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IM EmbarrassedMay 30th, 2005 by Hans Bjordahl :: see related comic |
We’ve all been in the room for one of these, haven’t we? Mixing personal and business use of instant messenger applications can be a dangerous game, and when personal messages pop up in work context — sometimes for all to see — they often take one of these embarrassing forms:
- “WHAZAAAAAP?” (greeting from friends)
- “I love you smoochy-woochy” (romantic talk from significant other)
- “So did you pull your head out of your ass yet?” (not-so-romantic talk from significant other)
- “Priest Holmes is a LOSER and so are you. LOSER LOSER LOSER!” (fantasy football or other competitive smack)
- “So how’d your meeting with the world’s biggest asshole go?” (unintentional breach of confidence).
Nothing drains a presenter’s gravitas faster than one of these doozies popping up at the onset of a meeting. Then it’s time for a new test for the audience to enjoy: How fast can the presenter find and disable the “pop up” option in the IM program or, more ambitiously, quit the program altogether while it tries to “helpfully” stick around like that last drunken party guest that can’t take a hint?
What’s your best “IM Embarrassed” story?
Sending a romantic note to my wife only to discover I was in the wrong IM window and it went to my boss.
Ooh the wrong IM window one is sometimes even worse.
As for me, I once was in a client presentation when Outlook came up with the e-mail notification for new incoming mail. If you recall, this includes the subject and a preview of the e-mail. As it so happens, that was one of those spam v!agra/c1alis ones (I’m obfuscating as spam tends to attract more spam). It was obviously spam but still not fun.
I’ve since gotten into the habit of killing ALL unecessary applications except for powerpoint (or visio if i’m presenting wireframes).
Remember, sometimes Outlook seems closed but is still lurking around. Kill the process tab =)
yep - i close *everything* when doing presentations (apart from powerpoint).
On another note, it doesn’t look like the cartoon is making the feed content and I thought it would do?
I was working at a place where IM was becoming the required medium for communication between all employees in the building. While working in the Technical Support department, we usually had more than one computer own office one, and a notebook of our own, we would make sure to keep only employee contacts on the office comptuer, and personl contacts on our machines. This kept us from getting into something we shouldn’t.
Talking to my teammates and suddenly, we hear a strange noise. Apparently, a friend decided to send me an audible on Yahoo. It took all my willpower to regain my composure, while they tried very hard not to laugh. And I was still new. >.
yep - i close everything when doing presentations (apart from powerpoint).
On another note, it doesn’t look like the cartoon is making the feed content and I thought it would do?
Hans worked with us to figure out the issue here and it’s now been resolved. If it’s working, feel free to send me praise. If it’s not, send Hans a flame.
Dude, despite playing for the Chiefs, Priest Holmes is NOT a loser. You, on the other hand, drafting Chad Pennington ahead of Peyton Manning last year?
(This really happened)
Clap…clap…clap…
Sincerely,
Champ of Hans’ fantasy football league. I rule.
This didn’t happen to me, but it did to happen to a coworker.
In an important sales presentation, he launched IE and started typing into the address bar. Everyone in the presentation saw all of the pron sites that he had visited that morning. Let’s just say that they weren’t run of the mill sites.
He was probably one of the best salespeople that I know and we got the sale anyway.
Bug Bash is a comic strip written and illustrated by Hans Bjordahl. Bug Bash is a comic strip about technology: managing technology, the business of technology. It's about project management and managing projects through the dull world of Rational Rose, use cases, and requirements. Functional requirements, user requirement, functional specifications, design specifications, call it what you want but it's still the bane of project managers. And when you're done with that, you can think about all the fun that comes with timelines, scheduling, estimates (PERT estimation anyone?) and resourcing until Gantt charts are coming out of your ears. Let's not forget the risk management in the software engineering life cycle. Maintaining the project is just as much fun, managing what was initially set out in requirements and trying to keep feature creep / scope creep in check with change management. If any of these words send nightmares to you, the project manager, then this site probably rings true with you. (Who Links Here?)