After almost two years of working from home during the pandemic, most office workers have become pretty savvy when it comes to online video calls.
Now, we've all had our fair share of awkward moments in the past, but none are quite so awks as some of the cringey horror stories being unveiled in an online Reddit thread.
There's mortifying, and then there's these.
Starting the thread, one user wrote: "What's been your top cringiest, most embarrassing or NSFW thing that's happened to you or whilst on a Teams or Zoom call for work, this year?"
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And the post has had hundreds of replies, with many taking to Reddit to share some truly mortifying moments.
Unsurprisingly, many were toilet related, with one person commenting on the thread: "Not me, but was in a workshop and some random lady forgot her mic on and announced to over 50 people she 'needed a fu**ing sh*t so bad' and you could hear her frantically trying to get off her seat."
While another reminisced: "End of a lecture, lecturer lets out an almighty fart and an audible sign of relief before turning off the mic. parrrrrrrrrp Ahhhh."
Another simply added: "My Wife shouted up the stairs she was going for a poo."
Other Zoom blunders occurred due to workers forgetting - or not realising - they had turned their cameras on, which ended up resulting in some very NSFW scenes.
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"My manager was working from home in early lockdown when it was very nice and warm," recalled one.
"She has her background blurred so you can't see anything but herself. That's until her husband walked into the room - Zoom must have thought his belly was another face because suddenly we had this portly beer belly drift across the screen behind her. It was a beautiful moment."
Another added: "I was on call with a direct report of a direct report (just us.) Mid call, his wife walks directly behind him on camera, completely naked, with a towel on her head, looked as if she’d just gotten out of the shower. I’m not sure if it made it better or worse but he turned bright pink and we both carried on as if nothing had happened."
A third wrote: "Last summer, 10 of us were in a Teams meeting with the CEO - he was delivering an important message to the whole company, small groups at a time to make it less formal.
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"One woman is sat in her conservatory and her husband walks by outside. Then back again. Then back once more, this time with the lawnmower. Then starts mowing the lawn.
"Nothing embarrassing about that. He was only wearing a pair of white y-fronts."
Others had plenty of pet and baby related video dramas, with one person's dog actually throwing up all over them while they were on a call.
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"My dog came back from his dog walk (into a meeting I was hosting) and proceeded to vomit what was presumably fox sh*t on camera off the bed he was on onto the floor over my right shoulder.
"Fairly gross anyway but the vom smelt so bad (as it was fox sh*t and dog stomach contents!!) I started gagging and nearly vomited and had to end the meeting 30mins early as I couldn’t stand the stench without gagging!"
Another added: "My sister just had a baby and I was holding it while in the weekly Teams catch up. There were about 40 people there. They were like, you have a baby! So as a joke I said 'yeah, can you believe I just found this baby in someone's house.'
"At that exact moment my boss appeared and took over the meeting before I could explain that I was joking and I didn't just kidnap some baby."
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If these weren't mortifying enough, one person had an unbearably embarrassing moment at the end of a work call.
"Zoned out on a zoom call, realised we were wrapping up and all signing off… My brain decided to go with 'Bye, love you'.
"Could see every one watching as i desperately tried to find the end call button. Edit - for context, am 48m, big beard, i build IT systems architecture."
We could read about these all day! You can find more on the thread here.
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