Mortification Week: the unexpected video call, the brain freeze, and other stories to cringe over (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 f*cking 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 co*ckatiel), 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.