Posted by Ask a Manager
https://www.askamanager.org/2025/08/the-costume-the-zoom-reveal-and-other-stories-to-cringe-over.html
https://www.askamanager.org/?p=32227
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 — 15 more mortifying stories people have shared here over the years.
1. The costume
For my very first job out of college, I worked on an Air Force base. A few months into my time there, Halloween rolls around, and we get no fewer than five separate emails assuring us that it’s TOTALLY COOL to wear a costume to work (as long as you aren’t in an external meeting). It will be fun! Lots of people do it every year! Now with more experience, I would definitely ask around first and get a feel for the vibe before doing this, but at the time I was a shiny new employee eager to appear willing.
I pondered for several days on what would be a work-appropriate costume – something that would show that I had a sense of humor without being ridiculous, something a MATURE ADULT would wear. All of my in-office coworkers at that time were significantly older than me, largely ex-military folks, and I wanted to send the right impression sooooooo bad. At last, I settled upon … a TELEWORKER! (This was 2020 but they were still making most civilians come in at least part of the time and the active duty folks had never been authorized to work remotely, even if they were just doing computer work.)
So, from the waist up I wore my nicest blouse under a suit jacket, did my hair and makeup, the works. For my lower half, I wore my fluffiest, silliest pajamas with little bitty foxes printed on them, and big fluffy slippers shaped like bears. I confidently rolled up to work, excited to share my joke with all my cooler, older coworkers. My confidence faltered a little as I realized the costume invitation had apparently not been extended to most active duty personnel, so I was a goofy looking speck in a sea of uniformed officers, but remembered that my floor was almost half civilian so I would surely blend.
You know where this is going. Literally no one else wore a costume. In fact, I saw exactly ONE other costume on base the entire day. Worse, apparently my coworkers had all forgotten it was Halloween – so not only were they not wearing costumes, they also didn’t realize I was wearing a costume, and assumed that the shiny new employee had chosen to wear pajama bottoms to work because she just liked them!
Throughout the day, multiple people, including but not limited to my boss, my boss’s boss, a colonel, and the recently retired chief master sergeant, who was my newest colleague, all pulled me gently aside to give me a few quick pointers about professional dress. I am, in general, very difficult to embarrass, but the idea that absolutely everyone I worked with thought I was so naive I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to wear pajama pants to the office made me want to just melt right into the floor.
Also, at the time I had a medical condition that prevented me from driving, and was entirely dependent on the bus system which only came by the building twice a day, so I couldn’t even go home to change. One of many reasons to keep a spare outfit at work! Can’t recommend it enough.
2. The mansplainer
A fellow researcher and I were interviewing a source over Zoom for our research. Near the end of the interview, the source volunteered, without our asking for it, some information about how to conduct research, how to publish it, how to analyze data, that kind of thing. So we ended the interview, and then said to each other something like “OMG did he just man-splain OUR OWN RESEARCH to us?” After a couple more words like “Yes! Ugh, Men!” and “So annoying!” we realized that we had said the words to end the interview (Thank you, bye now!), but we had not actually ended the Zoom session. He was still there, listening to us criticize him.
To his credit, he emailed us shortly thereafter and apologized for mansplaining.
3. The nap room
I was in my first year of teaching and was being shown around by the custodian during the week of in-service before school started. He and I immediately got along and could recognize the smartass in each other. He was sure to show me that I had a TV that got full cable and that The Price is Right was coming on soon. In response, I had intended to say, “Hey, I’m gonna be in here taking a nap. Whatever you do, do not come in here” as a sort of way to say, “Yeah, I’m gonna hunker down and watch TV while I should be working.”
Readers, instead, I told this 60-year-old man I had just met, “Hey I’m going to go to sleep. Do what you gotta do, but don’t come inside me.”
4. The underwear
Years ago, one of my first real jobs was working the overnight shift at a dog daycare/boarding facility. It was an easy, straightforward gig: give the dogs dinner, do some laundry, prep breakfast, then hang out or sleep until the morning shift came in at 6 am.
I had several mortifying experiences there, including my first shift – I slept through my alarm, so the day manager came in to find me fast asleep on a dog mattress in my oh-so-professional Muppet Babies pajama pants.
But the one that still makes me cringe is the time I got my period early and bled all over one of the aforementioned dog mattresses. Luckily, I had a change of clothes, and the mattress was designed to be easy to clean. It only took 10 minutes to get cleaned up, and since I was doing laundry anyway, I decided to just throw my underwear in with the rest of the wash. And then, of course, I completely forgot about it.
I returned a few days later to find the underwear neatly folded in a paper bag, which someone had kindly pinned to the bulletin board in the break room with a note that said, “Is this your underwear?”
5. The layoff
I didn’t realize I had been fired and showed up for work the next day!
Right out of college, I worked part-time for a young startup founded and run by a bunch of college kids and interns. It was pretty normal for the volume of work to fluctuate, so when my supervisor pulled me aside and told me there wasn’t enough work, my services weren’t needed, and I could head home, etc. I thanked her and enjoyed an extra few hours of free time that evening.
The next morning, I showed up and got right back to work. My supervisor looked so confused and said, “What are you doing here?” After I explained that I was completing my assigned tasks, she left the building to make a call, only to come back and explain to me that the company didn’t need my services moving forward. Slow on the uptake, I thanked her and told her I would finish what I was working on before I headed home. It slowly dawned on me that she was trying to lay me off – she was just being so kind and gentle that I didn’t get it! Once I put two and two together, I picked up my purse and walked out – stunned in silence for the next few hours. (Note from me: this was not your fault! They were in the ones who messed this up!)
6. The mangled sentence
In my first job out of college, I worked for a Fortune 500 company in a major city. I was one of ~115 people in an open office that was a sales environment and I was an admin. I had walked over to my supervisor’s cube to chat about something and during the course of the conversation, as we were both standing there chatting about work, I said, “He’s going to chew me out” in reference to a colleague.
What actually came out was, “He’s going to eat me out.”
We both pretended as if nothing had happened, but I still think about it to this day and it has been more than 25 years.
7. The haircut
I was working retail, it was a small independent business, and there were only two of us working. It was close to the end of day and it had been DEAD. It was a beautiful summer afternoon and people had clearly chosen to enjoy the outside.
My coworker, Suzie, had an event after work and was disappointed that she had not been able to schedule her hair appointment beforehand, because she felt like her style had grown out too much. So, her great idea was to talk me into giving her a haircut:
Suzie: You should just do it! You’ll do a fantastic job, you’re an artist!
Me: No! That’s a terrible idea, our scissors suck.
Suzie: I just want an inch off the bottom, three cuts and you’ll be done. I know you can do it, I’m confident.
Me: Okay, why not.
I really was just that bored that it only took one more sentence from her to convince me, like, that conversation has not been edited down. I got out our terrible scissors that are used to cut open all kinds of boxes and have residual goo from packing tape on them and proceed to start giving her a “trim.” I quickly saw how just how bad on an idea this was; after one cut her hair looked like an absolute disaster, and unbeknownst to me my brain had flipped the numbers in her request. It has translated “one inch in three cuts” to “three inches in one cut.” I cut off way too much hair. It was only around shoulder length to begin with.
Me: This isn’t going well, are you sure you can’t make a last-minute appointment?
Suzie: *feels back of head* OH MY GOD! How much are you taking off?
Me: Three inches, that’s what you wanted, right?
Suzie: I said one inch in three cuts! Well, just keep going. It’s too late now.
I kept going. At this point, it finally dawned on us just how insane this all was. We both got kinda giggly in that hysterical way. Both of our faces went red, we both could not believe how much I had butchered her hair and realized that our boss would kill us if they found out (this level of goofing off would not go over well). So now we’re putting all her hair in a bag to get it out of there and she says she’s going to try showing up at her hairdresser in person and begging. I say of course: just go right now, I’ll close up and if anyone asks, I’ll say you were here till close.
This is when the last customer of the day comes in. Suzie take off out the back. I try very hard to be normal to this poor person, I’m pretty sure it didn’t work. She clearly picked up on the weird vibe and did not stay long.
I close up. Still reeling. I go to the closest liquor store and buy a bottle of gin and bring it to Suzie’s house (it’s a small town). Her husband opens the door and I ask him to give it to her. My face must still look crazy because her asks me if she’s okay. He looks extremely concerned and shocked. I tell him, “Yeah, yeah she’s okay. She’s fine. She’s not hurt or anything.” I leave, I am so ashamed.
Twist ending: her hairdresser takes pity on her and gives her an amazing haircut! She really looked fantastic.
8. The Zoom reveal
I was on a Zoom call that I had to leave halfway through in order to pick my kids up from daycare. My company is a “cameras on” place, so I had my camera on for the call, and then turned it off so I could change out of my sweats and into shorts before I picked up my kids…
Or least I thought I turned off my camera, but dear reader, I did not. And thus about 10 folks got a view of my butt and underwear while I changed, and then dropped off the call. And I was blissfully unaware, until I returned home and saw I had a missed Slack message from someone on the call. We did a quick huddle where she gently informed me about my inadvertent strip show. It’s been about three years now and I’m still embarrassed just telling this story…
9. The image
Part of my job involves receiving and forwarding mail throughout my company. I don’t need to look at the mail in any sort of depth, just enough to know who it goes it.
This one particular envelope had the recipient’s name clearly written on the front, so I just stuck the contents in the scanner without looking, grabbed it when it was done, and then looked up at my computer where there displayed on the scanning app was a full-screen, very zoomed-in butthole.
I closed out the window in startled panic and then immediately went back to the envelope to actually read the accompanying letter to see what on earth??? Was it hate mail? A prank?? Nope. It was in fact a business-related butthole and I had to forward it on to the proper person with a big huge warning of basically SENSITIVE MATERIAL, BUTTHOLE INSIDE
I spent the rest of the day nervously hoping no one had been behind me when I scanned it.
10. The misspelling
I texted the dean of my department that I was taking a sick day. But the letter S and the letter D are very close on the keyboard.
Luckily he was also a friend out of the office, so he found the exchange rather amusing.
11. The misprinted placemats
One Thanksgiving, my entire family spent the day helping my sister and her boyfriend manually correct printed plastic placemats containing a typo. It was a child’s placemat with brightly colored sea creatures on it, and had been printed overseas. One of the sea creatures was labeled as “RED CRAP.” Needed to turn all the Ps into Bs. Fun times.
12. The static shock
I gave a coworker a static shock into her nose ring: We had an awful static problem on one side of the office and I was mostly good about discharging myself when I stood up, apart from this day, when I wandered over to her to talk, mentioned she had something on her cheek, and went to wipe of off (we were the kind of office where that was okay), and then I saw the actual spark jump to her nose ring. She jumped a good foot back from me.
13. The centrifuge rotor
When I was a grad student, I was wheeling a heavy centrifuge rotor out of a cold room when it fell off the cart and clattered like a manhole cover so the entire building heard it. It triggered a brief assembly/party where everyone told me about their lab mishaps such as injecting themselves with an antibiotic resistant bacterium or doing a three day purification and then throwing way the sample at the end.
14. The meowed conversation
I recently started a new job, and the organization hosted an all-hands Zoom meeting to discuss continued funding for our work in the face of a hostile political landscape. I also have a cat who likes to meow at me from the other room when she wants attention. My habit is to “talk” to her, imitating her meows. So of course, I somehow unmuted myself and carried on a full “conversation” with my cat. I wasn’t paying attention to the chat, so I missed the warning messages that people could hear me. It wasn’t until the facilitator stopped what he was saying to ask me to mute that I realized everyone could hear me carrying on in fluent cat.
15. The coding
I was in the final stages of a job I really wanted and they asked for a technical interview, needing to solve coding problems live on a virtual platform. Between knowing I was being watched and judged, the new program, and general anxiety about coding, I panicked. I misunderstood the first question, tried to overcomplicate it, completely blanked on how to write code in a language I’ve used almost daily for 10 years, and in a grand finale, gave up for a few minutes and put my head in my hands trying to calm down, forgetting that I was still live on Zoom and the interviewers could see me.
I will be reliving this for a long time but life goes on and I have a better idea of how to prepare for any future interviews like this.
The post the costume mishap, the Zoom reveal, and other stories to cringe over appeared first on Ask a Manager.
https://www.askamanager.org/2025/08/the-costume-the-zoom-reveal-and-other-stories-to-cringe-over.html
https://www.askamanager.org/?p=32227
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