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Early in the pandemic, I was in a Zoom company meeting where the host (one of the stakeholders) was going through their deck of requirements. Most people on the

Early in the pandemic, I was in a Zoom company meeting where the host (one of the stakeholders) was going through their deck of requirements. Most people on the call had their video off but audio on. Somebody on the call would breathe heavily and grunt periodically, and it would cause the host to pause his presentation for a second until it stopped. After a few interruptions, the host finally said "Sorry folks, I'm getting some background noise, so I'm going to go ahead and mute everyone." and that was that. To this day I still have no idea who it was making the noise or what they were doing. I am still amazed at how he handled that with a straight face as I was out of my chair laughing my ass off.

iambateman 6y ago
I was on a 9am zoom call with 25 people. Some guy on a different team fell asleep and started to snore loudly. A check of the participants showed one unmuted mic, so I DMed his boss, the host, and said “heads up: it’s Peter”. Unfortunately, the presenter was sharing screen and hadn’t turned off notifications, so the whole room saw a pop up from me ratting out the guy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- castillar76 6y ago
  Ever since a co-worker was caught out messaging a snarky remark to his boss (who happened to be sharing his whole screen at the time, thus broadcasting the snark to the whole call), I've been absolutely paranoid about never messaging the presenter. The idea of having that happen is really terrifying, which helps keep me polite. :)
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Oh, I keep messaging the presenter things like "so what did the doctor say about your genital rash?" to mess with them.
    - castillar76 6y ago
      Back in the before-times when we had all-hands meetings, my boss had a running game where he would randomly call the cell-phones of people who were presenting or who were sitting in the audience, to see who'd forgotten to leave their phone on vibrate. Some people have very interesting ring-tones...
    - zapdrive 6y ago
      Sexual harassment lawsuit coming in 5.. 4.. 3... Just kidding, I hope you only mess with male presenters.
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        Wouldn't discriminating who I mess with based on gender be sexist?
        justwalt 6y ago
        You’ll have to send the same message to your female coworkers in the name of fairness.
      - Jeff_Brown 6y ago
        You could claim you meant to send it to someone else. It might lead them to doable those notifications.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    We have an informal game of trying to get fellow participants to crack a smile via slack. Extra points if they break to the point they have to turn off their video.
  - TameAntelope 6y ago
    I honestly don't know how I avoided doing this during my years of employment thus far.
  - sfblah 6y ago
    I once texted a presenter who was explaining something for the 12th time to a slow coworker, “I’m sorry you have to do this.” Thankfully it only showed my phone number and not my name, and it was ambiguous enough not to be totally obvious. But still....
  - enriquto 6y ago
    > the presenter. The idea of having that happen is really terrifying, which helps keep me polite. This is actually a very good and general principle of behaviour: "act as if anything you say to anybody is overheard by everybody else in the world". Maybe you won't ever become a sneaky manager if you follow this principle, but you will certainly sleep well at night.
    - viklove 6y ago
      That sounds like an extremely boring way to live
      - enriquto 6y ago
        Maybe for you, but I live by that principle and I'm having a lot of fun!
      - sethammons 6y ago
        Why would it be boring or even extremely boring?
  - Communitivity 6y ago
    Not a message, but a related story that has caused me to be paranoid about possible sources of embarrassment during presentations (turning off all notifications, closing all chat apps, email, closing all browser windows, etc.)... I was on a cybersecurity team. We were all guys and much younger at the time, so perhaps not the most mature. We also were pretty decent at what we did, so our egos were...let's go with our egos weren't in check. As a result we had a running competition of who was the best at defending their laptop from getting hacked by one of the others, and who was the best at hacking them. Notice of success was delivered by setting the desktop background and/or screensaver to one of the Absolut ad images with Fabio style men dressed in skimpy clothing. Have I covered the not very mature at the time? This also was around 2002, so social awareness of just how bad this behavior was, and how toxic it could have been if female colleagues saw it, was not on our radar at the time. Anyways, this all came to a halt one day. The team lead had been hacked a couple days before, and the person doing it went a little overboard and put the image [1] on the screensaver, the main desktop, and the external monitor desktop. The lead deleted the image from the screensaver and the main desktop, but didn't expect it on the external monitor desktop and didn't check. He discovered it when he connected his external monitor port to the big screen just before a presentation to a small room full of 2-stars and SESs, who were shocked at what they saw on the big screen. Our team got an earful (rightly so), and we were probably lucky we didn't get fired. That was the last of that competition, and he was getting razzed about it a little four years later when I left the company for greener pastures. [1] The image. Warning, it is a graphic male image. https://www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/detail/32171/1/Billboard-Advert/Absolut/2000s https://www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/detail/32171/1/Billboa...
    - tlavoie 6y ago
      Heh. In my relative youth, I was pranking a fellow co-op student on our work term fairly regularly. One of my faves was that he was on an HP Unix workstation in the shared computer room, and the X display defaulted to allowing all connections from other hosts. I'd set my DISPLAY environment variable to his desktop, then use xv to open whatever gross / unflattering / whatever pictures I'd found on the net that day.
- rootsudo 6y ago
  Well that isn't cool, Patrick. We need to discuss this over some Huey Lewis and talk about your stats.
- ghostbrainalpha 6y ago
  I only say this because I used to be that "teacher's pet" guy. But my career has had much more upward trajectory, and I have had more fun by being actively sympathetic to my colleges mistakes and trying to "cover" for people instead of telling on them. Of course I'd never cover for someone doing something illegal, but I stopped looking at work as a contest where I wanted to look the best, and decided to help everyone put their best presentation forward. The weirdest thing is after I began to get a reputation for this, I am in a WAY better position to get someone fired if I really need to.
Jaygles 6y ago
I have a similar story but the opposite end of things. I was listening in to a large meeting (>200 people) and the presenter decided to UN-mute everybody's microphones. I still can't believe I didn't hear any explicit or unprofessional things that day. That really was a dangerous move.
- TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
  Christ, what software lets you do that? It can be annoying that Teams lets you mute but not unmute people, but thank god it doesn't.
  - Jaygles 6y ago
    It was Zoom. Apparently once you allow a host to unmute you remotely, they are able to do so until you revoke the permission. I don't remember allowing that, although its possible I did and forgot about it.
    - r9 6y ago
      From my experience, if you are unmuted, and the host mutes you, they can unmute you again. If you mute yourself, the host is unable to unmute you.
      - Thorrez 6y ago
        Huh, once I believe someone muted me then tried to unmute me and I got a popup saying the host wants me to unmute. I'm pretty sure I didn't mute myself; I was in the middle of talking, and my hands weren't even on my mouse or keyboard. There was someone else making background noise, so I believe the host tried to mute that person, accidentally muted me, then tried to unmute me causing me to get the popup.
        r9 6y ago
        If you have muted yourself, the host has a button that says "ask to unmute".

iambateman 6y ago

I was on a 9am zoom call with 25 people. Some guy on a different team fell asleep and started to snore loudly. A check of the participants showed one unmuted mic, so I DMed his boss, the host, and said “heads up: it’s Peter”. Unfortunately, the presenter was sharing screen and hadn’t turned off notifications, so the whole room saw a pop up from me ratting out the guy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

castillar76 6y ago
Ever since a co-worker was caught out messaging a snarky remark to his boss (who happened to be sharing his whole screen at the time, thus broadcasting the snark to the whole call), I've been absolutely paranoid about never messaging the presenter. The idea of having that happen is really terrifying, which helps keep me polite. :)
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Oh, I keep messaging the presenter things like "so what did the doctor say about your genital rash?" to mess with them.
  - castillar76 6y ago
    Back in the before-times when we had all-hands meetings, my boss had a running game where he would randomly call the cell-phones of people who were presenting or who were sitting in the audience, to see who'd forgotten to leave their phone on vibrate. Some people have very interesting ring-tones...
  - zapdrive 6y ago
    Sexual harassment lawsuit coming in 5.. 4.. 3... Just kidding, I hope you only mess with male presenters.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Wouldn't discriminating who I mess with based on gender be sexist?
      - justwalt 6y ago
        You’ll have to send the same message to your female coworkers in the name of fairness.
    - Jeff_Brown 6y ago
      You could claim you meant to send it to someone else. It might lead them to doable those notifications.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  We have an informal game of trying to get fellow participants to crack a smile via slack. Extra points if they break to the point they have to turn off their video.
- TameAntelope 6y ago
  I honestly don't know how I avoided doing this during my years of employment thus far.
- sfblah 6y ago
  I once texted a presenter who was explaining something for the 12th time to a slow coworker, “I’m sorry you have to do this.” Thankfully it only showed my phone number and not my name, and it was ambiguous enough not to be totally obvious. But still....
- enriquto 6y ago
  > the presenter. The idea of having that happen is really terrifying, which helps keep me polite. This is actually a very good and general principle of behaviour: "act as if anything you say to anybody is overheard by everybody else in the world". Maybe you won't ever become a sneaky manager if you follow this principle, but you will certainly sleep well at night.
  - viklove 6y ago
    That sounds like an extremely boring way to live
    - enriquto 6y ago
      Maybe for you, but I live by that principle and I'm having a lot of fun!
    - sethammons 6y ago
      Why would it be boring or even extremely boring?
- Communitivity 6y ago
  Not a message, but a related story that has caused me to be paranoid about possible sources of embarrassment during presentations (turning off all notifications, closing all chat apps, email, closing all browser windows, etc.)... I was on a cybersecurity team. We were all guys and much younger at the time, so perhaps not the most mature. We also were pretty decent at what we did, so our egos were...let's go with our egos weren't in check. As a result we had a running competition of who was the best at defending their laptop from getting hacked by one of the others, and who was the best at hacking them. Notice of success was delivered by setting the desktop background and/or screensaver to one of the Absolut ad images with Fabio style men dressed in skimpy clothing. Have I covered the not very mature at the time? This also was around 2002, so social awareness of just how bad this behavior was, and how toxic it could have been if female colleagues saw it, was not on our radar at the time. Anyways, this all came to a halt one day. The team lead had been hacked a couple days before, and the person doing it went a little overboard and put the image [1] on the screensaver, the main desktop, and the external monitor desktop. The lead deleted the image from the screensaver and the main desktop, but didn't expect it on the external monitor desktop and didn't check. He discovered it when he connected his external monitor port to the big screen just before a presentation to a small room full of 2-stars and SESs, who were shocked at what they saw on the big screen. Our team got an earful (rightly so), and we were probably lucky we didn't get fired. That was the last of that competition, and he was getting razzed about it a little four years later when I left the company for greener pastures. [1] The image. Warning, it is a graphic male image. https://www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/detail/32171/1/Billboard-Advert/Absolut/2000s https://www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/detail/32171/1/Billboa...
  - tlavoie 6y ago
    Heh. In my relative youth, I was pranking a fellow co-op student on our work term fairly regularly. One of my faves was that he was on an HP Unix workstation in the shared computer room, and the X display defaulted to allowing all connections from other hosts. I'd set my DISPLAY environment variable to his desktop, then use xv to open whatever gross / unflattering / whatever pictures I'd found on the net that day.
rootsudo 6y ago
Well that isn't cool, Patrick. We need to discuss this over some Huey Lewis and talk about your stats.
ghostbrainalpha 6y ago
I only say this because I used to be that "teacher's pet" guy. But my career has had much more upward trajectory, and I have had more fun by being actively sympathetic to my colleges mistakes and trying to "cover" for people instead of telling on them. Of course I'd never cover for someone doing something illegal, but I stopped looking at work as a contest where I wanted to look the best, and decided to help everyone put their best presentation forward. The weirdest thing is after I began to get a reputation for this, I am in a WAY better position to get someone fired if I really need to.

Jaygles 6y ago

I have a similar story but the opposite end of things. I was listening in to a large meeting (>200 people) and the presenter decided to UN-mute everybody's microphones. I still can't believe I didn't hear any explicit or unprofessional things that day. That really was a dangerous move.

TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
Christ, what software lets you do that? It can be annoying that Teams lets you mute but not unmute people, but thank god it doesn't.
- Jaygles 6y ago
  It was Zoom. Apparently once you allow a host to unmute you remotely, they are able to do so until you revoke the permission. I don't remember allowing that, although its possible I did and forgot about it.
  - r9 6y ago
    From my experience, if you are unmuted, and the host mutes you, they can unmute you again. If you mute yourself, the host is unable to unmute you.
    - Thorrez 6y ago
      Huh, once I believe someone muted me then tried to unmute me and I got a popup saying the host wants me to unmute. I'm pretty sure I didn't mute myself; I was in the middle of talking, and my hands weren't even on my mouse or keyboard. There was someone else making background noise, so I believe the host tried to mute that person, accidentally muted me, then tried to unmute me causing me to get the popup.
      - r9 6y ago
        If you have muted yourself, the host has a button that says "ask to unmute".