the job fair, the edited performance review, and other stories to cringe over

It’s Mortification Week at Ask a Manager and all week long we’ve been revisiting ways we’ve mortified ourselves at work. Here are 14 more mortifying stories people have shared here over the years.

1. The list

Instead of emailing my boss a data file letting him know a “donor list” was attached, I wrote: “Attached is the fuck list you requested.”

In my defense, I got his request for the data past the end of my work day when I already had my coat and bag on ready to leave. I think it was my subconscious frustration shining through. Thankfully, no one else was copied and he was very chill about it.

2. The message

Was working on something with a strict page limit and tight deadline, and crunch time had involved a lot of late nights and a flurry of Teams messages. At one point my boss asked, “Are we okay on length?” and I mashed up “we’re golden” and “stay golden, pony boy” and sent, “We’re golden, pony boy.” About 30 seconds later I realized I’d just called my boss “pony boy” and it was time to head to bed.

3. The vault

I worked for a company that manufactured metal buildings, roofing etc. A customer came in to talk about getting materials to build a building for a bank. In describing the architecture, he said there would a vault in the ceiling. My dumb self immediately thought he meant like a bank vault, not the architectural vault of a roof and said, “How are people going to get up there to get the money and stuff?”

As soon as I said it, I realized what he meant. He looked at me like you assume he would and I couldn’t for the life of me say anything else to let him know I was not that big a moron.

4. The fart

During my first month I was talking to my coworker and felt a fart coming. Knowing it couldn’t be prevented and thinking, surely, this would be quiet and small, I steeled myself and, to my horror, let out a long monotonous fart during a lull in the conversation. It did not change in pitch or tone and it went on for far longer than a usual fart. I tried to pretend it didn’t happen, but my coworker said, “I’m sorry, did you just fart?” To which I said, “I did.” And then, thankfully, she started laughing.

5. The job fair

I went to a job fair during my senior year of my horticulture degree; you had to sign up for slots with companies you were interested in. For some reason I signed up for one with an arborist company. Their first question was, “Do you like heights?” I cheerfully answered, “Absolutely not!” And the interview ended there.

6. The beavers

At a retail job a long time ago, I was scheduled alone with the manager on an incredibly quiet day. No customers and no deliveries, so we were slacking off looking at animal pictures on his phone. I noticed something about the aquatic rodents.

“Do you think it’s weird that in every single beaver picture it’s swimming or looks like it just got out of the water? Look, this one’s asleep but it’s still dripping all over the floor. Seriously, what’s with all the wet beavers? I’ve never seen a dry beaver in my life.”

It took me about a second to process what I’d just said, which was enough time for him to physically turn around and give me a look. He didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. He changed the subject to sports.

7. The editing

Back in the 90s, at age 25, I landed my first salaried office job. After three months, I had my first-ever performance review. My supervisor took me into an office and presented the document for me to read while she watched me. It was riddled with typos and misspellings, so I … noted and corrected them. We wrapped up the meeting, we left the office, and she dropped her pleasant facade and ripped into me for having been so very inappropriate. (Frankly, I think she was more unprofessional than I was, at that point; I didn’t have the experience to know better.)

8. The v-card

I was attending an event with a socially awkward colleague who was really looking to network. He was working hard to network with a young woman in a related industry, asked her for her v-card, then realized he had just asked for her v-card (electronic business card) and tried to walk it back while I looked on in equal parts amusement and horror and did not save him.

9. The girlfriend

I did a grad school program with a large team component, many of the team meetings were handled via video calls.

One guy (John) had mentioned “his girlfriend Katie” several times to the team, so when we were on a call one day and saw a woman briefly walk by in the background one of the teammates jokingly said “Hi, Katie” loud enough that she could hear.

She whipped around, stared at John with daggers in her eyes, and asked him, “Who the hell is Katie?” before he logged off the call in a panic.

10. The craving

I told my coworkers I was craving “5 Guys” and they didn’t realize I was referring to a burger joint.

11. The frosting

This was at a somewhat contentious virtual meeting of a community organization. Most members of the organization were mad at me: their reasons for anger were very understandable, but unfortunately I could not actually do anything to change the infuriating circumstances. I knew this meeting was going to be unpleasant, so I saved myself a mostly-empty container of frosting to eat during the meeting. I used a small spatula to really get everything out of the container. I may have used my fingers at some point. I did not actually have my camera off.

The upsetting circumstances resolved themselves a few months later, I have cordial but distant relationships with the organization’s other members, and nobody ever mentioned any aspect of that call again.

12. The group call

Many years ago I had a boss that literally no one liked. She was petty, rude, inflexible, and pretty much any other annoying trait you can think of. In a company re-org, three large offices had been folded into one so we worked at many different locations and didn’t really know each other.

One day we had a staff meeting that included about 15 of us in a conference room and everyone else, including the boss, dialed in from their locations. In the middle of our boss going on about some thing or another that we all needed to improve, someone joined late, pressed a phone key instead of saying his name, and didn’t mute. He was either talking to someone at his location or on another call at the same time.

We all got to hear him say out loud on the line something like, “Yeah, it’s another meeting with the old bag. Every meeting is literally useless.” He went on and on as the boss’s deputy, who was in the conference room with us, kept saying loudly, “You are not muted! Whoever is talking, your mic is live! Mute your mic! It’s a live mic! Mute your mic!”

As the insults continued to roll in via the clueless guy who must have not even had the phone up to his ear, both the boss and deputy boss just stopped talking as we listened to him complain about “all she ever does is yap yap yap, she doesn’t even understand our jobs.” Finally it stopped, and the boss said, “Did you want to go on? You have strong opinions about me, it seems.” Then a click and the computer phone lady said ‘*BEEP* has just left the call.’

We all sat in stunned silence. The man sitting next to me had been silently laughing for several minutes, his entire body shaking. I could feel the shaking next to me and when I looked at him when it was finally over I saw the tears running down his face. After a few moments my boss said, “Moving on” and continued like nothing had happened.

13. The song“I work at a children’s hospital and was singing to get a child’s attention. His parents requested a specific song I was surprised by, but who am I to judge?

“Welcome to the jungle, we’ve got fun and games…”

They died laughing, they wanted ‘WALKING in the Jungle,’ not Axl Rose.