I got stuck on a lunchtime video conference today with some people in my department and a vendor. I hate meetings at noon, but with timezones being a factor, it was the only available time the vendor could meet. Usually, I’m only on these for technical consultation, so I rarely need to speak other than to clarify a point or answer questions about our infrastructure. Those are usually toward the end of the meeting.
That said, I just muted myself and ate at my desk because I was starving and would have plenty of time to eat a quick bite before it got to the point where I had to say anything.
What I did not realize was that even though I was muted, my webcam was on. So 6 people I work with plus three vendors all watched me eat a bag of tacos, and no one said anything!
Like, when I eat a taco with people around, I do eat it in a dignified way. Less so when I’m alone (or think I’m alone) and wolfing it down before I have to do something So, yeah, it was not a pretty sight.
I’m still mortified, but at least I am laughing about it as I’m typing this out.
Don’t be mortified. That was a power move. Lunch time is for lunch.
Yeah! If there’s any way to make a statement that says, “please don’t book stuff during my lunch hour” passive aggressively, that is it.
Didn’t even think of it like that! I like the way you think.
Yeah, alls you hear is “no one wants to work anymore”, yet this guy is sacrificing his lunch to benefit his company. They need a raise.
My day was pretty chill, pretty productive, and entirely too long.
The nicest part was sneaking out between meetings with my office fuck buddy (my spouse - I work from home) for a walk in the nice weather.
Don’t worry about it. If the room was big enough, many of them didn’t see you, and half of the ones you did probably thought it was just a flex to show your annoyance with being dragged into a lunchtime meeting. In any case, 95% of people would laugh it off and forget it, and the other 5% are probably well within the “meet an asshole everyday” crowd. With the camera on, they at least know you were there in front of your computer. My coworkers might not always be able to say the same thing about me on some of my larger calls where I’m just there so our org “has presence.”
My day consisted of users complaining about speed, everything on analytics looked fine, I checked some random high demand applications and they indicated that they were waiting on network IO pretty consistently, so I go to check the file server where the data for those apps is centrally located with no redundancy, and I managed to… Turn off the network interface on the file server.
🤦♂️
Don’t ask me how, I’m still confused about it myself. My manager calls me not 5 minutes later after he got a call from the client. I’m sitting there absolutely shitting myself trying to figure out how to turn the network card back on, and every method I’m trying to use to connect to the system is failing.
Even my manager had some serious trouble trying to figure it out.
Took about 45 minutes until the system was back on the network. Right at the end of the day, on one of the busiest days of the year for that specific customer.
I feel really stupid.
that’s pretty funny and equally embarrassing. thank you for sharing. i admit, I don’t pay much attention to traditional lunch times becsuse i mainly meet with network ops folks who have no concept of time or work-life balance. 24/7 or bust. i have a beard so foods like ribs, and tacos that fall apart are my kryptonite. i feel like i need to take a face shower after a meal at times. And honestly after the quarantine period of covid i felt like i had to learn how to interact with society again. cheers.
As an infrastructure person. You’re talking about me, and I don’t like it.
Accurate. Now take your upvote and getottahereee.
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Ha, thanks. To give a 30 Rock example of what it probably looked like:
But replace “teamster’s sub” with 5 tacos from a local Mexican place.