances of whimsy are what keep me going some days. Bring on the Valentine’s, the cats in virtual meetings, the bun-dwelling birds. I’m here for them all!

      1. Percy Weasley*

        Yes! My current team are scrupulously professional and apparently not pet people. (To be clear, I’m very grateful for scrupulously professional, but my cat would appreciate some admiration!)

  20. Rogue Slime Mold*

    Genuinely intrigued that so many people have experienced forgetting all the basic facts about theselves. Name. Phone number. Every aspect of one’s current job.

    1. Eldritch Office Worker*

      I can know something cold but if you ask me about it I’ll instantly forget. Especially in a high stress situation, but not exclusively.

      1. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

        Thank you for the flashback to my HS AP English class. I had read the book, I knew the chapter I was supposed to summarize backwards and forwards, I had practiced it at home. But when I had to stand in front of the class, my mind went completely blank.

    2. Strive to Excel*

      It goes to show how thoroughly stress can scramble our brains, and explains a lot of terrible decisions people have made in high-stress scenarios.

      AND why training EMTs etc out of those panic responses is so incredibly important.

      1. Jay (no, the other one)*

        Yes. When I was a resident we drilled what to do at the beginning of a resuscitation so we had the first two or three interventions down as automatic responses.

    3. Mentally Spicy*

      At an induction meeting for new starters, we were going around the room giving our name and job title. My job title was “digital production coordinator”, which is not very memorable. And I completely blanked on it.

      “I’m a digital…. something.” I find stuff like that hilarious, though, so I wasn’t mortified.

    4. Linden*

      My work recently had us carpool to and from a retreat a couple hours away. My coworker had picked me and a few others up from the office, but was going to drop us off at home. I was the last stop, and I confidently gave my address for her to put into the gps. We get to my building and she keeps heading south past it. I had given her a completely random street number that was more than 600 off and two subway stations south of mine!

    5. Nightengale*

      sometimes it’s the recording

      I speak fluently. In a lot of ways I talk for a living. Or maybe info dump for a living
      I can do public speaking. I can handle off the cuff questions, sometimes some really off the beaten path.
      Today I asked two coworkers for any suggestions for a catchy title for a talk I am giving soon. I explained who the audience was and the goal of the talk in 2-3 sentences.
      One cued up her phone wanting me to repeat what I had just said about the talk into chatGPT.
      I. just froze. I could not repeat the brief explanation I had given aloud a minute earlier. I had no words. (I also didn’t particularly want to use AI but it was really the recording in this case)

      I had the same problem in medical training when I was supposed to call a dedicated phone line for the dictation service. I had to basically type out what I was going to say before calling. Even though I could have given a much longer live speech to humans without any notes, I could just not organize my brain to speak coherently to a recording.

      1. allathian*

        Yup. I hate being recorded and I particularly dislike the way my voice sounds to other people, although I don’t particularly mind the way it sounds in my head.

        I also hate watching myself on video. My face is asymmetrical enough that I’ve sometimes genuinely failed to recognize myself in a photo, although I never have problems doing so in a mirror. I’m genuinely grateful for the flipped video of yourself that most online meeting platforms provide.

        I suspect that I’m mildly face blind, as I have trouble recognizing coworkers I’ve worked with for years, and I can’t reliably identify people from photos unless I’ve met them in person before.

        1. Popinki*

          In my case, it’s voice mail. I talk to people all day long with usually no problems, but when I have to leave a voice message I wind up sounding like a total goof.

    6. lunchtime caller*

      I can answer anything about myself (maybe in part because my work involves a lot of schmoozing and public speaking and intros) but the first thing I lose memory of when stressed or a drink or two in is the name of anyone else I’ve ever known, including family members if they’re not literally people I’ve lived with. As someone with a good memory in daily life, it’s very odd but noticeable that’s where my brain fails!

  22. Lily Rowan*

    #10 reminded me of the person falling down the stairs in the background of a snow report, which I just googled, and it was a publicity stunt! It worked, though, I watched that video multiple times.

    2. Timothy (TRiG)*

      The man on the ice in Dublin happened in 2010, and he’s still famous (and still unidentified).

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        In case people aren’t aware and might be interested, I’ll just point out that that winter in Ireland in 2010 broke records for cold weather. That is not weather that Ireland is used to or prepared for.

  23. ElizaB*

    I had a vehicle issue that I had to take care of during lunch that caused me to run late for a 1pm meeting. 99% of our company meetings are through Teams, but this one was through Zoom. I hadn’t made it back to the office, and I knew that I wasn’t going to need to participate for the first part of the meeting, so I pulled over to join the Zoom from my phone, so I could just listen until I got back to the office and could join from my desk. I didn’t realize that my Zoom app didn’t have a name set, and so it defaulted to my phone name, which is iGroot. This was a small meeting and the organizer was like… “I don’t think we have an iGroot at this company, who is that?” I was too mortified to confess, so I just dropped off the call entirely.

    Sidenote, I don’t know why I decided to name my phone iGroot. I’m not a particularly big superhero movie / Guardians of the Galaxy fan, I guess I just thought it was a cute name for my phone. I never did change it, although I did ultimately update my Zoom app to display my real name.

  24. Dr. Rebecca*

    #13: one of my students showed up as “Feral Spork” half the time last semester, and it thrilled me to my toes because it was just so whimsical.

    1. MigraineMonth*

      I started my job in 2020 just after the Great Scramble to move everyone remote. IT had decided to use Discord as superior to Teams, and while I created a new account for work separate from my gaming account, it’s evident that many of my coworkers did not.

      It took a while to figure out which of my new teammates is CritStab, and I’m honestly still not sure which one is juggleknob or DestroyerOfToilets.

  25. It's Marie - Not Maria*

    Back in my early career in HR, I worked at a Union Shop. I was typing a Grievance Resolution email, which copied the President of the Company, my Boss, a Union Steward, and the President of the Union.

    The sentence was supposed to read ” We will credit the employee’s Sick Time …” Well, we know what the letter directly to the right of letter S is on the keyboard, and I hit it. Spell check did not catch it, and off it went to all these people. About two minutes later, I got a panicked call from my Boss. She was able to do damage control, and I got gently teased for the rest of my tenure with that company about offering Non-Traditional Benefits.

    1. Verbal Typo*

      I was once discussing my love of guacamole shortly after starting a new job and said “yeah, I’m a big dip person.” Reader, I did not in fact say “dip”. My manager laughed so hard and made me repeat it to a team member who hadn’t been present later in the day.

  26. JJ*

    Right, if I must share this, I will.

    My department was an open plan office connected by a corridor to another open plan office and thus to the main exit.

    I started an hour earlier than everybody else in order to run batch files. That meant I left an hour earlier than everybody else.

    The other department, who mine had nothing to do with, reported me to management for “sneaking off early every day”. Management explained and one of the team leaders came to me to apologise for complaining (which is how I found out about the complaint).

    This is not the mortification.

    That evening, as I left I waved and shouted goodbye, “leaving on time! Not sneaking! See you tomorrow!” to laughter from that department.

    The next evening, I waved and called “just sneaking home! See you tomorrow!” to more laughter, and some groans.

    The third evening, I waved and sang “So long! Farewell! Auf Wiedersehen! Goodbye!”… to totally stony faces.

    What I didn’t know was that 5 minutes before that the department had just got out of a meeting where they’d been told their work was being outsourced abroad and they would all be leaving the company in a month.

    On the following Monday, my supervisor forbade me from singing in the office ever again. I still wake up at night sweating.

    1. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

      OH NO. Those poor people, but also props for Sound of Music re-enactment in the office.

      1. JJ*

        Oh, thank g-d the jobs were going to India! If they’d been going to Austria I wouldn’t have been mortified, I’d just have dissolved into a permanent pile of goo there and then, never to speak (or sing) again!

      2. And...uh...Abraham Lincoln*

        #14, if it makes you feel better, I would find the kids’ valentines charming. Especially if there was chocolate.

  27. FakeEleanor*

    15: Back in college my friends and I also used to meow conversationally at each other. Once, I was expecting my friend to visit me in my crappy little campus apartment, and when the buzzer rang I meowed over the intercom to let her up.

    Imagine my surprise when I opened my door to an employee of the city, here to tell me about the upcoming temporary water shutoff.

    3. Elizabeth West*

      Not work-related, but back when my sister and I used to call each other and not text, we would do weird greetings on the phone. One time I called her, and when someone answered, I launched into my best imitation of Hannibal Lecter (the Anthony Hopkins version) with, “IS THIS CLARICE? WELL HELLO, CLARICE.”

      I had misdialed and it was not my sister.

  29. Slightly Less Evil Bunny*

    Re: 6. Back in one of my prior careers, my coworkers and I were working with some kind of lab kit – memory is a bit hazy, but I’m pretty sure it was a DNA extraction kit.

    It could handle a variety of sample types, with different sample units and amounts required for each type. The suitable sample matrices included fecal samples, and much to my (outsized) amusement, the ‘official’ unit for feces for this kit was – you guessed it – the turd.

    I’ve led a weird life.

    1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

      I did the Cologuard earlier this year and boy howdy, they should be commended for their packaging and instructions. It made a weird situation pretty amusing.

      1. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

        I did it last month and the UPS guy who picked it up said “Oh, the famous chocolate box!”

      2. Sweet Fancy Pancakes*

        Oh, man, when I did one last year I felt so sorry for the poor techs who have to open those up. I hope they get paid really well!

      3. Popinki*

        I did one last year and took it to the UPS store. The guy at the counter said something like “oh, another one of these, and you’ve got it all packed up and everything!”

        Do some people… bring in their poop samples NOT sealed up?? EEEK!

  30. LoV...*

    For #7, I like to say if someone wins the lottery, because it’s just a bit more pleasant than being hit by a bus.

  31. becky s.*

    I’m retired so reading all these at home, laughing out loud, helplessly. I also realize my gaffs weren’t that bad, except maybe…. the time I told a man, to whom I hoped to sell a large group health insurance policy, that he looked like my gynecologist. I was in my thirties. I knew better. :-|

  32. Blue Spoon*

    Oh man the D&D one… I’ve been playing as a foppish noble fighter for years and I would hate to show up as Alexandre von Oglethorpe IV in a work context

  33. Strive to Excel*

    #7 – OK, yes, bad example, but if they’ve had someone go abruptly unavailable in the last few months and are STILL pushing back on having shareable files, clearly nothing was learned.

    1. KateM*

      That’s what I was thinking, too – “they had a manager actually suddenly dying recently and there was *still* someone who didn’t understand the need to have files shared??”.

  34. The Formatting Queen*

    #12 – Years ago my hubby once came home with a story from a meeting he was in that day, where they were talking about VIP bugs. (He’s in software QA.) These were like showstopper bugs, I guess? Very Important… something, I don’t remember. But the director who was running the meeting was consistently asking the stakeholders about the “VIP-ness” of each bug as they went down the list and apparently was completely oblivious to the smirks, snorts, and giggles of the developers and QA folks around him. The way hubby tells it, someone was whispering to the director as everyone left the room and all he heard was an exasperated “Oh for fuck’s sake” from down the hall.

    1. Retiring Academic*

      When I worked in catering, I once had a job application from a chef who wrote that he had experience working in a brassiere.

  36. TQB*

    What I’ve learned this week is that the difference between these things being abject humiliation and a hilarious anecdote enjoyed for years to come is the degree of uptightness of the workplace. Every one of these, save maybe the poor dude and his balls and the bus accident guy, is a thing that people should savor having been fortunate enough to witness. It’s OK to have some fun.

  37. throwaway73*

    Once I was making a comment about people watching “cat and dog videos” all day… only I actually typed “cat and dong videos” ……

    That is unfortunate in itself but also completely changes the connotations of the word cat too, I still blush at the memory.

  38. Alex*

    I used to have a job where I received Word files with track changes from people outside of my company, and had to review them.

    Well, a lot of people forgot that the name associated with their microsoft programs was what would show up on their comments. Usually all was well, but occasionally I would get some really interesting ones. Harry potter and other fantasy book themes, etc.

    The best one, though, was one who had his mother edit his document, and her edits were all labeled as “Mommy.”

  39. pagooey*

    #1 is so completely charming that I love it. Like moving from freshman to sophomore year!

    And #10 reminded me of an incident at my first corporate job. It was a fairly small branch of a company, maybe 50 of us in our own building in a remote suburban office park. The HR head, “Martha,” had picked up a huge sheet cake for someone’s birthday and so arrived early, before anyone else. She parked close to the back door, so as not to have to carry the cake far…but then struggled to badge in to the door while balancing the huge cake. This door was up a half-flight of stairs, with a narrow concrete porch set into landscaping that sloped away from the building. Well, poor Martha, juggling badge, purse, and giant cake…stepped off the edge of the porch and rolled down that slope. She flung the cake box away from herself to save it, and luckily it did land face-up.

    Cut to 40 minutes later, when the rest of the org began to arrive, and we noticed this mysterious trail of shredded beauty bark, mulch, and leaves from the landscaping, from the back door and winding through the building. Martha had brushed off the front of her clothing, but had not realized how much debris she’d picked up on her back. We also opened the cake box to find it largely intact, but the decorated top had hit the inside of the lid and smeared, so that HAPPY BIRTHDAY WHOEVER looked as if it had been applied at a dead run.

    Further mortifying Martha, we convinced security to look back at the tape from that door. The camera angle was such that she simply dropped out of sight down the slope, as if through a trap door…so we didn’t even get to appreciate her tuck-and-roll, cake-saving stunt work.

    1. Popinki*

      I’m #10. I applaud Martha’s quick thinking and emergency gymnastics skills. Had it been me, the cake would have landed splat on my head, frosting down, so I’d have ended up at the bottom of the slope as a giant mulch and frosting ball. And I’d probably break something and get to go to the hospital like that. To be treated by some ER doc who’d submit me as a future “craziest thing you’ve ever seen at work” column :D

  40. sleepy tortoise*

    For those enjoying the P-ness stories – check out the Horne Section song Grandaddy. Not Quite Safe for Work, would send a jr high class into hysterics.

  42. OddyHD*

    Man, that P-ness one: too bad he was high on the P-ness scale. Otherwise, he’d be a J-ness.

    (See what I did there?)

    Lol, this round is especially good.

  43. MigraineMonth*

    I had the opposite of #6 happen at a former company. We had a culture where the CEO would call out fairly petty misbehavior at the 10,000-people all-staff meetings. We would all get scolded by our billionaire CEO because someone was caught parking in guest parking, stealing an extra hamburger from the cafeteria (value: $1.50) or because people were taking and losing the branded pens (value: $1 ea).

    So when the CEO shows a slide of a dog turd on our office carpeting and tells us it’s okay to bring in dogs on the weekend but we have to clean up after them… yeah it’s gross, but we’re also all pretty annoyed to be wasting time on this when we’re all expected to do mandatory overtime.

    Which is when one brave employee stood up and took responsibility, claiming that he recognized the turd, that it 100% indisputably came from his dog, and apologized for not watching his dog more closely and wasting all our time.

    He wasn’t the hero we deserved, but he was the hero we needed.

  44. MsMaryMary*

    OP7, would you feel better to know I once used the “hit by a bus” metaphor in front of my client, a public transportation agency?

  45. Was I ready for a career leap?*

    In give or take 2007, I was a newspaper reporter at a small daily in the rural South. I was assigned to cover a September 11th memorial ceremony being put on by the local American Legion post or its equivalent. I ran late. Flustered, I tracked down the organizer — who was as stereotypical a retired Marine as one could imagine: a basically rectangular block of muscle of a human being who considered the occasion with deep reverence and solemnity. In my disorganized panic, I opened my questions for him with “So how many years have you been doing this?”

    Once I removed foot from mouth, he kindly (if humorlessly) allowed me to start over.

  46. Slugcat*

    Oh, the bus one just reminded me.

    Six months into my new job a client showed up to a monthly event that I took over running. I hadn’t seen him before and he said it had been about a year since he’d been here. He greets some of the volunteers, who he seems to know well. One of the older men he recognizes, but this gentleman doesn’t recognize him. “Oh you know me, I used to come with Henry,” he says. The other man asks if he means Henry White, and the client says no, he means Henry Brown. The older man continues to look blank.

    I know that the older man has some memory issues so jump in with a friendly joking, “We have so many Henry’s around here he can’t keep them all straight! Is he tall, short? Does he have glasses?”

    The client laughs along with me and the older man, and the conversation turns elsewhere. But as we chat two of the regular volunteers who know this client look at each other nervously, then at me.

    As they were leaving one of them told me discreetly and politely, “It’s good to see him, he hasn’t been to this event since his husband Henry died.”

    1. allathian*

      Oh my! I think I could shrug off most of the stuff that people have written about here, at least in my current work environment, but this is one where I’d want to turn invisible.

  47. woodshop dunce*

    a few years ago i worked for a university as part of the management team for their woodshop. as part of this i was often asked to participate in formal critiques for the design students. this was like week 3 of covid, so the critiques were all on zoom and i was joining from my living room with my dog. my video was off and i was muted until they asked for my feedback, at which point i unmuted myself and began speaking. after a minute or two, one of my student workers breaks in and says, “is your dog by any chance drinking water right now?” and i said, “oh, yep, sorry, he’s a very loud drinker!” and continued with my critique.

    it wasn’t until months later when we were all back on campus that my student informed me, trying not to guffaw as he was saying it, that the professor had been making increasingly concerned and horrified faces at his webcam as my dog was drinking water, which was why the student spoke up—saving my blessedly clueless ass from the fact that the professor very clearly thought i was somehow having extremely sloppy/wet sex while also nonchalantly critiquing a student’s sophomore design project.

  48. Late Bloomer*

    Oh, #12, with the P-ness, I can’t begin to imagine the number of puzzled and/or judgmental looks to which I was oblivious when, in the 90s, my lit. grad student chums and I would sit around in coffee shops and other public places enthusiastically discussing “the gaze” or, worse yet, “the male gaze.” I hope some, at least, knew what we were actually talking about and didn’t just think we were a bunch of benighted Yahoos.

  49. Cowboy Carter to You*

    Don’t worry, Cairora Whisperwind. My Zoom used to not retain my actual name and would revert back to my department name, except for the time I changed it to Beyonce for a casual meeting with a coworker and then went into an important business call a week later.

  50. Long time reader*

    I can ABSOLUTELY see myself coming up with some off-the-wall answers to the communication question!! What about “2 or more parties must be able to use at least one of the five senses in common?” Can’t communicate visually if one person can’t see, can’t communicate by scent if one person can’t smell, etc. That would have been even more confusing than the answer the OP gave!

  51. Daniel P*

    I had just returned from a European vacation and I stopped into Amsterdam for a few days. I ended up winning about $4k playing poker so I bought the 2 most expensive boxes of chocolates they had at the duty-free store. They cost about $250 / box. I brought them into the office the next morning and told the team it was my valentines day gift for everyone. Note: we were a sales team that started at 5am for calling folks on the East Coast so these chocolates were probably the first thing that anyone had to east for the day.

    Well, I don’t read Dutch and I didn’t know that the chocolates’ ingredients contained espresso and cognac. To say the team was abuzz was an understatement. Someone who knew Dutch read the ingredients and advised the team why were were all buzzed. The icing on the cake was our company’s president has his office right next to our cube farm (we were in sales). He munched on a few, but he is also a practicing Muslim who abstains from alcohol. That was a monumental day that was one of the books.

  52. Janna*

    “Stop doing that, you weasel!” I said to my computer when it was doing something weird at my new job.

    Office mate, also new and young enough to be my daughter asks. “Did you just call your computer a weasel?”

    “Yes.”

    And then we went about our day. Still my favorite office mate.

  53. I'm a man! Well, nobody's perfect*

    Oh, the bus one just reminded me.

    Six months into my new job a client showed up to a monthly event that I took over running. I hadn’t seen him before and he said it had been about a year since he’d been here. He greets some of the volunteers, who he seems to know well. One of the older men he recognizes, but this gentleman doesn’t recognize him. “Oh you know me, I used to come with Henry,” he says. The other man asks if he means Henry White, and the client says no, he means Henry Brown. The older man continues to look blank.

    I know that the older man has some memory issues so jump in with a friendly joking, “We have so many Henry’s around here he can’t keep them all straight! Is he tall, short? Does he have glasses?”

    The client laughs along with me and the older man, and the conversation turns elsewhere. But as we chat two of the regular volunteers who know this client look at each other nervously, then at me.

    As they were leaving one of them told me discreetly and politely, “It’s good to see him, he hasn’t been to this event since his husband Henry died.”

  54. SihayaTX*

    Oh my. I think I know where #7 worked. Unless it’s a crazy coincidence. Sorry you stumbled into it.

  56. DataGirl*

    LW 5- I can confirm that is a mortification for life. I still remember clear as day being on the playground in 5th grade (age 9/10) , talking about something to my friends and right as I swung my arm around to emphasize a point a boy jumped onto the bench next to me and I hit him square in the crotch. It’s been 40 years but I’ll never forget that awful moment.

  57. Emily Byrd Starr*

    The last one: My husband and I also have a cat and do the same thing, and I sure hope I never meow at work!

  58. Dek*

    I believe that the proper response to that last one is to ask if they think you’re a cat prancing around all nimbly-pimbly

  60. Jules the 3rd*

    #14: Sys admin here, and I lol’d. Good thing I’m wfh today or I’d have to explain assassinating users….

    1. Jules the 3rd*

      (To someone other than my cat, who would be just fine with assassinations. But I don’t meow to her – we do chirps and purrows. I hope that will keep me from doing it to colleagues or in their hearing…)

  61. Whoops*

    LW #3’s friend and I are kindred spirits.

    Years and years ago, I was applying for an internship. I had horrible phone anxiety at the time and in an effort to combat that, I would write out a script of what to say…only to not have considered that maybe no one would pick up and I would be greeted instead by voicemail. (At the time, I was simply shocked. It was business hours, so why wouldn’t someone be manning the phone?!) Anyway, I took a deep breath and told myself I GOT THIS. I started off strong with my name and reason for calling…then blanked out and defaulted to, “Oh my God. Oh God” before hanging up out of sheer embarrassment. I did not get a call back. I’ve also never left a voicemail since. I simply hang up now….

  62. H.C.*

    The meowing story reminded me of something similar. It was around Easter and I got an earworm of the Cadbury commercial and starting clucking like its mascot bunny, only to be asked by office neighbor “Are you… clucking?”

Comments are closed.