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It’s Mortification Week at Ask a Manager and all week long we’ll be revisiting ways we’ve mortified ourselves at work. Here are 12 more mortifying stories.

1. The disk

Grad school in the late 90s. I was a female graduate student working at a computer lab. One professor had written a computer program on a 3.5″ floppy disk that the students had to take to a computer, insert the disk, and run the program. A male student came in asking for assistance. I of course forgot the “s” sound, so I told him, “It’s easy, you just stick your dick into it.” He was horrified and said, “I really don’t have to do that, do I?”

2. The wrong word

I once described a coworker as “randy” thinking that it meant mischievous or fun. Reader, it does not.

3. The insult

After finishing my MLIS in 2016, I was doing the customary circuit of academic all-day interviews with presentations to the faculty and staff.

I work in a technical part of LIS, so I was speaking about how users interact with databases and search interfaces and intended to say something along the lines off, “Of course many people in this room have been working with computers for decades and have seen the evolution of user experience design in computers, but often collegiate users only recognize modern design.” My nerves at being new to the field and not the most experienced presenter yet made me look at a room full of senior librarians and faculty at a STEM institution and say, with the full-chested confidence we all put on for professional presentations, “Of course many people in this room are older than computers.”

OOF. And yet, I got the offer!

4. The wrong phrase

I once said, “We shouldn’t shoot our whole wad” in a business meeting. Because I was absolutely sure that it referenced a wad of cash and meant you shouldn’t use up all your resources at once. And I was absolutely sure that I had heard my very proper mother use it that way.

Looking around the room at my colleagues’ faces, I realized in that very moment that that is not the actual origin of the phrase.

5. The straw

My third interview for my very first managerial job involved me flying into Chicago where I would be meeting with “the Big Boss” right at the airport.

Finding each other, he suggested we get a table at one of the restaurants, where we both ordered sodas. As he was speaking, keeping my eyes focused on his face, I bent down to take a sip of my soda. My straw went way up one of my nostrils! Neither of us said anything and I prayed he somehow had not noticed.

I got the job! Years later, it was time for me to move on. On my last day, that same boss called me in to say good bye. Grinning ear to ear, he asked me if I remembered what he called “the Straw Incident” when he had first interviewed me. (As if that were something I could forget!)

6. The potty

I (a female attorney) had gone to an attorney’s office to review some documents for a case in which we were on opposite sides. After doing so, he walked me back to the elevator and asked, “Do you need to go potty before you leave?” He was immediately mortified! I laughed and responded, “no, I think I can make it back to my office!”

He apologized profusely and said he was in the midst of potty training his toddler and “I guess I’m asking everyone that question automatically.” I thought it was hilarious but he could not stop apologizing.

7. The voicemail

One day at an old job, I had just started eating lunch when a “minor work emergency” came up that I had to deal with (read, not actually an emergency, but the person whose issue it was needed everything done RIGHT NOW and in this case it was easier to do it than deal with them complaining the rest of the time until it was done). I scarfed the rest of my food and chugged the soda I was drinking, picked up the office phone, and dialed the much senior coworker I needed an answer from regarding the topic. I was sent to their voicemail because they too were eating lunch. The “please leave your message at the beep” happened, I opened my mouth to talk, and immediately burped longer and louder than I ever had before or since and, in shock, immediately hung up the phone.

I sprinted up three flights of stairs to the office of the coworker, burst in the door, and yelled, “Delete your voicemail,” which obviously led to said coworker listening to the voicemail over and over and making sure as many coworkers as possible got to hear it.

8. The self-congratulations

When I worked at a mid-size nonprofit, all our previously in-person meetings moved online at the beginning of the pandemic. Before Covid, high-level donors and board members had special lunch meetings at a posh location that regular employees didn’t attend. But after Covid, boosting attendance at the virtual meetings mattered, so these strategic meetings became required for all employees.

In searching for something to talk about, the leadership asked me if I would present a small amount of my work in front of these bigwigs. It was a huge honor, and I took the assignment seriously. I practiced the presentation many times and even got feedback from coworkers and my partner who was at home working, as well.

The big day came and I carefully set up a room where things would be quiet, checked camera angles, and made sure my slides were ready to go. I did a great job presenting but was so relieved when it was over, I forgot to turn off my camera and microphone when I was done. All the important people on the call got to see me jumping excitedly around hear me clapping and saying to myself that it had gone well. It wasn’t until I had about a dozen texts from colleagues all at once that I realized my mistake! So embarrassing!

9. The wrong answer

One of my first professional interviews was for an internship in college. When asked what my five-year plan was, I honestly told them my goal was to work as an ESL teacher after college and get paid to travel – which had absolutely nothing to do with the job at hand. My aunt’s friend who got me the interview called me later and gave me the feedback that even if it’s not true, you should tailor your responses to the interview at hand. Oops.

10. The exam

I was on my OB-GYN rotation in medical school. My student partner and I were very nervous learning how to do a GYN exam on a real person. The school has actors who are willing to let a bunch of nervous and blushing students do these exams. We are taught to describe everything to help the patients feel comfortable. The students were divided into pairs with a OB attending doctor and a patient-actor.

When it was my turn to do the exam with the speculum, I encouraged the patient to relax, letting her know I warmed the speculum. Just before, I reassuringly told the patient, “You will now feel a little bit of pleasure.” (I meant pressure!)

It was over. The patient and attending exploded with laughter. I mean, tears rolling down faces, gut-busting laughter.

11. The kiss

I was working at a vet’s office and helping a client hold his dog while the vet was examining the dog’s tail. The owner and I were both near the dog’s head and he must not have realized that in addition to holding the dog, I was moving my hand to pet the dog’s head to comfort it. At this exact moment, he bent down to kiss his dog’s head and ended up kissing the back of my hand. we both just stared at each other for a second and then pretended it didn’t happen while the vet continued her exam.

12. The dress

I worked at a mall jewelry store and frequently wore cute, work appropriate fit-and-flare dresses. One morning I squatted down to unlock and raise the gate at opening, and my skirt caught on the handle and went up with the gate, over my head.

It’s Mortification Week at Ask a Manager and all week long we’ll be revisiting ways we’ve mortified ourselves at work. Here are 12 mortifying stories to kick off today.

1. The socks

I had to go into site one weekend and found the security officer doing his rounds while wearing socks but no shoes. This is not considered safe behavior (risk of slipping) so I politely reminded him he needed to wear shoes, and also, as required, entered it as a quick observation in the on-line site safety log.

Monday comes around and we start our daily management meeting at 9am with the usual review of any new safety issues in the log. We get to mine, and rather to my surprise the entire team look at me in shock. A very concerned HSE manager speaks for all of them: “Was the security officer really walking round site naked?” she asked, sounding horrified.

“What?!? NO, why would you think that?” I responded, equally horrified.

At which point I reread the observation I’d input: ‘Security officer walking round site in just his socks’ and realized that perhaps this was not quite as clearly worded as it might have been.

2. The insult

I had a new client I had just started working with text me asking me a question about his job. I was working out of the office that day, and didn’t have access to his information to answer. So I texted back, “I’m not in the office today, but will get you the answer first thing tomorrow morning.” Unfortunately, I didn’t proofread before I hit send. Autocorrect changed morning to moron. I immediately saw it and texted “Morning, not moron! I’m so sorry. Stupid autocorrect!” He replied with a laughing emoji and said that I had caught it too fast, as he was just about to reply, “That will be fine, idiot.” (So glad he had a good sense of humor!)

3. The invitation

I once texted and asked my boss to attend my next OB-GYN appointment with me. Yes, I thought I sent it to my husband. Fortunately, he replied back before I sent text number two which would have gone into a lot more detail.

4. The neighbor

Working at a bank where the breakroom was on the second floor, we typically took the stairs from the first floor at lunchtime. It was faster. Invariably one coworker would take the elevator. Jokingly, one day I asked if she was too good for the stairs. Her response? “I have an artificial leg and can’t climb stairs.” I was mortified.

Then, to compound my careless insults, another day the same employee was sitting outside the bank waiting for her afterwork ride. He didn’t show up, and there were no cell phones back them. She said she lived in the same adjacent town I did, so I gave her a ride. During the drive, as she was giving me directions, it was fun to realize we must live very close to each other. In the conversation, I mentioned that we have the very worst neighbors. They continually drive across our acreage when their driveway is too muddy to navigate. We went to the expense of putting in a culvert and gravel and hate that these rude people are putting ruts in our property to use our driveway. And, to make matters worse, they have no control over their vicious dog that lunged at my husband while he was working on our property. Yup, you guessed it, she and her husband were those neighbors. My mouth gets me into lots of mortifying trouble.

5. The lost bag

Not 10 minutes ago, I texted a coworker who I do not know well that the airline lost my vag and I couldn’t enjoy the conference until they returned it.

The “b” key and the “v” key should not be so close together on the keyboard.

6. The aggression

I called a company help line recently, and the customer service rep on the other end of the line greeted me with “Back off, asshole!”

Her dog was stealing her snack just as the line connected. Pretty hilarious.

7. The phone number

I worked in an emergency department as a receptionist. A lot of my job was passing on phone calls from nursing homes wanting updates from doctors about patients they had sent us. I got one such call, wrote down the contact information, and gave it to the doctor (a very serious man), who comes back to me a few minutes later, red in the face, fuming, asking if I thought wasting his time was funny. It turns out I had switched two of the digits in the phone number, which resulted in him calling a sex toy and lingerie chain instead of a nursing home! To top it off, it happened to be Valentine’s Day so it was very easily misconstrued as a prank instead of a harmless mistake, with the additional implication that I thought he needed to spice up his sex life.

He avoided eye contact with me for 3 years until I left the job, but I always triple check phone numbers now.

8. The overhead page

I am an MD and split my time doing informatics and hospitalist. At the hospital, we gets texts, messages in the computer and rarely overhead pages. We still have overhead paging for codes and typical stuff like fire alarms, system downtimes, etc. Our operator accesses the overheads with a secret code. This code is guarded for obvious reasons (immature humor is more prevalent in medical professions compared to “civilians”).

On to the hospital telephone system. Our phone system is similar to a hotel. Patients enter a code and then the number when calling out. Their families similarly call the hospital and enter a code to reach a specific patient room. Most people now have cell phones, but a few folks still use the traditional room phones.

How are these related, you ask? In theory, not at all. But when one patient’s wife dialed the code to call her friend from the hospital phone, she unwittingly hacked into the overhead speaker line. With her husband was under anesthesia for some procedure, she caught up with her friend – and everyone in The House. Due to the nature of the overhead, we only heard the wife’s part of the conversation, and that was more than enough. And it was juicy.

We heard all the juicy details:
1. Hubby was having an affair.
2. He spent a lot on “that tart” insert many f bombs and descriptions.
3. Yes, we have a pediatric wing.
4. Her scheduled bank transfers from the joint accounts were happening “as we speak.”
5. “Oh he will be a different man after this.” He — the patient — had no idea she knew.

This is all going on on the OVERHEAD. The operator could not break into the “announcement” and kick her off the line or shut it down. They also could not track who was doing it.

Now, in the hospital we are held to some important, and sometimes impossible, standards. Protecting PHI — private health information — is a big one. Any time we inappropriately share or give out PHI the hospital is at risk for fines. The fine is per breach. If ANY medical information got out, the hospital would be liable for a huge fine. The leaders and CEO (and then everyone) were all racing around trying to find who was talking and from what room, looking for the wife. Luckily, the conversations ended without any PHI. We never found the room or the wife or the patient.

The last thing she said before getting off the phone: “BTW, the new car is only in my name. I’m taking the Benz. Elvis has left the building.”

9. The inappropriate rephrasing

I once worked at a very prestigious mergers and acquisition firm. This was in the early 90’s. I had become familiar in my role as EA to the owner of the firm, a little too familiar. My boss asked me to get a file for a company we had just pitched. I asked why. He said the firm that had initially gotten the business had to back out and we were being given another “bite at the apple.” I do not know why I said what I said, but I replied, “Kinda like sloppy seconds?” WTF???? Whyyyyyyy??? I am currently getting hives just thinking about this then.

10. The training notice

Several years ago, we received a mandatory training notice. It was for human trafficking awareness. But for some reason, the person who sent out the email made the subject line: UPCOMING HUMAN TRAFFICKING EVENT. It definitely was attention grabbing, but perhaps for the wrong reasons.

11. The wrong translation

I (an American) was working in Germany. One of the Germans I worked with told me about a local insect pest that fell from trees, and the home remedy they used to drive it away. Their home remedy was to use the seeds from a plant that repelled the pest. Rub ’em on your nose and you’ll apparently ward off the bugs from dropping on you, presumably due to some chemical, like a seed oil, that’s not obvious or offensive to humans.

This German colleague did not know that there are some subtleties to terms for various gametes in English. So he offered to rub sperm on my nose for me, to ward off local bugs.

And then we had a very awkward chat to sort out what he really meant.

12. The Oompa Loompa

In a previous job, I had to call a prison and spell out a name, and somehow my brain refused that day to find “O for Oscar” and instead I said “O for Oompa Loompa.” The prison officer on the other end of the line had to put the phone down and in the end get a colleague over to finish my call, as she just burst into laughter and couldn’t calm herself down.

It’s Mortification Week at Ask a Manager and all week long we’ll be revisiting ways we’ve mortified ourselves at work. Here are 13 more mortifying stories to enjoy.

1. The mustache party

My partner and I were in our 20s and we had just moved across the country for my grad school program. He got a job at one of those hipster tech startups that had an office equipped with Nerf guns and beer taps. True to type, the company culture was all about ironic parties, and two months in, we were invited to an after-hours mustache party at his office.

This was in 2008, when hipster tech startups and Movember still seemed like novel amusements, and I’m a sucker for a good theme. I went all out — but not TOO all out – with a cute cocktail dress, a nice bushy stick-on mustache from the dollar store, an eye patch, and a pirate hook. My partner looked a bit doubtful, but I pointed out that the mustache made no sense without a pirate patch (“like, what’s the narrative?”), applied a kicky red lipstick, and prepared to network.

It … did not go as I had imagined. Remember this was still early 2000s tech: someone had stocked the party with what I can only guess were models hired to make it seem cooler. The path to the front door was lined two deep with very tall, very blond women wearing small black dresses. They did not have mostaches, or eye patches. They smoked their cigarettes and stared at us in dead silence as we walked the gauntlet to the bar. It was too late to turn back — too many people had seen our grand pirate entrance. All I could do was straighten my mustache and work my way through the party, shaking hook-hands with my poor partner’s coworkers as I went along.

My partner worked at that company for ten years and I never saw those tall blond girls again. He has also never again let me win an argument about dress code.

2. The hat

I worked for a school district that decided the hill they wanted to die on was hats. Religious headgear was allowed, and grudgingly the few students who were undergoing cancer treatments that made them lose their hair were permitted to wear a cap of some sort, but those exceptions were a small portion of the student population, and it seems no matter how styles change, teenagers are fervently attached to wearing some sort of hat. Personally, I don’t care about hats and I had to train myself to notice them after I was scolded for not enforcing the rule.

Then for the next 30 years, I was saying some variation of “Hats off!” on at least an hourly basis during the school day. This followed me into non-school settings, and once I was confronted with the shocked and irritated face of a stranger I had sternly told to remove his baseball cap in the public library.

3. The pothole

I was part of a team working late one night on a proposal and we decided to walk across the street to grab dinner before returning to finish the work. It was completely dark out and had rained all day, which is why when I tried to leap across a patch of wet grass to land on a pothole cover, I didn’t see that the pothole was actually NOT covered, but filled to the top with water. I went in feet-first all the way up to my waist. My coworkers looked in every direction but me as I somehow leaped out of the pothole (I have never shown that level of athleticism since) and spent the dinner trying to laugh it off in soaking wet shoes, tights and skirt.

4. The drinks

At the time, I’d worked for 10 years in a community center as a new manager on the member-facing programming team. Every year, there is a two-day regional conference where community centers from the tri-state area get together to share best practices, professional development, and a night out (usually a karaoke bar). This one year, I decided to start a diet the day of the conference, so I did my best to eat very cleanly and very little … then finished the evening by accidentally getting very, very drunk. Our CEO eventually escorted me back to my room where I proceeded to vomit all night long (much to the chagrin of my roommate/colleague).

I was still so drunk the next morning that one of my coworkers had to drive me in my own car from the hotel back to the conference location, where I was unable to keep my eyes open and ended up sleeping (missing half the conference) on an office couch under someone’s coat as a blanket. I was 37 years old at the time. My CEO was incredibly understanding about it, basically telling me to never let it happen again. (It hasn’t. I’m still at the same organization in a middle management role. I also never drank Fireball again.)

5. The presentation

I was on a call with the vendor, who was presenting, when he switched his screen so I could see another aspect of the product. Up pops a document titled “How to Use Your Rabbit Vibrator.” Cue frantic clicking on his side. (He claims it was left over from a previous client presentation.)

6. Not sun

I had an panel interview where one of the interviewers arrived with shockingly red skin all over. I remarked something like, “Wow! You got some sun! I hope you were having fun!” He muttered something like “not really,” and I responded with a “oh, yard work or something?” And I think … I don’t remember … but I think … I … might have … actually called him “Lobster Boy.”

I got the job, amazingly, and discovered a month or so in that his skin condition was the result of a painful ongoing medical treatment. I melted into a puddle under my desk.

7. The ice cream cone

The summer before I turned 17, I worked at McDonald’s to save money for a used car. I worked at the counter, but we did handle food and for some reason they didn’t make us wear gloves. (We were handling money and then serving fries and ice cream with those same bare hands!) One day, two women came in with kids and ordered ice cream. As I was making a cone, I got some ice cream on my hand and I LICKED IT OFF. While holding the ice cream cone. I went to give it to the woman and she said, “I saw you lick your hand. I’d like you to make me a new cone.”

Did I then profusely apologize and immediately make a replacement? Of course not! I stupidly said, “Oh, it’s okay, I only licked my hand, not the cone,” thinking that of course the problem must be that she thought I licked her food. She said, “Yes, I know, I’d still like you to make me a new one.” I did make her a new one and didn’t really give it a second thought until years later, when I realized what a horribly unsanitary thing it is to lick your bare hand while holding a customer’s food.

8. The wrong recipient

I once worked in an office with a secretary who couldn’t stop talking. One of those people who’d even narrate what she was doing if no one was around to listen to her. One day I had a difficult project to finish, my earplugs had gone missing, and Secretary had a captive audience in the form of a new hire she was “training.” I meant to use the interoffice IM to text, “I can’t focus with Secretary chattering on, so if you need me I’ll be in the conference room. God she drives me batty” to my team partner. Sent it right to Secretary.

9. The wrong word

I worked for many years in the customer service department for our local newspaper, and one of our duties was to make calls to customers starting or restarting their subscriptions to make sure there were no issues with delivery. So there I was, making my way through an hour of outbound calls, repeating my script over and over again: “Hi, it’s Scrooge calling from Newspaper to make sure you got your paper okay?”

It was going great until my last call of day, when I instead said: “Hi, it’s Scrooge calling from Newspaper to make sure you got your pooper okay?” This was almost 20 years ago and I still cringe when I think about it.

10. The voicemail

When I was in college, my best friend and I worked for the college’s foundation making cold calls for donations. The system used an autodialer and most people weren’t answering so we were chatting and having a playful argument while we worked. As one of my calls was ringing, she said something and I said, “You know what? Don’t even talk to me” and realized too late that the voicemail had picked up and I had just left that as a message for someone. I panicked, hung up, and called again leaving a normal voicemail.

11. The cocaine

When I was newer to a job as a salesperson, I was on the phone with a colleague. We had a company rule that we could not be on the phone while driving, so I pulled off into a parking lot to go over some updates with him on speakerphone. A man came up to my car, motioned to me to roll down my window, and while my colleague was on the speaker asked me if I “I wanted a bump.” I will admit, I am a bit naïve and had no idea what a bump was but, always the learner, I said in a very polite way, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what a bump is.” To which he replied, “Cocaine, would you like some cocaine?” In the most midwestern polite way possible, I said back to him, “Oh, no thank you, I am good” while my colleague was laughing loudly at me over the speakerphone.

12. The missing word

Back in the 90s, I did improv mystery dinner theater where we sat at guest tables. Wives loved it when we singled out their husband’s and did fake flirting in character. I was at a table with a nice extended family … and in character, flirted with the dad to make him my character’s love interest jealous. He made some comment, to which I replied, “Oh, I’m just using you, but I’m going to blow you off later.” Except … I somehow didn’t say the word “off.” It was a truly mortifying, record scratch moment and I eeked out, “Oh, wow. Um, that is not what I meant!!” The entire table burst out in laughter. It was not that kind of show!

13. The accidental grope

When I was a young salesman, I was selling a woman a phone from a display, I was gesturing at one of them and turned towards her, just as she turned towards me … and I perfectly cupped her breast.

It’s Mortification Week at Ask a Manager and all week long we’ll be revisiting ways we’ve mortified ourselves at work. Here are 14 mortifying stories to kick off today.

1. The sweater

I flashed my coworkers during a video call. All men.

I was wearing a thick, flowy sort of sweater and sitting next to the fireplace with my work laptop facing me on an ottoman. The fire got a tad warm, so I grabbed the bottom hem of that sweater and fanned it up and out, as one does, which provided them a perfect – PERFECT – view of my entire torso. No bra (that sweater was thick! I thought it was safe!).

The whole scene unfolded in a half-second delay on my little video window. I saw it all. I saw what they saw. All three fannings. By that time, it was far too late. One man said, “WOAH.” Another made a “hehuh” sound. I scrambled out of frame and spent the rest of the time huddled on the floor, too mortified to even approach the keyboard to leave the meeting.

We’ve all (mostly) recovered and moved on from my full, authentic work self.

2. The insult

I loved Mad magazine growing up. They would list their contributors on the cover and end it with “the usual gang of idiots.” Fast forward to my first tech job out of college (early 90’s), and I responded to an email question about who was working on a ticket. I replied with “me, Bob, and the usual gang of idiots.” Let’s just say there weren’t any other Mad magazine readers in that group.

3. The terrible interview

I left grad school in the middle of the semester for health reasons and was also newly out as a trans man. I found a job teaching but needed work before the new semester started. It’s worth noting I was in a terrible headspace at the time.

I got an interview for a seasonal position at an upscale women’s business professional store. I got the time wrong and showed up ridiculously early, which already irritated the manager. I did well on most of the interview but was very flustered when asked to put together an outfit I would wear from the store. I showed up to the interview in a man’s suit but I was in a very awkward point in my transition where most people thought I was a poorly dressed butch lesbian. I panicked and threw together something hyper femme and then word vomited the whole saga of transitioning to the interviewer.

Then, when she told the hours and pay rate, I realized it would conflict with my more lucrative tutoring side gig, which I again proceeded to tell her (I still don’t know what robbed me of my mental filter) and then backed out of the interview altogether.

Reader, it gets worse. My partner gently chastised me about all this so I CALLED THE INTERVIEWER BACK and retracted my refusal of A POSITION THAT WAS NEVER OFFERED. To the surprise of absolutely no one, I never heard back and proceeded to get a seasonal job at another store in the same mall, where I told no one my pronouns and the staff debated my gender identity amongst each other all season without any clarification from me. I still shudder at the mere thought of those three months of my life.

4. The lettuce hater

At some point I put “Lettuce Hater” as my name on Zoom. It was a personal account. I forget why I ever did, an inside joke of some kind, but it was literally years ago. I was suddenly reminded when I used my personal account to attend an interview during Covid. “So, you hate lettuce?” was one of my interview questions.

We all laughed. I didn’t get the job, though I don’t know if it was my qualifications or my anti-lettuce stance.

5. The coloring page

I was working in a library, in a very wealthy town, and a particularly huffy resident came up to the desk. She loudly, obnoxiously went on a tirade at me and another librarian, detailing an incident that had happened a whole week before, in which her daughter didn’t get a coloring page because the desk had already closed when she came up to get one. That was literally this woman’s complaint: that a whole seven days ago, we closed the desk at closing time, and so her daughter couldn’t get a coloring page. This woman was screaming and finally said, “It was the WORST experience I’ve EVER had” before huffing angrily out of the library.

It became somewhat of an inside joke, that we all wished our WORST experience EVER was that we didn’t get a coloring page. The woman didn’t come to the library much after that, but about a month later, my coworker noticed her, turned to me and said (a bit louder than intended), “Well I’m about to have the WORST experience EVER,” only to turn back around and see that the woman was walking directly behind her. She definitely heard the comment, but just kept huffing to the exit. My coworker was mortified, but our manager, thankfully, was quite amused.

6. The fart

I farted in an interview and we just ignored it. I did get that job.

7. The good riddance

For the longest time, I thought “riddance” was derived from “ride” and would cheerfully say “good riddance” when wishing people a safe and pleasant ride home.

8. Tim Gunn

I once interviewed for a teaching position and one of the questions was essentially “tell us about a good teacher you had in the past and what you learned from them.” Again, this interview was *for a teaching position*, I absolutely should have been prepared for this kind of question, but every teacher I had ever had just completely flew out of my head. I had nothing. I talked about Tim Gunn on Project Runway. (Somewhat surprisingly I did get moved to the next round of interviews, although I did not get the job.)

9. The stolen lunch

I used to work in a department that had weekly events. For a young, broke person like myself, the best thing about the events was that there were always some snacks put out on a table in front of the room where they were held.

One day when I arrived for the event, I noticed the snacks were really paltry, but undaunted, I nudged behind the people who were standing in front of the table and started to rummage around anyway. Right as it dawned on me that something was terribly wrong, one of the women I’d squeezed past said, “What are you doing? That’s my lunch!” She seemed skeptical about my panicked explanation and just said, “Well, I guess you can have some if you really want…”

It turned out I’d missed the email cancelling the event that day.

10. The song

A few years ago, while working from home, I was playing phone tag with a longtime colleague who I’m friendly with, catching up about a case. I called her and left a voicemail, updating about the work related issue, and signed off with a cheery, “Thanks, talk to you soon!”

… and then I never hung up. I typed notes and emails for a bit and then, as I often find helps me focus at home, I started singing aloud. What did I sing this time? “I’ll Make A Man Out of You” from Mulan. My colleague was treated to the sounds of me singing, with verve, “Let’s get down to business! To defeat the Huns!”

I carried on for quite some time before I realized! I finally hung up several minutes later when she’d been treated to several minutes and the entirety of the song, including triumphant final note. I immediately messaged her, filled with embarrassment, and she thought it was one of the funniest things she’d ever heard. She saved the voicemail, but has had the good grace not to mention it again since!

11. The relief

It was one of those corporate town hall things and one of the speakers had just finished giving a very cohesive and articulate presentation. Immediately after she said “back to you, host!”, she immediately whipped off the blazer she was wearing over her t-shirt and let out a big “UGH MY GODDDDD, BLECHHH”. The host kindly reminded her that her video and sound were still on.

It’s fairly mellow, but that raw “I hate presentations” attitude was amazing.

13. The duck face

Whilst waiting in the interview room for the hiring manager to arrive for our chat, I decided NOW would be the perfect time to practice my duck face (I was young, I was stupid, I’m sorry) – and then the door opened. Instead of returning to my normal, everyday expression, I continued to talk with my lips exaggeratedly pursed throughout the whole interview. Looking and probably sounding like a loon. I didn’t get the job.

14. The amigurumi

I like to crochet amigurumi and other 3D items, the splashiest of which is a very large and highly detailed penis and testicles. When I say highly detailed, I mean, our friend the urologist was so impressed he showed photos of it to the other urology residents. This decorative item is usually on display on top of a cabinet. However, I moved it to the top of a bookshelf while dusting, forgetting that said bookshelf is in the background of my husband’s Zoom calls.

He spent half of a Monday morning all-staff meeting cheerfully answering questions (he’s a VP) before realizing what was sitting in the background. Most of his coworkers are fairly conservative evangelical Christians. He video muted in horror and removed the offending objet d’art, hoping no one had noticed.

Later that day, a coworker who had recently turned in two weeks notice – and thus had nothing to lose – DMed him a screenshot of his video feed with the decorative penis and testicles circled and annotated with “????” My husband tried to pass it off as a butternut squash. Luckily no one told the CEO, or if they did, he wrote it off as an inevitable consequence of employing secular Brooklynites.

I now make sure to replace all decorative objects in their proper homes while dusting.