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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 snar

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.

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.