the misdirected message, the Portuguese proficiency, and other stories to cringe over

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 15 more mortifying stories to enjoy.

1. The fraud

At a school job fair I told somebody who does anti-fraud work that it made sense to me that their work often involved looking at finances, because it wasn’t like people were committing fraud for no benefit. When she paused and didn’t respond I panicked and said, “I mean, maybe some of them are in it for the love of the game.”

She didn’t respond to that either. I walked away. Luckily, that wasn’t the field I was looking at, I’d just gotten trapped in the crowd and ended up at her booth.

2. The accidentally misdirected message

I had a colleague who was adamant, sometimes to the point of being combative, about doing as little work as possible. I overheard him telling another coworker about what he was working on that week and, while it was a normal amount of work for the employees who took their jobs seriously, it was an unusually long to-do list for him. I sent a message to another manager sarcastically commenting on how shocking it was that he was trying to accomplish so much more than usual. But the manager had a name similar to the lazy colleague’s and, well, you can probably guess who I sent the message to by accident — as I found out minutes later, when he replied to me.

Luckily, he was so oblivious to my contempt for him that he completely overlooked the sarcasm and took my message as a compliment.

3. The misunderstanding

This is how I mortified myself as an interviewer. I was hiring someone to help with my small crafting business shortly after having my baby. One interviewee asked why i was hiring help at this point. I said, “Oh, with the baby, dyeing, and everything else going on…” The interviewee went very serious and profusely shared sympathy for the loss of my child. I hadn’t heard back what I had said so I had no idea where that had come from. I was also relatively freshly post-partum and feeling pretty fragile, so to my horror I started crying at the suggestion that my baby had died, and found myself repeatedly and increasingly frantically asking what they meant.

We clarified the misunderstanding but they were clearly weirded out and left as soon as they could. I didn’t blame them when they withdrew their application. I have not cried in a professional context since then and my son is doing very well, as is the textile dyeing side of my business.

4. The interview

I went to an interview, listening to a podcast on the way. The interview room was glass, slightly open on top and bottom, so there was some noise leakage from other parts of the office. Occasionally, we’d hear raucous laughter in the distance, and the interviewer seemed mildly irritated.

It was at least 20 minutes before I realized that I hadn’t actually turned by earbuds off, and the laughter we heard was actually my just-audible podcast coming from my bag. I had no idea what to do, that deep into the interview, so I just tried to ignore it. I’m not sure if I’m interviewer was also confused or if he knew from the start it was coming from my bag. I didn’t get the job.

5. The second language

I was unemployed for so long and just getting no bites after applying to everything under the sun. I saw somewhere that if you speak a second language, you are more likely to get hired. I also read that it was okay to lie a little on your resume and that everyone lies or stretches the truth on their resume. You see where this is going? Dear friend, I did NOT (and still do not) speak a second language. I added that I was proficient in Portuguese under the skills section. And just to show how little I knew about world languages, I picked Portuguese because I didn’t think a lot of people knew about it, let alone spoke it.

Well, as I hoped, I received a few call backs. It worked! I excitedly accepted the interview invitations. My first interview went great! Until the interviewer switched to speaking Portuguese. At first I was very confused, since I had no idea what she was saying. So was she because I’m sure I looked like I had no idea what she was saying. She confirmed that I said I was proficient in Portuguese and that’s when I realized she was speaking Portuguese! What are the chances, right? Embarrassed, I gathered my things without speaking and walked out.

I found this blog shortly after, deleted that line on my resume, and applied for jobs I was actually qualified for, given I was only 22 years old and looking for high-paying management positions. I also researched how common the Portuguese language is.

6. The favorite trait

We had a team meeting, and we were supposed to write down what our favorite trait was. Most people wrote down that they were good with Excel or budgeting or typing or whatever administrative assistant or work-related skill there is out there. Me? I wrote down that I had nice hair.

7. The presentation

The day after my birthday, I was delivering a major presentation to a very accomplished board of directors and high level clients. I was running a laptop while the presentation appeared on a giant screen behind me. The next slide was supposed to be an emotional film clip I’d produced, which I introduced as “one of the defining projects of my career.”

Thanks to a miscommunication between myself and my assistant, what actually appeared on the giant screen was a meme of a wild-eyed squirrel and the message, “Happy Mother F$&@?!@ Birthday.”

I somehow made a joke and managed to make it look intentional. Following the presentation, one of the board members told me it was the best marketing presentation he’d ever seen.

8. The call

This was years ago when cell phones were just starting to become ubiquitous. I had my first cell phone (a big bricklike device) and, of course, found it so cool. I took it with me to an interview in a small pack. During the interview it rang (stupid me didn’t turn it off) and then, in front of an interviewing committee of six people … stupider me answered it! It was my friend asking how the interview went. I told him that I was still in the interview and he immediately hung up. I put the phone and went on like nothing had happened. Deservedly, I did not get the job. It’s been nearly 30 years since that happened (and I ended up in a better job) but I still inwardly groan whenever I think about it. What was I thinking?

9. The salary negotiation

I was offered a role and asked about my salary requirements. I said “I’d like 40k, but I’ll accept less.”

WHY. WHY did I say that?? Spoiler: they did not offer me 40k. I was 24, and it was my first corporate job, and I cringe every time I remember my excellence in negotiation.

10. The congratulations

A coworker had recently received a much-deserved and long-sought promotion. Our schedules didn’t overlap much, so I kept reminding myself to congratulate him the next time I saw him. When we were finally in the same room the very first thing I said was, “Oh, hey, man, congratulations! You should be really proud of yourself!”

Unfortunately, the room we were in was the bathroom, and he was standing at a urinal. It did not sound like I was complimenting him on his promotion.

11. The butt

I was on a call with about 20 people, just a normal check-in call on a project. Some people were cameras on, some people were cameras off, no big deal either way.

One of the main contributors to the project was camera on, with a blurred background, in a space that was clearly her bedroom. (We all know what a blurred bed looks like by now, right?) A blurred figure enters the frame and starts moving into the center of the screen, between my coworker and the (still blurry) bed.

Blurred figure then changed color from mostly blue in the center to skin tone all over. And then a completely bare butt appeared next to my coworker’s head. Coworker does not seem to notice, it stays there for enough time that I’m sure I’m looking at what I think I’m looking at, but not long enough for me to get out of my panic freeze. Butt disappears.

What I’m pretty sure happened was that the coworker’s partner came out of the shower in a blue towel, put full faith and trust in Zoom’s background blur capabilities, dropped the towel and bent over to get dressed, and that bending action put their derriere close enough to the coworker’s head that Zoom picked it up as no longer background.

12. The transcription

An awkward AI transcription showed up in a meeting where the presenter had the last name Buckman. When she introduced herself, the auto captions/transcription showed up at “Hi everyone, I’m Beverly. Fuuck, man, it’s nice to see you all today.”

13. The zoom call

Back in academia, we would have professors from other institutions come give talks to the department about their work. This occurred in the times when Covid was still in the news, but vaccines were out, so this event had attendees half in-person and half remote.

A visiting professor (Steve, VERY PROMINENT IN FIELD) was set up in a conference room in-person. Another professor (Bob, from my department) was logged in over zoom. Bob apparently had his mic on, but the actual zoom call muted, and had professors Mike also in his office. The following is largely paraphrased.

Bob: “Ugh, Steve is such a blowhard. You know he’s editor of Very Prominent Journal? He definitely has a vendetta against me and is keeping me from getting published.”

Host: “Hey Bob, can you mute yourself please?”

Bob: “God, I hate Steve, he’s just such an ass and his work’s not even that good. I bet he’s been faking data.”

Host: “BOB PLEASE MUTE YOURSELF”

Bob: “You know he published that paper on X? We were just starting to think about doing work on X, so the fact that he published on it means he totally stole my work…”

*Knocking noises*

Bob: “Ugh I bet that’s one of my students, I swear they’re so needy, they couldn’t wipe their own asses without my help. They can wait. Anyway, where was I … Oh yeah, I hate Bob, blah blah blah”

*Knocking noises get louder and more frantic*

Bob: “Ugh fine…”

*Shuffling noises. Frantic whispering*
*Bob abruptly leaves the call*

If Bob was complaining about Steve hating him and blocking him from publishing before … this sure didn’t help!

14. The headline

As a student in the 80s, I worked as a reporter for my small town newspaper. I was assigned a story about the Elderobic Moonwalk, a week-long fitness activity where seniors took daily walks and combined their results in an attempt to cover the distance between the earth and the moon. I decided to add what I thought was a hilarious joke about seniors in the headline to make my editor laugh. I was terrible at writing headlines, and I expected her to replace it as she did with all my other stories. Reader, she did not. She was swamped that week, she trusted my work, and she sent it to printer without reading it.

When I arrived the next morning, the receptionist glared at me and held up the paper so I see my headline: “Raisins walk to the moon.”

I was and I still am mortified. I didn’t lose my job (thank you Canadian federal government for student employment grants), but I believe my small town’s Golden Age club passed a formal motion that I am never allowed to join.

15. The wrong response

An interviewer told me about the hybrid setup: in-office Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday; remote Monday and Friday. And I said, “Four-day weekend. Great.”

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