Tech Mishaps
Embarrassing Fails in the Digital Age
I Phubbed My Partner at the Worst Possible Moment
My partner had been out of town for work and I'd been missing him like crazy all week. When he got back, I threw myself into his arms the minute he walked through the door. Things progressed quickly. And then, right in the middle of our reunion, I felt my wrist buzz. Without even thinking about it, I looked at my Apple Watch to see the message. He was like, “Seriously!?” We had a good laugh about it after, but I still didn't say a word when I noticed him send a tweet while we were out for dinner that night. -Hooked on Tech, I Mean You
I Got Flagged for Inappropriate Content at Work I was working for a Fortune 500 company and someone from high school sent me a magazine cover shot of one of our classmates lying naked on a bed of roses. To open it, I had to save it to my desktop. I got a chuckle out of it and promptly forgot all about it. Months later, our tech team upgraded all our computers. When I got back to my desk, there was a highlighted copy of the acceptable use policy on my chair. The section highlighted was about inappropriate content and there was a handwritten comment saying that they had to delete an inappropriate file from my computer. At first, I was so confused about what they could possibly mean, and then with horror I remembered the magazine cover. It was pretty hard to look the head of IT in the eye for like a month. -Joke’s on Me
I Botched My Uber Application
A couple of years ago I decided to apply for a job at Uber to pick up some extra cash. When I was filling out the application, I had to scroll through a year's worth of pictures on my phone to find my ID picture. I was scrolling so long I forgot what I was actually looking for, so naturally when I came across a random pic on my phone of two young children pointing guns at the camera, I thought it was hilarious and tapped on it. It immediately started uploading to the Uber site. There was nothing I could do, it was on its way to the recruiter. I never heard from the recruiter again after that. -Where’s Uber’s Sense of Humor?
I Emailed Work About My Vacation… A Million Times
In anticipation of an upcoming trip, I decided to set up an outof-office reply. I still don't know what I did, but every single email already in my inbox received the vacation message. Even emails from four years ago that I'd never deleted! And because I'm automatically CC'd on some emails to our more general inboxes, like sales and customer support, those ones turned into an infinite auto-reply loop that filled up the email inbox of everyone who receives those emails, including our CEO! I only found out about it because he messaged me on Slack to say my vacation reply was “very aggressive.” - Did You Hear? I’m on Vacation
Caught Stalking my Boyfriend Online
I don't have a Twitter account, but I still enjoy scrolling through my boyfriend's Twitter page once in a while, since it's the only social media platform he uses regularly. (He knows I do this.) I usually google his name followed by the word Twitter, but one day I forgot and straight-up googled him, something I haven't done since before agreeing to meet him for our first date. I confess that I read a couple of his old blog posts and professional profiles. One of the top results was his CV. I couldn't resist snooping and clicked on the link. Well, it turns out the page hosting his CV sends an alert with the location of the searcher any time someone looks at his information. We live in different towns and I'm the only one he knows in my location. Fortunately, he thought it was hilarious. -Just Casually Scrutinizing Your Résumé
My Sneaky Teen Is a Future CIA Agent
When I had my iPhone 5s, I didn't bother setting up the fingerprint recognition and stuck to using a passcode. When my daughter asked to use the camera on my new iPhone X, she said she needed the code to unlock it. I told her it was the same as on my last phone. “Well I don't know what that is,” she said. “Yes you do, I saw you using my phone several times!” I replied with a laugh. “Oh, well I programmed my fingerprint into the phone after you set your phone down once so I could unlock and use it whenever I wanted.” !!!!!! I couldn't even get angry; I was so amazed at her ingenuity. -Too Impressed to Be Mad
Autocorrect Planned a Naked Coffee Date for Me
A couple of years ago, I was working in a temporary office while our new space was being renovated. The lady who sat across from me in the temp spot brought in her coffee maker to keep on the desk so we could have all-day access to coffee. When the new space was ready and we all started moving our stuff, I saw that her coffee maker was still in her empty cubicle. I texted her offering to bring it to the new area. What I tried to type was, “Do you want your coffee maker downstairs?” What autocorrect fixed and sent for me was, “Do you want coffee naked downstairs?” -Don’t Report Me to HR