Mortification Week: the unexpected video call, the brain freeze, and other stories to cringe over

by Alison Green on July 29, 2024

Welcome to Mortification Week, where we’ll be talking all week about how we’ve mortified ourselves at work.

To start us off, here are 15 stories people have shared here (or submitted via email) about work moments they now cringe over.

1. The unexpected video call

During the pandemic, when we were all just learning how to really work from home, I, a woman, had logged on earlier than usual to check something, got distracted finishing up my usual morning routine, and, therefore, was in nothing but pants and my underthings when my boss, an executive for my company and lovely man with a good sense of humor, video called me unexpectedly.

Panicking because I’d forgotten I was logged in and not wanting him to think I was ignoring him because I’m his executive assistant, I answered thinking I’d be fine because the camera on my laptop was covered. My friends, I was NOT fine. Apparently, my very thoughtful spouse had connected our external camera up without telling me, so the camera turned on upon my answering, and I immediately realized the issue.

Terror filled and continuing to panic, I literally hit the floor like someone had yelled out for a disaster drill. I hit the floor so hard that it shook my desk, causing my camera to tilt and, essentially, follow my line of descent into mortification. I crawled under my desk to the sound of my boss laughing so hard I think he may have been crying, reached up blindly and somehow managed to end the call.

After dressing, pulling myself and what was left of my dignity together, I called him back. He answered by covering his eyes with one hand and asking first if everyone was decent.

We never spoke of the incident again, but he also pings me now before he calls me. Bless, I think I traumatized us both.

2. The wrong detail

Years ago, I had a new employee in his first couple of weeks. During a training session, he apologized about asking so many questions and being “anal-retentive” about the information. What I intended to say was, “That’s okay; we love detail-oriented people!” What I actually said was, “That’s okay; I love anal!” Cue awkward laughter and me wanting to disappear into the carpet.

3. The smooth move

When I was new (like first week) to my current job, we had a leadership meeting in the boss’ conference room. My office was just down the hall, and I wanted to get there a little early, being new and all. I didn’t know too many people yet, and as I approached the door I could hear voices, so I walk in, super-confident, my boss is sitting in his seat and one of my colleagues is sitting to his right, so I go and sit to his left and say hello to them both, introducing myself to my colleague. They both stare at me in shock for a moment, until my boss finally says, “I’m sorry (my name), I’m in an interview right now. I’ll call you back in when I’m done.” I go, “Oh, of course. Good luck!” and breeze away like the queen of England but was DYING inside.

4. The road rage

I was relatively new, on a call with a bunch of colleagues, including my even-newer boss. Someone did some driving shenanigan in front of me that I did not appreciate and I yelled something like, “Nice fucking move, asshole!” and immediately realized I was not muted like I thought I was. I froze, panicked, and immediately hung up, thereby probably calling attention to the fact that it was me yelling. No one ever mentioned it, but I am still haunted.

5. The request

Not me but a colleague many years ago was writing to IT to request a better processor in the laptop they were getting specced out. Unfortunately autocorrect changed “Is there a reason I can’t have a Pentium?” to “Is there a reason I can’t have a penis?” Yes, they said, there is a reason.

6. The migraine

My employee was out with a headache one day and I sent a message to our group about that. Just after clicking send I saw that I had written “(Person) is home in bed with a migrant.”

7. The bird

I worked a job where phone duties were a part of my responsibilities, so I could only take lunch from 12-1 when we had an answering service take over. I also needed my lunch break to go home and take care of my animals (a dog and a cockatiel), and I was pet-sitting a relative’s dog.

One day there was a call that ended going long, so it was 12:20 before I was able to get off the phone. I raced to the car and drove home. It was about a 10-minute commute. I let the dogs outside to play and have a potty break. My little bird loved nothing more than sitting in my hair (it was normally styled in a high bun) while I did things around the house, so I got my bird out of her cage and put her on my bun. Then I had 20 minutes to make myself a sandwich, pay some bills, feed the dogs, and put the dishes in the dishwasher. Having finished all those things, I got in the car, and quickly drove back to work.

Just as I got back into the office, sat down in my chair, and started to put on my phone headset, two little eyes peer down into mine and I realize that I have walked into the office WITH A BIRD ON MY HEAD. In my lunchtime rush and extra animal responsibilities, I totally forgot to put my bird back in her cage. As I gasp and say “oh no” out loud, everyone in the cubicle farm also turns to look at me. Not sure what they were expecting to see, but it was not someone with a bird on their head.

8. The skirt

About 20 years ago, I was PR director for a big writing conference. That year our theme was poetry, and we invited the Poet Laureate, among other eminences. After the big poetry panel (to a packed house of about 200 people plus more in the hallway eavesdropping) I went up to the front of the room where the famous poets were all sitting to thank them. Took my time, shook all the hands, turned around to leave and realized that my skirt, which was short and made of stiff cotton, had flipped up at the waist and I had just mooned the most important poets in North America. And the entire room of 200. I was wearing a hot pink thong, too.

9. The bare feet

When I was in college, I did some part-time temping. One assignment was as receptionist/phone answerer at the tiny office of the warehouse of a beer importer/distributor. The owner really liked me and tried to give me beer every week and handbags occasionally (I assumed he also imported those). Being the unworldly (aka, dumbass)) student I was, when I injured my foot and couldn’t get it into a shoe, rather than … I don’t know, maybe wearing a shoe on one foot and a slipper on the other … I decided I should go to work barefoot. My boss had a client visitor that day, and they both clearly thought it was very strange that I had no shoes on, even after I explained why (I don’t know how I could have thought that was OK!). This was a Friday, and over the weekend, I got a message from the temp agency that my assignment at the beer distributor was over. What a surprise…

10. The interview question

I was conducting a face-to-face interview with a candidate for a job working as an aide to a woman who was partially sighted and had a guide dog living with her.

In this context, I intended to ask the candidate, “Are you a dog lover?” Except … for some deep unknown twisted Freudian reason what came out of my mouth was, “Are you a good lover?”

Cue blushing, stuttering, explanations that almost made it worse. Not sure which of us ended up more embarrassed.

11. The shoplifting

This is making me remember the time that I interviewed for a retail position when I was like 17. The interviewer asked me what I would do in the event of discovering a shoplifter. I proceeded to ramble about how everyone makes mistakes, how I would talk to the person that I saw stealing and ask them about why they were doing this, and the cherry on the disaster sundae was saying, “Not everyone who steals is bad, I have several friends who have shoplifted before!”

I’m full-body cringing just typing that out.

Quite clearly, I didn’t get the job.

12. The pizza thief

I used to work at a place that had more volunteers than employees, so parts of the building were open to the public. One day a coworker’s lunch was stolen from the kitchen, and it was some kind of specialty pizza that she was really craving. When she realized it was stolen, she was furious and asked the building supervisor to look at the security cameras. He agreed and then word went around the office at lightning speed that someone was about to get busted, so we all gathered around his computer to watch the footage.

At first we saw multiple volunteers in the kitchen. We all recognized all of them because they’re regulars. Then one by one they left until one guy remained, and at this point I started getting nervous because I knew the guy veeerrrrry well. But I thought surely he would never steal food. No way. He disappeared from the camera lens for a few minutes and I thought, oh thank god it wasn’t him. But then he juuuuuuust leaned back into the frame for a few seconds – just enough that you could clearly see him stuffing his face with a piece of pizza. And I wanted the floor to swallow me whole, because the culprit was MY DAD.

I just stood there in shock while all the other employees around me busted out laughing (except the pizza victim; she was still pissed). I took a lot of ribbing over this. The building supervisor took a screenshot of my dad’s face stuffed with pizza and people made all kinds of work-related memes with it. It was hilarious/mortifying. I’ve never had the courage to bring it up to my dad though. One day I will… Pizza victim confronted him though. I didn’t have to witness that, thankfully.

13. The intoxication

I was right out of college and interviewing for management consulting positions. They tend to have many interviews and I was talking to a few companies, so I was doing quite a few of them, and probably not giving the process the attention it deserved. Anyway. One night I went out with friends, and the night got a bit out of control … Woke up the next morning still very drunk, went to my interview and did a TERRIBLE job. Surprise, surprise, I didn’t get the job. The interviewer said I wasn’t “structured” enough and that it was “hard to follow my train of thoughts.” Ahem.

14. The brain freeze

I was interviewing for network engineer positions. Ya know, “making the internet work” sort of stuff. One interview, after a few general questions, they handed me markers, gestured to the gigantic whiteboard that took up one entire wall floor-to-ceiling and 20 feet long, and said, “Draw the Internet – use the entire board.” My brain FROZE. I had been a network engineer for 10 years at this point, I knew exactly how the internet worked – but my brain just stopped functioning and I had no ideas ready on how to translate my knowledge into a drawing the size of a billboard.

After a few very awkward moments of silence, I drew a cloud and wrote “I” in it, and sat down.

No one said anything. I said, “I guess we’re done!” and walked out.

15. The mute

I interviewed under the STAR format and was woefully unprepared for it. After the first question, I sat there in silence. The three interviewers returned the silence. After a full minute someone said, “I believe she’s on mute.” I piped up, “Nope!” and the silence resumed.

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{ 257 comments }

{ 257 comments… read them below }

  1. Delta Delta*

    I need a follow up to #7 – did the bird get to spend the rest of the day at the office? This is making me chuckle.

      1. TheBunny*

        Honestly? I think you just go with it, leave the bird where it is and pretend like it’s everyone else with the problem.

        Are there other choices? LOL

        1. RLC*

          Reminded me of a comic from The Far Side with a roomful of people, all with ducks on their heads, and one person suddenly realizing that they forgot their duck. This is the inverse!

    3. Cruciatus*

      In the original post she said she was able to get coverage at work so as to get the bird back home.

      1. Hlao-roo*

        Yes, for anyone who wants the full details the rest of the original post is as follows:

        Luckily, we could all have a big laugh and someone covered the phones for me while I clocked back out and drove home and returned without my living hair accessory. My bird wasn’t normally so quiet or still like she was on the day of her big adventure, I am still not really sure how I forgot she was up there. I’m also pretty shy, so I died of embarrassment when everyone laughed at me. The rest of my time at that job, whenever we would have customers visit or new employees join, our office manager would always introduce me and jokingly warn people to watch out for the bird on my head. I guess that’s not really the kind of thing you can ever live down.

        (Posted by Carole from Accounts on the “let’s talk about your mortifying moments at work” thread from July 25, 2024)

      2. Juicebox Hero*

        That’s good. That way she didn’t have people saying to her all afternoon, “Valentina, there’s a bird on your head.”

        1. bamcheeks*

          Perfect set up for the, “Did you know there’s a person growing out of your ass?” joke.

      3. English Rose*

        And me. I could even see ahead of time what was going to happen and I still wept laughing!

    7. Aggretsuko*

      Bringing the bird to work sounds utterly charming. I’m also surprised the bird was quiet and un-wiggly enough that she didn’t notice!

      1. buddleia*

        Definitely the cutest story here! So glad the bird didn’t fly away and the LW didn’t have to worry about a lost pet.

        1. alle*

          That happened to my grandpa. He walked outside forgetting his parakeet was on his shoulder, it flew away and was never seen again. :(

      1. Carole from Accounts*

        She was toilet trained. She would do a little peep, I would offer her my hand to step on to, and I would place her down on a piece of kitchen towel to do her business, give her a treat, offer her the hand elevator again, and return her to her perch on my head.

        1. Bay*

          My brother’s cockatiel had a similar routine for the toilet. They’re such honeys. I love that she was so quiet during her big adventure, really appreciating all the excitement I bet

          1. WheresMyPen*

            I like the idea that she’d been waiting for this opportunity to see the outside world and stayed quiet on purpose!

    12. Csethiro Ceredin*

      I laughed out loud.The little eyes peering down!

      The bird was probably thrilled to get an exciting field trip.

    13. The Ginger Ginger*

      That bird was having a fantastic afternoon. Tons of new things to see on the car ride. Hanging out longer with their person during the day than they normally did. They had their best day ever lol

    14. LCH*

      i hope they were breezing around like the queen of England with that bird on their head, similar to OP#3.

    15. Jules the 3rd*

      Indeed!

      LW7: This would have made me instantly want to become office besties with you.

      1. Some Words*

        That was my thought too.

        “Become instantly popular in your workplace with this one weird trick!”

    17. RabbitRabbit*

      That’s adorable! We had a ferret who would sometimes nap around your neck like a little fur stole, and one morning my husband nearly wore a very special fur collar to work except our little buddy suddenly woke up from his nap and popped his head up as my husband put his jacket on.

    18. Dark Macadamia*

      This one was so adorable. I love that the bird didn’t make itself known until it presumably almost got squished by the headset.

    20. London Lass*

      I adored this! My family had a cockatiel for many years, and in late 2020 he came to live with me while I was working from home. He was old and much less energetic than in earlier years, and happily spent online video calls with my colleagues preening himself and/or napping on my shoulder – they loved it!

      Sadly he passed away in late January 2021 at the grand old age of almost 22 years. That was a little difficult when colleagues asked after him, but at least they understood why I was upset, having had the chance to meet him for themselves.

      His favourite place was also on top of people’s heads – preferably my dad’s – but I cannot imagine him ever staying quiet and calm enough for me to accidently take him to the office! The only way I wouldn’t have lost him the minute we stepped out of the door would have been once he was to old to fly. (Not that it stopped him from leaping off things and gliding as far as he could.)

    21. Meh*

      Wait a second. Cockatiels (and other small birds) aren’t typically housebroken. I’m wondering about the hair now. Also that the bird didn’t flutter off in panic at some point.

      1. Carole from Accounts*

        I have never had a cockatiel like her before, or since! She was toilet trained, and once on my hair bun, she typically stayed there for hours. She also wasn’t one to panic and fly off.
        Normally she was much more active, preening herself (or me), or singing, but maybe because I was rushing around so much at lunch she just held on for the ride. Or maybe she was just tired, sometimes she would just sit up there and half snooze.

    22. lurkyloo*

      Aw! I love the ‘two tiny eyes’ thing and can just see this lil birdy upside down going ‘Where are we now, mum?!’ <3

    23. goddessoftransitory*

      I would make it my life goal to make that OP my very, very best friend. I can just picture this wee birdie snuggling in her bun, churriping “bun bun bun bun!” in bird.

    24. Jasmine*

      I think the bird might’ve gotten hungry after a while. I mean, do they really have something at the office to feed it?

  2. Wonderer*

    I feel like #9 is the sort of thing that you can really only learn about by making the disastrous decision yourself. I would never think to warn someone new to the workplace: “Make sure you wear shoes every day.” And yet, if you haven’t had much experience it would be easy to just make this kind of weird mistake!

    1. MicrobioChic*

      I actually did have a boss that specified it was inappropriate to come in barefoot when I had never done such a thing.

      I was a TA for a class at a liberal arts college that had lots of folks who really wanted to be hippies, and she’d had that issue with her TAs before.

      1. Czhorat*

        Yeah. Any random warning like that is clearly an indication that someone else has done the thing.

        It’s nothing any manager thinks of if it hasn’t happened.

      2. MicrobioChic*

        Yep. I was all of 20 years old and I remember just staring at her and completely bluescreening. It never would have occurred to me to go barefoot to class. Possibly partially because I was a STEM student (the class I was TAing for was not a STEM class) and had already had many many lectures about all the bad things that could happen if I went to lab in open toed shoes. Wearing anything but boots or sneakers was already reserved for weekends.

        1. Nina*

          Also STEM – at my college, you had to wear ‘some kind of footwear’ any time you were inside the STEM blocks, and closed shoes in labs. This is a country where adults going barefoot around town at least in warm weather is not particularly unusual. I used to store a pair of flip-flops clipped onto my bike so I could get into the building, and closed shoes under my desk so I could get into the lab, and went barefoot outside like normal.

        2. RaRaRasp*

          I once worked at a university biology department where a PhD student would walk around the building barefoot and had to be reprimanded several times (by increasingly senior people) before she knocked it off.

          But then, I’m often barefoot when at my desk (in an office area! not a desk in a lab space!), so I perhaps shouldn’t judge.

      4. Meep*

        When I was in engineering college, we had a guy minoring in my major whose feet were soooo black from walking around barefoot all over campus.

        I, too, hate shoes and when campus was flooding, I would sometimes just take off my socks and shoes to traverse it, but the lack of washing them to that point really got to me.

        1. Charlotte Lucas*

          I once took a yoga class where someone showed up having walked there barefoot. His feet were filthy! One of the instructors pulled him aside, and we never saw him in class again.

        2. Nina*

          In a city with a lot of cars, honestly, your feet can get pretty black just walking a couple kilometers. Your shoes do too but somehow nobody seems to care when it’s shoes.

      5. KaciHall*

        I hated shoes when I was in college. (Stepmom was a hippie and probably my best role model, lol.) If it was close to warm out and reasonably dry, I went barefoot any moment I was outside. I still wore shoes in buildings and on the bus, though. Still prefer to be barefoot but now it’s just when I’m sitting at my desk and no one else can see my feet.

      6. Irish Teacher.*

        Meanwhile, one of my fellow students told me I shouldn’t go barefoot around the grounds of our accommodation because I could “step on glass.” It was extremely hot and hadn’t been in my hometown (which was only 50 miles away so who knows why the weather was significantly different) so I didn’t even have much suitable clothing with me and certainly didn’t have sandals, so once I got “home” from college, I took off my tights and shoes and went barefoot in the accommodation and its grounds. I did wear shoes to class though!

    2. unitofraine*

      I have a recurring nightmare that I go to work without shoes. It has never happened, but it’s apparently my “forgot my pants” scenario.

      1. Butterfly Counter*

        I was about to say the same thing. This is a literal nightmare of mine. I am cringing.

        Of course, I have the “forgot my pants” and “forgot to dress at all” nightmares, too.

    3. Dust Bunny*

      One of my chemistry profs had to tell his TA not to come in barefoot. To a chemistry lab. Yeah.

      1. MicrobioChic*

        I’m now reminded of grad school and how my PI had to tell a bioinformatics professor who had his office on the same floor as a bunch of labs that walking barefoot in the hall was a bad idea, because a bunch of us were working with pathogens and the chances he’d pick something up from the floor was non zero.

        1. Betty*

          I’m gasping over here! I work in biotech, but I’m not a scientist, and I never go in the labs, but even I know that you have to wear close-toed shoes, no shorts, etc. OMG!!!

        2. Lab Snep*

          I work in a lab and one of my recurring nightmares is being at an old abusive workplace, and I am wearing all the right clothes for the lab, except I’m in socks.

        3. MigraineMonth*

          Slightly off-topic, but my HS genetics teacher had to pull me aside and ask me to stop eating lunch in his class. (It was around noon, and we didn’t have a scheduled lunch hour, so it seemed reasonable to me.)

          Apparently me eating in class made him anxious now we’d started experimenting on E.coli bacteria.

      2. Paint N Drip*

        I took my labs during summer sessions in undergrad because I really struggled with them. Based on my classmates, I have to assume that many others take the summer session because they struggled with LAST semester. My first round was for Biology, so basic lab rules but we aren’t really dealing with anything hazardous – my lab partner ended up being this intense yuppie hippy gal who I was constantly battling for basic lab safety, including just simply wearing shoes. I chose my seating for next summer’s Chem lab much more carefully!!!

      3. ProfJanrtDavis*

        I am a computer scientist because I like going barefoot, and in college, often went barefoot to class.

        It’s not the whole truth, of course, but as a first order approximation it will do.

    4. Jen MaHRtini*

      I once worked with a somewhat eccentric woman who broke her toe. For a few days she wore a slipper on that foot, completely reasonable solution. One day she came in wearing a shoe on the good foot and a sandal on the other. It was summer, and there was no rule against wearing sandals, so I always wondered about that thought process.

      1. Yvette*

        Maybe because she still couldn’t fit a shoe on the bad foot, and a slipper was just too hot

          1. Yvette*

            Depends on the job anywhere I’ve ever worked sandals, except for unusual circumstances, would have been considered totally inappropriate

            1. Nerfmobile*

              Totally depends – in my case, I’ve spent 30+ years working in a variety of jobs from academia to tech industries. At all of those employers, sandals would be generally acceptable footwear for most employees most of the time. (I joke that at my current employer, the dress code is “yes, please wear clothing.”)

              1. Jasmine*

                When I was in seventh grade in small town Alabama the girls were allowed to wear pantsuits if the top were made of the same fabric as the bottom and the top was down to the fingertips. (Covering the fanny)
                The next year I was in eighth grade in central Florida. The rule was “shoes and shirt required”. Shirt included crop tops and halters.
                Boy did I have culture shock the first few weeks!

            2. Baldrick*

              Jen MaHRtini says “there was no rule against wearing sandals” so it makes it clear that the question is: why not wear sandals on both feet?

            3. fhqwhgads*

              Sure, but when your brain thinks “ah sandals inappropriate, must go bare feet” trying to use logic is sort of out the window, no?

          2. Jen MaHRtini*

            Yes, exactly my question. It was not a place where wearing sandals would have been an issue at all. If I remember correctly, the sandal looked better with the outfit than the shoe did.

      2. Dust Bunny*

        I once deep-bruised my foot badly enough that I had to borrow my dad’s automatic-transmission car for two days because a clutch pedal was just too much. I came to work on those days wearing one normal shoe and one fuzzy red slipper.

        We had patrons in from Japan and they wanted a picture of someone on staff “doing things”, so my boss volunteered me. I assumed they would crop the pictures but we found out later they did not, and some of them were printed in color. I appeared in several Japanese newspapers with mismatched feet.

    5. ThatGirl*

      In college I had an internship at a well-known magazine in Manhattan. One day I got sent on some kind of crazy errand that had me walking halfway across the West Village in my dressy sandals, which were not well broken in. My feet were killing me and I limped back to the office barefoot. My manager was horrified and made me promise I would not get on the subway barefoot.

      1. Sue*

        “subway” and “barefoot” jogged my memory. I was on my way to work one morning in NYC. As I started to step into the subway car, someone stepped on the back of my sandal (nice ones I could wear to work, not flip flops), and my sandal came off and immediately slipped through the gap between the train and the platform to the tracks. I glared at the person who caused the problem, but there was nothing they could do, and I wasn’t going to go to work without 2 shoes, AND I wanted my sandal back. So I stepped off the train, went to the ticket booth and asked them what to do. The MTA does NOT want you on the tracks. The actually have (or at least had) people who go around to the stations after the morning rush and check for stuff that has fallen on the tracks. I showed the MTA person my other shoe so they would know what to look for and have her my name and number. Then I had to walk back home to get more shoes. I decided it was less embarrassing to walk barefoot and carry the one shoe, but I was self-conscious all the way home. I’m pretty sure no one walks barefoot in NYC if they don’t have to. I stopped at the booth on my way home, and they had my shoe! I cleaned it VERY thoroughly when I got home.

    6. MigraineMonth*

      I worked in a place with such a relaxed dress code that they had to make periodic announcements that shoes, sandals or slippers were required *in the cafeteria*.

    7. DannyG*

      In the sterile procedures class I taught day 1, hour 1 I would demonstrate what various sharps would do to various types of footwear. Leather, closed toe shoes were the best choice. Sneakers with nylon mesh and crocs were worthless.

    8. ED*

      This accidentally happened to me! I prefer not to drive in heels, so I tend to walk out to my car with them on and then toss them in the back. One day I dropped a shoe in the driveway without noticing, and drove off to work. Imagine my panic when I went to grab my shoes and found only one! This was a super toxic workplace where it was NOT okay to be late, so I went in with just the one heel rather than driving back home for the other. (Thankfully my boss “allowed” me to go to a nearby Ross to grab a spare pair of shoes, which I kept in my desk the rest of the years I worked there)

    9. AnneCordelia*

      I was just looking at the ticket website for a stage production of Lord of the Rings. It actually *specifies” that although Hobbits don’t wear shoes, theater patrons must wear them! (Actually I read that their Hobbit actors aren’t barefoot either, probably for safety reasons. Apparently they wear Birkenstocks.)

    10. Keeper of the Boos*

      I am a boss who had to add “you must be fully dressed at all times when working in the office or meeting clients, including shoes” to our office manual. Along with “when instructed to check the post box, make sure you do it AFTER the postman has been”, it was definitely something that had to happen before I would believe it could be a thing.

      1. RLC*

        Another boss here who had to add that EXACT statement to the employee instructions! I was accused of being an unreasonable boss, such an extreme request. We regularly visited construction sites (eye roll).

    11. Coffee*

      I don’t understand why this didn’t cause severe talking to and warning instead of termination

  3. Czhorat*

    ALl of the Zoom call shenanigans remind me of an anecdote that’s been circulating in my field: a certain company with a middleware sort of product that could compile data had given away a T-shirt that said “Peace Love Analytics”. In a casual zoom meeting someone wore said shirt on a video call. With a half-unzipped zip-up hoody over it. Said hoody, of course, covered the first word and the last five letters of the last word, making a definite statement.

    I saw this company at a trade show years later, handing out new shirts. “Peace Love Insights”.

    1. MigraineMonth*

      Lol. Speaking of inadvisable shirts, my medical software company had one that said “My Code Changes Lives” with a graphic of a heartbeat monitor on the left that then underlined the name of the company.

      Yup. They printed hundreds (thousands?) of shirts with their brand name above a heartbeat monitor that was *flatlining*.

  5. Trying Out a New Username*

    On #5, I have known some misogynist IT people who would have said the answer to both questions is the same.

    1. Harvey 6'3.5"*

      I’m thinking that several of these have probably happened to dozens, if not hundreds, of people.

    2. Medium Sized Manager*

      The same sports bra thing happened to me, but luckily it had thick, tank top-like straps, so I just sat perfectly still and hoped the meeting ended quickly. Still, embarassing!

    3. Space Needlepoint*

      Ditto, though a rather sheer camisole. In my defense, it was hot as hell outside and in.

    4. Angstrom*

      When I WFH I have a dress-code-compliant top at my desk. I’ve tried to train myself that when the meeting warning pops up the top goes on.

  7. Dust Bunny*

    #7 Animals, man.

    I have, on two occasions (so far), found cats in need of rescue during my work day. We have a secure utility room in the back of the warehouse that then get repurposed as a temporary cat room. What we do has nothing at all to do with animals. I dread the day I find a cat that can work door handles, escapes into the warehouse, and leads me on the world’s most futile chase.

    1. I strive to Excel*

      I own two cats. They have both figured out how to work the sliding pocket doors. One of them is actively figuring out how to use the lever-style door handles. I give it a year, max, until I have to switch out my front door handle with a knob.

      1. Dust Bunny*

        Both of my cats can open our door handles at home. I actually have a video of the older cat testing the handle until the door pops open

        Whoever owns the house next is going to wonder why we monsters had child locks on the insides of the bathroom doors (the cats have to be fed separately so we lock them into the bathrooms while they eat).

      2. Jaunty Banana Hat I*

        We have a cat that literally hangs from the door knob trying to open it. She *knows* how it opens, she just can’t make it open. One day, she’ll probably jump and grab it from the correct angle with the right force to open it. If we had doors with lever-style handles, we would be so screwed.

        1. Texas Teacher*

          We had a cat that could turn the knob to our front door. One day he opened it, and he and the dog got in the house when no one was home. My mother came home midday to find a casual acting cat, a guilty dog, and a cake plate that had been completely eaten clean of said cake.

    2. ThursdaysGeek*

      I worked at a company that had a colony of sage rats (ground squirrels) not far outside an exterior door, and I would sometimes prop the door open to get some air flow into my office. I was called by HR one time because a critter had entered the building, and had travelled a considerable distance down the halls, to the HR office, and it needed to be redirected back outside.

      1. Dust Bunny*

        My mom attended a language workshop in Wales and they had very strict rules about never propping doors or windows open ever because of the goats.

    3. Merci Dee*

      One day earlier this year, I had gone out to the parking lot to retrieve an umbrella from my car, as we were expecting rain around quitting time. While I was outside, I heard the most desperate kitten meows from somewhere close in the lot. I tracked the noises, and discovered that a kitten was in the front engine area of a car near mine. One of my co-workers has a mother who fosters kittens for a local animal shelter, so I came back inside to ask her if she could help me try to free the kitten, and asked our admin professional at the front desk if she could check with our Facilities guys to see if the car was registered to one of our regular workers. Co-worker and I head back out to the parking lot to the car in question to see if we can determine a way to free the kitten. After just a few seconds, one of the line workers who had finished up his shift came out to the lot and said it was his car — he found out that the kitten was trapped in the front bumper, but couldn’t free the poor thing before he had to leave for work. He had already called his regular mechanic to see if he could bring the car by after work to get their help to remove the kitten. Turns out my co-worker and I were able to finesse the wheel well cover enough to make a gap into the front bumper, and then co-worker was able to snake her hand in and grab the poor kitten. She got a few scratches on her hand for her troubles, but considering that she has a number of cats of her own, this wasn’t any damage that she wasn’t used to. We were able to find a box for the kitten, and since this all happened just before lunch, I gave the baby a small portion of the tuna I had brought for the day and a small container of water. Co-worker called her mom, who was able to stop by about an hour later to pick up the kitten and take her to a local vet for an exam. We ended up naming the kitten Infiniti, since that was the make of the car she was rescued from. Co-worker’s mom registered Infiniti with the local shelter, but said she would foster since she’d already picked her up from our location. Infiniti turned out to be a foster fail, and she’s still happily residing with co-worker’s mom’s mini-herd of cats and dogs. All in all, it worked out very well.

      1. Dust Bunny*

        First Workday Cat was a kitten who was in the bushes initially, screaming in terror, but then panicked and climbed into the engine compartment of a Lincoln Navigator. I went to the business that owned the parking lot, found the car’s owner, and it took four of us to get her out. A coworker of mine adopted her.

        Second Workday Cat was abandoned in her carrier by the sidewalk between my train stop and office. A non-work friend of mine has her now.

        I found two extra cats before these, but not on work time. I kept the first one and a different coworker took the second.

        1. Seeking Second Childhood*

          I am glad to see that the cat distribution network also functions in the corporate world.

    1. Carole from Accounts*

      I’m the bird on the head OP. Someone else covered the phones for me so I could run home and return my bird. I spent another 2 years at that job, where customers and new employees were regularly introduced to me and warned to watch out for the bird on my head. It’s really not the type of thing you can live down.

  9. ariel*

    Thank you for the interview stories, sharers – why is it so hard to be a real person under a microscope for an hour?? Or just a person from ages 16-25 especially, haha!

    1. Paint N Drip*

      being perceived and all that – I swear I can get it together when you all stop looking at me!!

      1. Spiritbrand*

        It’s like the guy in Mystery Men who can turn invisible as long as no one is looking at him.

  10. GwenSoul*

    About 20 years ago, I was PR director for a big writing conference. That year our theme was poetry, and we invited the Poet Laureate, among other eminences.

    Why did I read this as …. “among other enemies”

    like, is there is some beef with the Poet Laureate?

    1. Meep*

      Honestly? I took a creative writing class with a Poet Laureate (who’s also on the panel for selecting those years Laureates) and the wild stories she could tell…

    3. The Prettiest Curse*

      If you have a beef with the Poet Laureate, it’s quills at dawn!
      Fun fact about the UK Poet Laureate: part of the payment for the role used to be a butt of sack. (It’s basically a large quantity of alcohol, in case you’d like to avoid NSFW search results.)

      1. londonedit*

        Yep, it’s still a fairly large quantity of sherry! Simon Armitage (the current Poet Laureate) tells a great story about going over to Spain to choose his sherry. By all accounts he now has tons of the stuff!

    4. On Fire*

      I was recently at an event where some muckety-mucks were presenting awards. One of the officials rose from her front-row seat to go up and present a couple – and her loose, flowing dress was caught in a very noticeable wedgie. Worse, she was turning back and forth several times at the front of the room, so EVERYBODY saw it. I felt terrible for her but had no idea what anyone could have done. (I was in the middle of the room, nowhere near enough for a discreet action.) It eventually worked its way out. (?) Nobody reacted, but literally every woman wearing a dress smoothed her own skirt upon standing, after that.

  11. Middle Aged Lady*

    A friend told me that when he was doing a panel phone interview with a candidate, at the end of the call, instead of saying ‘goodbye’ the candidate said ‘love you!’
    The panel didn’t hold it against him.
    Our brains are creatures of habit.

    1. L. Ron's Cupboard*

      The number of times I have called my slightly older, kindly coworker ‘Mom’ by accident…! Lucky for me she’s so lovely I have a feeling I’m not the only person in the office who has caller her that without thinking.

    2. Babbalou*

      Not in an interview, but I once said, “love you” when I was finished with a call with one of our sales guys. That’s what happens when you have young adult kids – my usual sign off, but not normally at work.

  12. Abogado Avocado*

    Numbers 1, 6 and 8 had me screaming with laughter. And, number 7, I would love to work with you and your bird, who I hope got to spend the rest of the day at the office!

  13. Chick-n-Boots*

    LW #12 – how have you not talked to your Dad about this yet?? I would not have been able to help myself. I feel like I would have brought a printed out that still showing him consuming the pizza the next time I saw him and Bartlet-style shouted “J’accuse!!!”

    1. FricketyFrack*

      Right?? My dad was a HUGE food thief, but only with family. I would’ve fallen out of my chair if I ever saw him to do it to someone else, and I can’t imagine not saying something! Father, what are you dooooing?! I also would’ve made him replace the pizza like…immediately.

      1. Meep*

        +1

        I would be calling that man telling him to come back here with a replacement pizza and some wings to make it up to her.

        Then again, IDK if my dad would’ve taken it, unless he thought it was mine.

    2. Chick-n-Boots*

      SMH. “A print out of that still” – what I wouldn’t give for an edit function.

    3. Ink*

      I would’ve made a stop on the way home to personally deliver him a pizza! No explanation, just peeved silence.

    4. Dark Macadamia*

      I would literally tease my dad about this every time either of us has pizza for the rest of our lives lol.

  14. Juicebox Hero*

    The bird on the head is just priceless.

    I used to work at a store that had a pet department and occasionally one of the birds would try and make a break for it. There are a lot of places for a bird to hide in a big old cluttered department store so everyone would be put on bird alert. A cockatiel got loose once so everyone was looking for this bird and not finding it until my department suddenly saw it peacefully riding the up escalator from our floor.

    We watched it ride the whole way up before anyone thought to call the pet department. I never found out where, or if, they found the bird.

    1. Ink*

      I would kill for a video of this. Freezing to watch was the right decision, when will you ever see a cockatiel riding an escalator again!

      1. Bossy*

        Remind me of the last season if amazing race- racers were given the directive to take an escalator, but no walking just ride it. Later they showed a dog calmly riding down the elevator on his own and following directive perfectly.

      2. Juicebox Hero*

        Unfortunately it was before cell phone cameras were a thing or it would have gone viral for sure.

    2. Cardboard Marmalade*

      I don’t know if Alison’s put out a call for animal-related work stories yet, but this amazing image of the cockatiel riding the escalator makes me hope she will.

    3. Harper the Other One*

      The mall I used to hang out in growing up had a pet store on the bottom floor with a scarlet macaw who liked to make a break for it. His wings were clipped so he would march down the mall heading straight for the escalator and regularly rode it up to the other floors. Seeing a pet store employee tearing through the mall looking for him was a regular occurrence and he always looked vaguely triumphant even as he was being brought back where he belonged.

  15. Ink*

    Is #14 as unfair as it seems to me? I’m sure IT might use the occasional diagram or something, but giant whiteboard? The ENTIRE internet?? What is that even supposed to demonstrate?

      1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        Probably expecting PC -> WiFi Router -> Cable modem -> ISP Server -> Backbone Server(s) -> Destination Server (or something similar).

        I doubt they truly expected the entire Internet, unless they were planning to hire the candidates great-great-great-grandchild.

        1. Socks*

          Yeah, I’m curious if any of the people saying it’s a terrible question are in IT/tech. A networking engineer with a decade of experience should have a good idea of how the internet functions (which I’m sure the OP does, to be clear — we’ve all had a brain fart like that).

          Maybe people are interpreting it as “draw an abstract concept of The Whole Internet” instead of “diagram how the internet works in as much detail as possible,” but otherwise I don’t get the pushback

          1. Ink*

            It’s really the size of the whiteboard that’s tripping me up, honestly. It feels like a lot to ask in an interview, it’s time-consuming even if you have really big handwriting!

            1. Socks*

              Oh yeah if I was faced with that whiteboard my diagram would probably have many very large boxes taking up space lol. I’m just confused by the reaction to the general premise

              1. Charlotte Lucas*

                I think it’s the word “draw” that caused the mind blank. “Diagram” would be much clearer.

                Although I did once explain the cloud to someone using Zeus as part of my example, and my explanation would have been kind of fun to draw. (This was to a very non- techie person and not part of an interview.)

              2. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

                Just fill the outside with lots and lots of little boxes representing individual devices after you’ve done the important bits in the middle. :)

          2. MigraineMonth*

            I’m in IT/tech, and I think the issue is that the engineer *has* a decade of experience and is basically being asked to put it on the whiteboard.

            It would be like asking a librarian to draw the Library of Congress. Do you draw the components of a book? Talk about the library’s history or importance? Explain the Dewey Decimal system? Go through the steps of how to access a book? Except the Library of Congress isn’t just books–should the explanation also include all the other types of media that are preserved?

            A more specific question (e.g. “Diagram in detail how this computer would access a shopping website based in Hong Kong”) would be much clearer and therefore easier to answer.

            1. metadata minion*

              If they explained the Dewey Decimal System, that would definitely be a mark against them since the Library of Congress uses a completely different cataloging system ;-)

            2. Kevin Sours*

              Figuring out which aspects of the Library of Congress are of interest would be part of the exercise. This the sort of question that lends itself to additional questions/discussions that were cut off by the complete brainlock.

        2. MigraineMonth*

          I think the way it’s phrased is open to interpretation, and the only restriction (“use the entire board”) makes it much harder, because the most reasonable assumptions (such as yours) wouldn’t actually take up the entire board unless the interviewee wrote very large.

          Do they want a diagram of the segments between a computer and the destination server? A diagram of the network protocols? A geographic map of the physical components (cables, satellites, etc)? A diagram of code libraries and dependencies (https://xkcd.com/2347/)? A map of IPv4 space (https://xkcd.com/195/)? A map of online communities (https://xkcd.com/256/ or https://xkcd.com/802/)? A list of domains? It’s really not clear.

        3. fhqwhgads*

          I’ve seen tons of posts suggesting this is a common tech interview ask. Unless the same poster has posted that story dozens of times, which maybe they have.
          But yeah, to me it’s clear they were asking for a diagram, and the “use the whole board” thing is sort of a red herring. Or being misinterpreted. I take that bit as shorthand for A) don’t draw it tiny; we should be able to see/read it from where we are. B) don’t oversimplify.

    2. bamcheeks*

      Crying out for someone to either reproduce the XKCD “bit of random hobby infrastructure maintained by some dude in Nebraska” diagram OR Moss and Roy telling Jenn that THAT’S the internet.

      (disclaimer about the terribleness of Graham Linehan.)

      1. KaciHall*

        The xkcd comic is titled Dependency. Should anyone else want to see it. (I had to search for it last week during the outage so I could share it with my team.)

    3. Meep*

      Yeah… It is one of those obnoxious trick questions that don’t actually show knowledge or how you can convey that knowledge. Otherwise, they would’ve helped by asking leading questions.

      1. Seeking Second Childhood*

        At the risk of ruining the fun, I will point out that the interviewer may have been looking for the interviewee to ask “narrow it down” questions. They could need someone able to rein in management’s tendency to propose grandiose ill-defined projects.

      2. Kevin Sours*

        The ability to take an overbroad question and figure out what is essential to convey and hit that level of abstraction *is* a useful skill in a lot of IT positions. It’s not entirely clear if this was one of them.

    4. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Yeah, it’s a pretty terrible question, IMO. Perhaps that OP knew what a terrible question it was and didn’t much care about working somewhere that would ask such a dumb question so their brain froze and didn’t even care, so they didn’t do anything to try to recover from the situation.

    5. Butterfly Counter*

      Showing my age, but to play for time, I’d have drawn a “series of tubes.”

      Hopefully, after a good laugh, my brain would go back online and I could answer the question.

      2. Lab Boss*

        If you really want to use the space, perhaps also a drawing of a truck with a large red X across it.

        1. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

          Not to “well, actually”, but.

          Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of hard drives. Storage space increases much more rapidly than transfer speed, and the major cloud computing platforms offer services that amount to “we’ll send you a drive”. This mostly gets used for stuff like going from on-premise data centers to a cloud environment, or consolidating two environments, but “sneakernet” is a very real thing.

          1. I Have RBF*

            Wouldn’t that be “dieselnet”??

            But yes, large data transfers are faster by truck than by wire/fiber.

    6. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

      For a network engineer it sounds like a BRILLIANT question, accompanied by “Okay, you’ve labeled that box “DNS”, what does that do? What happens if there’s a problem with it?” and so on.

  17. Higgs Bison*

    I didn’t realize autocorrect was around early enough for Pentium to not be one of Intel’s lower tier processors.

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      I was thinking the same thing. I would not have expected Pentiums and autocorrect to overlap in any way, but I just googled to discover that Pentiums were still being made up until last year!

      1. Higgs Bison*

        They were being made, but after the Core line launched, Pentium became the least crappy of the lower tier, below i3.

      2. Nina*

        My current computer has a Pentium processor. Granted, it was manufactured in 2012 and I recently had to install Linux to get it back to usable speed, but it still fundamentally goes.

    2. Salty Caramel*

      I Googled and Microsoft first implemented autocorrect in 1993!

      Hasn’t ducking improved much.

      1. Higgs Bison*

        I guess I’m glad I was a Wordperfect user until around 2008. I am not a fan of autocorrupt.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        Yeah, I’ve been fighting it for a long, long time. I delayed using Word as long as possible because its efforts to “correct” my writing (autocorrect, the dreaded squiggly underlines, odd formatting decisions) pissed me off so much.

  18. Dex*

    Number 7 reminds me of how we adopted our lovebird. One day my mother was out shopping, and as she went to get back in her car, a lovebird just flew up and landed on her shoulder. We live in a hurricane-prone area, and one had been through recently, and this was obviously a bird used to humans, so it was very likely a former pet who had gotten loose due to the storm, and there was very little chance of finding out where it had originally come from. (Birds don’t generally have tags like dogs do.)

    My mother carefully got into her car, but the bird calmly remained on her shoulder the entire car ride home, and stayed there while my mother waited in the house and my father went out and bought a cage. They got a lot of bird-appropriate toys, food, and snacks, and the bird remained happily with us for the rest of its life, while was several more years. It always enjoyed getting to ride around on people’s shoulders while we did random tasks throughout the house. (it also liked sitting on the blades of the living-room ceiling fan, looking down upon all of us mortals – the fan was generally off, obviously.)

    But yeah, the bird had been lost, saw my mother, decided she looked like someone trustworthy, and found a new home.

  19. Brain the Brian*

    Frankly, #4 highlights exactly why I won’t take work calls while driving. I’ll call family and friends for a low-stakes chat, but a work call? Nope, too much focus required.

    1. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

      My sweetheart regularly calls me from the road, and his New Jersey Road Rage pottymouth is INCREDIBLE. It makes my whole day when he gets cut off.

      1. Corvus Corvidae*

        It’s great that you appreciate our state’s creative language! My husband just reminds me that the dashcam is running and what I say can and will be used against me or whatever.

        1. Orv*

          My wife likes to yell at other cars, pedestrians, etc. I’m usually the one saying, “shh, hon, we’re in the convertible! They can HEAR you!”

    2. Reebee*

      Yeah, also, it’s dangerous. I’m surprised it’s featured as a mortification chortle.

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        I kinda felt like that particular person got what they deserved. Work calls (or any other calls, really) don’t mix.

      2. Miss Pantalones En Fuego*

        I had the same thought. Where I live it’s borderline illegal to take calls like this while driving so I’m always rather surprised at the attitude that it’s not a potentially dangerous practice.

  22. bamcheeks*

    My boss is a gay man, with a love of the kind of old-school northern English comedy which is 90% double-entendres and “ooh er missus” looks. So what on earth possessed me to say, “The numbers are looking good — next month, as long as we get a really solid bulge we’ll be happy.”

  23. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

    #8 I adore the idea that, a hundred years from now, literary analysts may wonder just why poets from Rita Dove to Louise Gluck suddenly incorporated hot pink imagery into their work… “Y2K neon” they’ll call it.

    1. Seeking Second Childhood*

      100 years from now they’ll conflate it with the Barbie movie, Disney princess pink, and Pretty in pink.

  25. TheBunny*

    Thanks so much for this today.

    I’m currently trying to reply to someone throwing a temper tantrum and “please treat my team as coworkers and not how you treat retail employees and those in the service industry” is what I really *really* want to say which likely won’t go over well….I needed the distraction.

      1. TheBunny*

        Hope your situation resolved. I fixed the issue myself and called him out for being annoyed my team “sat on the issue all day yesterday probably because they don’t know what to do” by apologizing for the delay and pointing out my team doesn’t work weekends but I handled it myself.

        He didn’t reply.

    2. Lady Danbury*

      Why would it be acceptable to have a temper tantrum with service/retail workers?

      1. Lucien Nova, Disappointing Australian*

        It isn’t. I’m pretty sure TheBunny was saying the person throwing the tantrum likely treats retail and service workers that way, and is treating their team in the same unacceptable way, not that it’s appropriate or acceptable to treat anyone that way.

        1. TheBunny*

          Exactly. He was being incredibly condescending and rude (starting the email with “y’all” instead of names and telling my team when they would be handling his issue among other delights) and assuming my team was utterly incompetent.

          I can’t imagine how he behaves when he’s not trying to be professional (giving him the benefit of the doubt).

    3. fhqwhgads*

      I once told a coworker to stop treating me like I was their butler. It did not go over well.

  28. learnedthehardway*

    The bird story had me laughing so hard that my teen son ran up the stairs to see what was the matter. He also thought it was hilarious.

  30. CubeFarmer*

    re: Video Call. It’s honestly why I make sure that I am 100-percent dressed before I do anything remotely Zoom adjacent on my home computer.

  32. HappyPenguin*

    These are all great…but “home in bed with a migrant” made me giggle out loud!

    1. MigraineMonth*

      This is why I have my email on a 2-minute send delay. It’s a pain when I need a response right away, but when it pays off it REALLY pays off.

        1. Nina*

          Outlook for desktop has an option to not send automatically, and to hold the email in your outbox until you manually hit send/receive, or until the next regular send/receive cycle (which defaults to every 10 minutes, I think).
          I use it and it has saved more than a few typos.

  33. Orv*

    My interview with Google was full of stuff like #14, with two or three interviewers in the room (it varied throughout the day). As an introvert with a history of being bullied in school, who as a result freezes up whenever I have to do something in front of an audience, I totally humiliated myself and was not asked to continue.

  36. DownWithHustleCulture*

    #4: This makes me cringe but not for the reasons you might think. Folks, please pleasePLEASEplease stop taking meetings from your car while you are driving! There is no way that you can pay proper attention to the meeting OR the road. Driving is really mean to be a mono-task…No matter what you might see happening out there. Distracted driving is very dangerous for you and everyone around you. If I am running a meeting and I can tell that someone is Zooming or calling in from their car, I always ask them if they are safely parked. And if they say they are driving or I can tell they are driving, I tell them that we need to reschedule for another time when they can be fully present and available.
    I have been in meetings where someone literally crashed their car (speeding!), one person rear-ended someone, and when someone had a medical emergency…and crashed. Sad results all around.

  37. Justice*

    I would not have been able to resist responding to the typo in number 6 with the South Park gif. “THEY TOOK OUR JERBS!”

  38. Yes And*

    Re #4: I was on the other side of a related situation. I was presenting to a Zoom/in-person hybrid board meeting. When I mentioned that the organization was planning a price increase in line with our past practices, a board member on the phone (who has long been a vocal proponent of larger, more frequent price increases) yelled, “Oh, bulls***!”

    There was a pause. Then I said, “Sorry, [name], I didn’t catch that. Did you have a question?”

    He said, “Oh… uh… I’m driving and someone cut me off. Sorry.” And then he muted himself.

  39. Anna Banana*

    #5 and #6 are absolutely sending me – I had tears from laughing after reading those back to back

  40. Anna*

    Re #6 – “(Person) is home in bed with a migrant.”

    I hate it when managers share the reason people are out. Why does the rest of the team need to know more than when you’re out and when you’ll be back

    1. Lady Danbury*

      I was coming to say this! It’s none of anyone’s business, a potential privacy issue (depending on the jurisdiction) and creates a culture where people feel that they have to overshare. Also makes it weird when someone doesn’t share, which they shouldn’t have to. “Person is out sick” is the most that I would share.

      1. TheBunny*

        As someone who gets migraines, I get this. If I’m out sick, and it’s really urgent, call me.

        If I’m out with a migraine, the only reason to call me is if you’re dead. And my phone is going to be on silent anyway. I always specify. I don’t give sick “details” but do differentiate between migraine and sick.

  41. cloudy*

    #11 rest assured you did way better than the guy who interviewed at the grocery store my partner works at. The guy came in to ask about his interview later that day… and actually shoplifted (in an obvious manner) on the way out. Right after informing everyone who he was.

    When he came in for the actual interview later they immediately confronted him about it and he asked “if this meant he couldn’t work there.”

  42. Risky Biscuits*

    Re: #7 — in German, you can say someone “has a bird” (hat einen Vogel) to describe someone eccentric or “crazy.” Maybe a bit like describing someone as cuckoo in English? Anyway, I’m sure anyone who saw you with a bird on your head might have thought you had a bird.

    1. Carole from Accounts*

      YES! I am the bird story OP, and I (and my cockatiel) relocated from the US to Germany a few years ago. The first time I heard the expression “Du has ein Vogel” I almost cried from laughing so hard and had to explain the story of the time I went to work with a bird on my head and everyone indeed thought it was crazy!

      1. FLuff*

        Almost bust a gut laughing. A real “hat einen Vogel.” For the German speakers at AAM.

    1. goddessoftransitory*

      Behold!
      That flash of pink
      A neon sunset, underskirt
      How we all remain dazzled
      By a glimpse of rayon; here, then concealed
      By the stiff cotton of curtaining cloth

  44. Hosta*

    I have totally had the question in number 14 or a variant of it. I stalled for time to let my brain figure out how to even tackle that by asking what level of depth do they want?

  45. MigraineMonth*

    While I’m sure the OP in #11 answered incorrectly, I am a bit curious what the correct answer was. Stores seem to have such diametrically opposed approaches to dealing with shoplifting (confront the person, don’t confront and call the police immediately, wait until the person has shoplifted enough to be a felony before calling the police, don’t report at all, etc).

    I guess “follow store policy” would be a pretty safe answer?

    1. Chick-n-Boots*

      The good ones would probably want some version of “follow protocol” or “follow policy” or something along those lines. Unreasonable companies want you to be very….confrontational. I worked for a store once where our regional manager thought we should defend our merchandise like it was our first-born. Like block-the-door-so-they-can’t-leave levels of defense. No regard for personal safety or if that was even legal or why we should take that risk when our multi-million dollar company could well-afford a lost box of legos.

      This wasn’t company policy, mind you. Just one crazy manager who thought we all owed undying fealty to our retail employer.

      1. Bartimaeus*

        A friend of mine is a thrill seeker type. A while ago, he worked store security at a discount clothing store, which means part of his job was *to* confront shoplifters.

        He said he’d apparently had knives pulled on him. Several times. Apparently the rules at that point were to let ’em just walk away with whatever they had, because no amount of discount clothing was worth getting stabbed.

        1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

          That’s the only policy I’ve ever known. Below a threshold it was written off as shrinkage, over a threshold Management would file a police report with the employee’s statement, but I’ve never heard of anyone required to be a minimum-wage hero.

          1. Adds*

            The guy who trained me when I was working at a grocery store said “Let them take it, it’s not your personal merchandise and it’s not coming out of your pay. Ask them if they need directions to the diapers or need help out the door. Don’t be a hero.”

  46. Juicebox Hero*

    #8 is why I compulsively either tug on the hems or sweep my hands over the backs of my thighs when I wear a skirt. I have a fear of it either getting stuck in the waist of my underwear or hitching up some other way and showing my true colors to the world.

  47. Ardis Paramount*

    “I believe she’s on mute.”
    “Nope.”

    This absolutely took me out. Thank you for the laugh.

  48. Big DIP person*

    A few months into my current job I was confidently announced to my entire team, including my boss, that I’m a “big dick person” during a conversation about guacamole over lunch. My boss laughed so hard she cried when I tried to sink into the floor. She then made me repeat myself when a coworker who’d joined lunch late so she wouldn’t miss out on the hilarity.

  49. CowWhisperer*

    #7 Please tell me someone looked at you and belted “What, ho, the Megapode!” from DiscWorld.

    Which reminds me – I need to make a duck hat.

  50. SarcasmBeforeAnger*

    If someone asked me to draw the internet, I would need to ask if instead, I could do an interpretive dance!

  51. newfiscalyear*

    It was my first or second day at the new job. My office building was two separate buildings that had been adjoined at some point, so it was a bit of maze to me. Even more challenging, I had two bosses that worked on two different wings and the offices for one boss were being moved to another floor, so, all around, I definitely got lost. Fast forward, I locate the restroom area of one side of the building and lo and behold, I walk in to immediately realize my error out loud when I see urinals, “Oh my gosh! I’m in the wrong bathroom!” Thankfully I didn’t see anything, but I heard my new boss laugh and laugh. I didn’t live that one down for a short bit.

  52. AnnieB*

    15 is amazing. Was it Stella? It’s very much Stella’s style of confidently saying the wrong thing in an absolutely hilarious way!

    1. Hlao-roo*

      It looks like the STAR interview story was originally posted by commenter Amanda Wahlberg on the “bombing an interview: let’s discuss” post from October 19, 2023.

      (Stella70 also has a great story on that post.)

  53. Adds*

    Oh, #11 …. I had a somewhat similar experience with an interview at a big box electronics store at 17 and a question about shoplifting …

    I, in my complete innocence and utter incomprehension that anyone would steal something from their employer could only think of the time or two I had accidentally put the company-supplied register pen in my pocket after using it and taken it home after my shift at my last retail job said maybe people should have a second chance (or something similar). Because I certainly didn’t think I should be fired for taking a pen home and I couldn’t imagine doing something worse than that. I was mortified when the interviewer asked me if I really thought an employee who steals a TV should not be fired. I did not get that job.

  54. pocket sized polly*

    Number 4: I’d be mortified that I was driving while on a Zoom call but go off, I guess.

  55. Snoozing not schmoozing*

    #13: The intoxication didn’t shock me as much as a fresh-out-of-college person being interviewed for a management consultant position. Eek!

  56. run mad; don't faint*

    #9, the bare feet! That reminded me of when I attended a meeting barefoot with the COO and my boss, who I think was still my boss at that point and hadn’t yet been promoted to CEO. It was one of my first jobs post college. My job was outdoors and quite physical. And we were really pretty casual and laid back about a great many things. It was a very hot day and I was sweaty and uncomfortable. So I took my work boots off to cool down more quickly! The COO commented rather restrainedly; I explained that I found it the quickest way to cool down. He gave me an enigmatic look and didn’t say anything else about it. Exactly what I had done didn’t hit me until a few months later. But I’ve been mortified by it every since!

  57. Tormented by Teams*

    My department runs a standing weekly meeting. I share my screen but don’t speak – my boss does. One week both of my bosses told me last minute they couldn’t make the meeting and I’d have to run it – no big deal. It became a big deal though when our brand-new CEO, who didn’t know me from a hole in the wall, unexpectedly joined the call. I panicked a little bit and sent my work bff a teams chat saying “OMG WHY THE F IS CEO ON THIS CALL??” Then went to share my screen. And shared…my teams chat. I realized it and panicked further, therefore taking too long to switch to the proper screen. Cue me dying inside. Immediately got a teams chat from another work friend – “Omg. What did you do.” The worst part? My bosses joined the call after all so I didn’t have to run the call AND they saw my teams faux pas.

    Turns out everyone thought it was hilarious, including CEO, but I have Teams PTSD and every time I share my screen now I triple check that it’s the right window.

  58. JJDeBenedictis*

    Re: #13 The Intoxication

    I knew someone who had something like that happen unintentionally. He was interviewing in another city, and a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend offered him a place to stay for free, which he was grateful for, because, y’know, unemployed.

    He arrived that evening at house of these nice people he hardly knew, and when they opened the door, a wave of marijuana smoke rolled out.

    Long story short, the house hot-boxed him. He woke up the next morning stoned and had to do his interview in that condition. Like #13, he did not get the job, but he also thinks he didn’t perform too badly. Maybe they just smelled it in his clothes.

  59. Zeus*

    When Mortification Week was announced, I didn’t think I had anything to add, but many of these are reminding me of events I’d forgotten/repressed…until now!

    #2 reminds me of a time I was helping out a crew of film students with their final exam, which was to create a short film (I’d done the course the previous year). I was the script supervisor, and I needed to check a couple of things with the director, including how anal-retentive he wanted me to be about a particular thing (the 180° rule, for those who know).

    I was trying to keep up with the jokey student-y atmosphere. I have no idea what possessed me to do this, though.

    What I tried to say: “I have two questions for you, and one of them has the word ‘anal’!”
    What I said: “I have two questions for you, and one of them is about anal!”

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