This Halloween our Marketing Manager shares some scary stories … we’ll let you decide how many of them are real tricks or treats from her time in work.
The PowerPoint fail
This Halloween, picture yourself backstage at a well-known charity event. The audience includes celebrities, influential business figures, and even a royal. As the event’s tech bod, you’re in charge of the PowerPoint presentation telling the charity’s story. You’ve rehearsed it loads, the moment arrives, and your’ve forgotten to turn your Teams notifications off …
We can all imagine it and this technical nightmare has left many professionals in awkward situations. The key is not to get spooked. Chances are that the audience laugh, and you lighten the mood. But it is a great lesson in ensuring that when you are presenting you switch off any necessary comms tools (same goes for email notifications!).
Reply all
One to send a shiver down the spine. Sending an email to the wrong person or accidentally hitting reply all. We’ve all done it. It can be embarrassing. It will almost definitely cost you an apology (or four). But once you’ve done it you’re unlikely to ever do it again – unlikely but not impossible, so remember to check BEFORE you send, not after it has already gone out into the ether.
Where is it?
We’ve all been spooked by a file going missing. There is never a good time to lose your work. Computer crash, accidental deletion, or not having a backup can be a scary experience. And many of us probably look like we’ve seen a ghost when despite rebooting, searching, shouting at the screen, and more searching it finally dawns that the file is no longer with us. The horror you can feel of realising you need to redo hours of work can be incredibly frustrating and stressful. The only upside here, is that possessed by the spirit of annoyance you will hopefully use hyperfocus to get through it even faster and the end product will be the better for a second more concentrated edit.
Proof reading
The text has been signed off, it has been checked, double checked, triple checked, and the office pedant has given it the once over and the thumbs up. 50,000 copies are ordered, and you cannot wait for the delivery to arrive. The event begins on Saturday and the pre-sales are close to sell-out already. Thursday, 6.66pm (okay, more like 3.30pm) and you open the first box and take a look. You’ve recently changed jobs and apparently forgotten where you work …
Imagine this happening, and I can tell you that the skills you learn are to always check the obvious details (dates as well as the name of the place you work!), stakeholder management (when the team around flaps in panic at your pretty daft error), NOT to point out that they are also culpable having proofed it for you several times, but mostly that accidents happen and if you stay calm you can talk your printer into a discount on a second batch as well as a super-fast turnaround and your colleagues will remember that more than the initial error.
You’re on mute
Silence. Everyone makes this mistake, even those impressive CEOs. The best thing you can do is unmute yourself and make your point again – after all you were trying to be courteous keeping out background noise so don’t be too spooked out.
I’ve been in at least 1,000,000 online meetings where people’s children, dogs, partners, budgies, neighbours, and resident spectres have all walked through the back of calls, knocked screens, said the wrong thing at exactly the wrong moment and I promise you it just doesn’t matter. The person on the other side of the computer from you is human as well.
Rejection
The terror of rejection for what you believe is your one big idea can be terrifying. The feeling of your creative work being dismissed is a nightmare for many … but rejection doesn’t have to mean the end of an idea.
The Office, not the work but the telly one, by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s was turned down loads by TV execs who didn’t believe in their idea. Now, they could have given up, but they persevered, creating a legendary show that has made me laugh for years.
Rejection is an important part of the hair-raising journey to success. In the world of work the key is to embrace these ghastly experiences, summon resilience, and grow from your workplace learnings. I’ve made plenty of ghoulish mistakes and I am certain I’ve got many more left in me – but that’s okay!
Find some spooktacular careers motivation via our links below.
Motivation with Jermaine What books can shape my career How to ace a job interview 5-star career reads How to improve your CV & excel in interviews
