I had a video conference this morning at 5:30 am. While I tend to be a morning person, I’m not a 5:30 am kind of a morning person. This particular video conference is just a monthly meeting of my family–my siblings, parents and any random children that happen to be around, so it’s not necessary that I wear a suit. And, in fact, I usually don’t turn on my camera, and simply sit in my bed. (I live in Europe, the rest of my family lives in Utah and California, so the time zone problem is real. It’s Sunday evening for them and very early Monday morning for me.)
Today’s conference had a bit of a snafu. My hard drive died on my warrantied computer. So, I took it in to the store and they said they could, indeed, fix it, but it would take 4-6 weeks! I was like, dude, do you have to go mine the metal yourselves? But, they held firm. Because they valued their lives they gave me a loaner computer. Now, on my computer, the camera doesn’t turn for a Google Hangouts conference unless I turn it on. Turns out this computer turned it on automatically. Which meant all of my siblings, their spouses, and my parents got a good view of me, inappropriately dressed for video conferences, in my bed.
They are family so it was funny. And then my cousin, who was visiting my sister (but not in the room when I inadvertently had my camera on), shared a story about how he once thought he had his camera off when he was doing a video conference and started changing his clothes, only to be yelled at by a conference participant before he entered dress code violation territory, not to mention a sexual harassment nightmare.
So, what has happened to you (or have you seen?) in your days of video conferencing? Share your stories in the comments, or send me an email at evilhrlady@gmail.com and I’ll use these stories for a new article.
Hope your Monday is off to a better start than mine! Happy President’s Day!
Working from home once in a while, typical dog comes and sticks her nose in the way (85 lb Bernese Mountain dog, so hard to miss). The “best” was my wife was home, heard her in the shower, shower stops, next thing I see is her walking around the corner in a towel. Good thing I knew where the button was to turn the camera off.
Good thing you turned the camera off or your wife would never forgive you!
As the TV commercials say the look on her face was priceless when she saw everyone else on the screen. I did eventually tell her the camera was off on our side.
I was on Skype with someone in the UK, interviewing for my next project. The Missus had come in quietly, realized I was on camera and tried to crawl out on her hands and knees. The other party called out to her, and the three of us had a nice chat for a few minutes, before we got back to business.
I got the gig.
I posted this before, but it probably got stuck in a spam filter because of a link: there’s a glitch in some Dell computers that turns your avatar into a sad kitten on Skype. Several people have found themselves transformed during their interviews.
I was having my annual feedback review when one of the managers who was meant to be reviewing me fell asleep!