Before the pandemic, most of us didn’t even know what Zoom was or ever participate in meetings online. But in the last year and a half, people have been forced to transfer their work or learning to virtual spaces.
After some time, we got used to it, because it’s nice when you don’t have to get ready in the morning; you can sleep in a little and work or study from the comfort of your bed. However, there is one danger in getting very comfortable with working from your computer. It’s the mute button.
Sometimes people think they’ve muted themselves, but they didn't. Other times, people really did mute themselves, but the programs would unmute them somehow. The mute button has caused some quite embarrassing and hilarious situations to occur, as you can imagine.
So if you want to hear some of those stories, you’re in luck as there is a quite popular thread on Reddit created by AsteroidPizza39 where he asked “Students/Teachers of Reddit, what’s the best ‘forgot to turn off the mic’ story during virtual learning?” and people flooded it with very entertaining tales.
More info: Reddit
#21
Wouldnt say it’s the best, but definitely mildly embarrassing for me.
Early morning lecture, much earlier than I’d been used to getting up during the lockdown experience. Ended up slouched over on the couch listening with my eyes closed.
Suddenly get a message from one of my good friends also in the class saying I might want to mute my mic as I’d sort of half-fallen asleep and my heavy breathing/light snoring was coming through the microphone a little too loud.
I was absolutely mortified, can’t imagine it was exactly pleasing to the ears for anyone in the class at the time.
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121points
#22
I'm a student, and my teacher was talking to his wife at first. Pretty normal right? Well, she leaves then he gets on the phone and says, "Yeah honey, my wife just left, wanna come over?" The entire class went bats**t bro.
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116points
#23
A student's mother had the habit of standing just off camera and very closely observing her kid. I know this because one time the student "forgot" to disable the mic. Everyone heard how the mother was coaching the student how to act. Don't look my way, smile, pay attention. It was next-level helicoptering, right on the edge of abuse in my opinion.
Our school has a good counselor and the student is getting help. All the teachers have been advised to limit contact with the mother and not make waves, lest she withdraw the student or redouble her controlling behavior. I worry about it.
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114points
#24
I had a student's boyfriend (both college) walk up behind her on Zoom; reach into her shirt; pull out her breasts; and start doing a little boob dance. She was just laughing and playfully slapping his hands away.
This was probably 30 seconds after I had just gone through my whole speech of making sure there was nothing in your browser history, Google search history, or names of folders that could be embarrassing or offensive.
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108points
#25
One of my professors classes had a student say something like "I just joined 5 minutes before class and this a**hole is already teaching."
The professor just laughed and told him his mic was on.
102points
#26
I’m a college student. Last semester we had a girl place an entire dinner order over the phone with her mic on while we all tried to tell her that her mic was on. I think she had us muted. She was ordering Mediterranean food. I think she got a chicken gyro.
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97points
#27
I’m not a student, but work in the tech industry. I’ve been in meetings where people forget to mute themselves on LARGE company calls, with hundreds or thousands of attendees, and we’ll hear a fart and then a toilet flush. That’s about as interesting as these meetings get though
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96points
#28
While giving a lecture on the 'heated' arguments among different schools of psychology, our prof screamed "Fire fire, there is fire" and most of the confused students included the teacher's pets replied "I agree. those were some lit points." Things turned out funnier and scarier when the prof went on with the screaming and we could hear her calling her house help and brother alarming them of a fire sparking up her switch board. So yeah, a confused, concerned class of 50 sat through the entire episode of turning out the fire while our prof revealed every dynamic of their family through her freaked out screams. and 30 min later she comes back to her lappy to unmute herself only to find a hundred "are you okay?" texts in the chat box.
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94points
#29
Work situation. I asked a question on zoom from someone and he didn’t answer (no video on), I asked again to confirm he was there, silence. “Hello?” he then panics and says “sorry I’m peeing”
Did I need to know that? I didn’t.
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90points
#30
A girl’s mom: “Who the f**k you on the computer fo this early in the morning?” And asking the same thing over and over
Teacher: “_ I think your mic is on”
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86points
#31
Dude my one teacher forgot to turn off his camera and his son was changing in the background and the son kept on looking at the camera
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84points
#32
Was in training before classes started this year. 200ish teachers. Only principal and AP were speaking. Teacher has her mic unmuted, phone rings, picks it up and says, "hey. Yeah. Just sitting here in another one of these goddam trainings."
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84points
#33
My son calls his tablet his “fix” because when I first got it and the battery would die, I’d tell him I was going to fix it. So imagine his pre-k teachers surprise last spring when he asked me if he could have his fix now that he was done with school. Lol I cracked up, held up the fix in question, and explained what he meant.
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83points
#34
In one of my classes, this girl wrote in the Zoom chat “this is so f*****g boring” not realizing that the professor could see it
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80points
#35
This was a conference call for work but it was a big call with like 12 people and I’m new-ish so I was really just listening as the senior analysts were discussing something. Call was going on for a while so I took my laptop Into the bathroom with me to take a s**t, flushed the toilet, and everyone just stopped talking. Turns out I didn’t mute my mic and everyone just heard a toilet flushing in the middle of a meeting. Luckily no one cared and they all laughed about it but I was mortified.
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79points
#36
Last week kid in my brothers class forgot his camera was on during the first class and was smoking a giant gas mask bong on his face during the syllabus review
75points
#37
Not really anything super weird - was in a meeting with my class for the first day of school, and I had forgotten to mute myself. I then proceeded to start noisily baby-talking my cat, who was in my lap at the time. Embarassing.
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73points
#38
Not a mic but an elementary student left their camera for a moment and the mother walked by naked. Guessing she asked him to leave the room so she could change or something not realizing the camera was left on.
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68points
#39
it isn't too bad, but during the graduating ceremony for a class, all staff were asked to attend and turn on their mic to clap at certain points so it wouldn't be awkward. One such staff member forgot to turn their mic back off and was heard loudly jokingly insulting her husband and asking for another drink whilst complaining about how long and boring this was. This was broadcast to a whole class, their parents, and anyone else listening. We stuck together and didn't tell anyone who it was, but we all knew.
MUTE. YOUR. MICS!!!
68points
#40
During a virtual gym class for my high school. A girl forgot to mute herself during a workout and yelled some obscene things very loudly
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67points
