Ask a Manager

It’s Mortification Week at Ask a Manager and all week long we’ve been revisiting ways we’ve mortified ourselves at work. Here’s the final installment — 12 more mortifying stories people have shared here over the years.

1. The pumping room

I had just started a new job shortly after having my first child and had to pump in my office. I didn’t have the money to purchase an expensive, hands-free pump so I was using the free pump from my insurance that plugged into a wall and required my shirt/bra to be off if I didn’t have fancy nursing clothes on that day.

I figured since I had a private, lockable office, I should be able to pump privately without significant issue. I was wrong. Just to be safe, I had made a small sign that said “pumping, please do not disturb” to make sure no one thought I was ignoring them if I failed to respond to a knock.

One afternoon while I was just finishing up pumping, I heard a knock at my door. I called out, “I’m pumping right now, please come back later.” The person started jiggling the door handle. I experienced a rapid-fire roller coaster of emotions (panic — did I forget to lock the door? Relief — thank goodness, the lock worked! back to horror — are those keys I hear jingling?). I could hear the person on the other side of the door, so I knew they could hear me. I called out, “Do not come in here! I am pumping and I need privacy!” and for some reason, the response I got back was, “It’s okay!” and they CONTINUED TO UNLOCK AND OPEN THE DOOR.

In desperation, I yelled at the top of my lungs, “I AM NAKED AND IF YOU PUSH THAT DOOR OPEN FURTHER, YOU WILL SEE MY BREASTS” as I rushed to try to throw my shirt back on. I caught a glimpse of an absolutely horrified young man in the doorway. After a minute of him freezing in shock, he slammed the door shut and I could hear him saying, “Oh my God, oh my God” as he ran down the hallway.

The worst part? In my panicked rush, one of the containers of my milk spilled all over the room. And all of our cleaning supplies were stored in the janitor’s office so I got to see my new little buddy almost immediately. I walked in to get some paper towels to find him shaking in the office, trying to explain to his boss what chaos he had just unleashed. Turns out he was a teenager who had only ever heard of pumping in the context of “pumping irons/working out” so he thought it would be fine to just pop in and talk to whoever was lifting weights in the office.

The other worst part? My office hallway was (usually) a very quiet, peaceful place so my yelling attracted quite the crowd as people came running over to see what was wrong just in time for the door to be opened. I’m fairly confident all of my new coworkers saw me topless although they were kind enough to pretend they had not.

About to have my second child in a month or two so we’ll have to see what happens this time around. Maybe I’ll push a desk in front of the door just to be safe! I asked my boss, who kindly suggested we order a large sign that says “I AM NAKED AND YOU WILL SEE MY BREASTS IF YOU OPEN THIS DOOR,” although we may need to run that one by HR first!

2. The donation request

At a college library we were collecting food donations and the organization gave us a list of their highest need items. I retyped the list for marketing and sent it off so we could get some fliers. A little while later, a marketing staffer calls me laughing hysterically and says, “You wrote on here that one of the requested donations is porn and beans. By any chance did you mean pork and beans?”

3. The phone interview

I was interviewing for a part-time job through my college where I’d be mentoring students. During the phone interview, in response to some question (unsure of what they asked that could have prompted this!), I rambled a bit and then concluded with, “Actually, I guess thinking about it, I don’t really like kids.” I then panicked and hung up.

I did not get the job.

4. The argument

I was asked to produce an all-audio live event on a special new audio platform. It was a two-day conference where I didn’t know many of the participants or listeners, but it was a fun challenge! I hit a bit of a snag when the first event started and I needed to record audio on my end without destroying the audio feed quality. The test run was fine but we all know the live moment is sometimes different!

I asked my husband (way better at tech) for help resetting the microphone — except that I hated his advice, and argued with him loudly about how to fix it and what would work for me and what wouldn’t, and it got briefly heated.

And then I heard another voice on the line: “Is this the conference? This is hilarious. I want to keep listening to this!” And then my boss’s voice: “Uh, next time you do this, can you mute? You have about 1,000 listeners.” It had gone on for literally five minutes before I realized I was broadcasting myself instead of the speakers.

5. The straw

It was my first day at a summer job (I was still in college) and my new boss took me to lunch. I was drinking iced tea with a straw, but watching my boss rather than staring down at my glass, so at one point when I dipped my head down to take a sip, I missed, and the straw went up my nose. I immediately raised my head … and the straw stayed in my nostril and sprayed iced tea all over the table.

6. The mints

A coworker of mine came down to my cubicle for a quick chat. She was standing in the hallway at the entrance to my cubicle as she updated me on a new training initiative. She reached into the pocket of her pants and pulled out a couple of mints (wrapped in plastic) and tossed one at me and unwrapped the other one before putting it in her mouth. We continued chatting for a couple of minute and wrapped up our conversation. As she turned to leave I said, “What else do you have in those pants for me?”

As it came out of my mouth, I realized what I said, and how it did not sound like I was asking for another mint. I started laughing and apologizing and she gave me the side eye and then laughed as well. My boss’s office was next door and he immediately popped out to the hallway because of course I was loud enough for him to hear. We all laughed it off.

7. The beat

I was a teaching assistant for music classes at a university. I was trying to explain to my students, who were pretty new to music studies, that a piece in 3/4 time had a section that was temporarily in duple time. Rather than using “technical” language like “So, as you see in these measures, Stravinsky creates a pattern of a quarter note followed by a quarter rest,” I said, “So, as you can see here, Stravinsky writes beat, off, beat, off, beat, off….” Then I realized I’d been repeatedly saying “beat off” in front of my class. I could not compose myself. I turned beet red and laughed uncontrollably for about two minutes. The rest of the class was punctuated by me periodically sputtering, laughing, and struggling to regain my dignity.

8. The sandwich shop

Went to work feeling OK; worked a few hours, took lunch. Ate lunch at a sandwich shop.

About an hour after getting back I was feeling awful.

Went to ask my boss if I could go home and threw up all over her office while asking.

9. The security tapes

I was a management intern at a well-known retailer a million years ago. I was in the back working on the schedule, and lost track of time. I walked out of the office towards the exit only to see the evening manager walking to his car. He locked me in the store for the night.

It was a serious “WTF?” moment, and much to everyone’s amusement, there were security tapes that showed me in a panic and pounding on the glass screaming.

I walked out the back door and set off the fire alarm. The fire department came, but I left before they showed up.

10. Not muted

During the early days of the pandemic, I was on a group call about A Very Important Topic and had a, um, bathroom emergency in the call. I thought I was muted. I was … not. To this day, I have never admitted it was me.

11. The delivery

Years ago I had ordered an expensive pair of sunglasses from a high fashion designer. The delivery needed a signature. Instead of just telling my boss I had to be home to sign for a delivery, I used messenger on my computer to ask one of my friends, “What’s a good, boring thing to say I need to be home to sign for – I can’t tell my boss I need to stay home to sign for sunglasses.” She later wrote back, “I don’t know – maybe an appliance? Groceries that need to be refrigerated?”

Well – my laptop was the one we were using at that moment in a major department meeting – with my whole screen mirrored on the big conference room screen – and her reply and our whole exchange popped up on the screen for all to see. Oops. I was mortified. Luckily my boss is cool and just asked me the next day, “So what kind of sunglasses did you get?” Now I know enough to not give details and just say I need to be home for a delivery/signature!

12. The misspeaking

I was once interviewing for a job at a school, and the interviewer (the head of school) asked for an example of how I got buy-in around a program I created. This was after a long day with lots of interviews and so while I was trying to say “I had a lot of success with…” what I actually said was “I had a lot of sex with faculty.” I withdrew from that search for many reasons, but this was definitely one of them.

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.