# Best. WebEx. EVER. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 3, 2011, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-webex-ever/591342 "2011-08-03T17:44:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![singular1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ba9def/32.png) [@singular1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/singular1)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-webex-ever/591342/1 "2011-08-03T17:44:42Z")
Note: all numbers and address info changed to protect the innocent. So I’m on a Webex with my coworkers, cleaning up a drawing while listening to our biweekly CAD User meetings. As usual, it’s bone dry, and we’re all listening with one ear and doing some mindless work with the other. We hear “…so to accomplish this, go to ‘Tools’, ‘Options’, and select blah blah blah buzzzz buzzzzzz derp derp …”…. And suddenly, with beautiful bell-like clarity, a female voice bursts in with a phone number. It happens, and no one gives it much import. “Please mute if you’re on the line. Now, if you right-click on the document itself-‘ “Three seven three six Pine Ave, North Ridge\> “Could whoever is on the phone please mute? OK, as I was saying, right click on the –“ “Four Six Six, Three Zero, Eight Two Be Nine” “Um, we’re talking to you.” “Unless you want your identity stolen” “_chuckle, chuckle_”🙂 “Seven Five Five Six, Two Nine Eight Four, “ Holy crap. This woman is giving everybody her credit card number!:smack: “Please mute.” My cubemates and I turn to each other, eyes widening, with three variations on an “oh, no” theme. “Yes, I need to make an appointment.” More pleas to hit Mute. “I need to see my gynecologist”:eek: To the casual observer, it must’ve looked as though the three women in our cube had been simultaneously hit with an invisible gut bomb. We all doubled over in our chairs, eyes flared in horror, hands to our mouths, moaning with sisterly sympathy at the humiliating spectacle unfolding in our ears, the Worst Thing Your Coworkers Could Overhear! The moaning and laughing is echoed on the WebEx as the men increase their pleas for the Mute button. But the crystal clear disembodied voice goes in, obviously oblivious to the chaos she is creating on the phone. “I need to bring my daughter in. Well, she’s got a rash.” “In the name of all that’s holy, mute that woman!!” “I’m trying, I’m trying!” “She’s allergic to apples.”:eek:😕:eek::eek::eek:😕:eek::eek::eek::eek: “For the love of God, where is she putting them?!?!?!” As she began to detail the antibiotics the child was on and the rest of the room erupted in delighted and horrified reactions, one cooler head prevailed and said “Let’s just kill this feed and everybody call in. We’ll start over” It was the right thing to do, but I have to admit, I kinda wanted to hear the rest of the story more than I wanted to learn about the latest function on my machine. The WebEx resumed, the meeting finished, and the presenter ended the demo with :”are there any questions?” One man piped in with “Well, I have this rash…”. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-webex-ever/591342/2 "2011-08-03T18:29:10Z")
Hilarious. Thank you for sharing. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-webex-ever/591342/3 "2011-08-03T18:56:38Z")
Ok, that is way, **way** worse than me not realizing that my line had hold music/announcements and putting the conference call on hold - and treating everyone to that - to take an incoming call… :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Dogzilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@Dogzilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogzilla)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-webex-ever/591342/4 "2011-08-03T19:37:36Z")
You know… in WebEx, the leader of the meeting has the ability to mute all the incoming lines to prevent that exact situation from happening. Every now and then, I sit in on a conference call where the high-level manager seems to prefer interrupting herself approximately every 0.03 seconds to harshly bark orders at people to mute their lines. Finally – after about 1/3 of the meeting has passed – she’ll threaten to do it. “If you guys can’t mute your lines, I’m going to have to do it from here.” All the while, with my line muted, I’m shouting, “Hey dumb cunt, why didn’t you think of that _before the meeting started_?” Eventually, I’ll hear “All lines have been muted. You cannot make comments until the leader un-mutes the line.” ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-webex-ever/591342/5 "2011-08-03T19:39:32Z")
In one of the Naked Gun movies, Drebin leaves his personal microphone on while he goes to the bathroom; the sounds of his bathroom visit are played on a PA system to an entire congregation of people. Oddly enough, this happened IRL at a work-related training course several years ago. Yes, the instructor actually left his mic turned on and during a break he went to the bathroom. Thankfully the noises of his micturition were inaudible, but we could clearly hear the flush, and the washing of his hands, and the hot air hand dryer. ---
**Author:** ![singular1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ba9def/32.png) [@singular1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/singular1)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-webex-ever/591342/6 "2011-08-03T19:42:44Z")
> [@Dogzilla](#): > > You know… in WebEx, the leader of the meeting has the ability to mute all the incoming lines to prevent that exact situation from happening. > > Every now and then, I sit in on a conference call where the high-level manager seems to prefer interrupting herself approximately every 0.03 seconds to harshly bark orders at people to mute their lines. Finally – after about 1/3 of the meeting has passed – she’ll threaten to do it. “If you guys can’t mute your lines, I’m going to have to do it from here.” All the while, with my line muted, I’m shouting, “Hey dumb cunt, why didn’t you think of that _before the meeting started_?” Eventually, I’ll hear “All lines have been muted. You cannot make comments until the leader un-mutes the line.” I didn’t detail this, but the leader was doing just that. This was some weird sort of patched-in call, because she could not hear us at all. He did eventually mute everyone, but she still came through with that unnatural clarity. That’s why we had to ditch the feed and start over. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Woo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7c8e57/32.png) [@Dr.Woo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Woo)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-webex-ever/591342/7 "2011-08-03T19:48:12Z")
I may have posted this before, but my favorite WebEx story (and I have a few) was where a guy was attending some conference _with a customer_ and had his camera on. Yeah, he forgot about the camera, and was watching porn - with one hand occupied. On camera. With sounds. His manager pinged him in the meeting, forgetting to address the IM just to the offender so everyone saw the message: “Stop jacking off and pay attention!”. After hearing this story every single person in my group has taped over their webcam to avoid any accidents. ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-webex-ever/591342/8 "2011-08-03T19:48:16Z")
I thought this was going to be a story about a congenial breakup and how it played out on the 'net. Kind of what I’d expect of Meg and Jack White if they were Web designers. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-webex-ever/591342/9 "2011-08-03T20:29:30Z")
> [@Dr.Woo](#): > > “Stop jacking off and pay attention!”. > > After hearing this story every single person in my group has taped over their webcam to avoid any accidents. Where do you work where people are so worried about getting caught out having a wank during meetings? ---
**Author:** ![Mtgman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@Mtgman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mtgman)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-webex-ever/591342/10 "2011-08-03T20:58:35Z")
> [@Larry\_Mudd](#): > > Where do you work where people are so worried about getting caught out having a wank during meetings? I don’t know, but please tell me they’re hiring! Enjoy, Steven ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-webex-ever/591342/11 "2011-08-03T21:34:48Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > Ok, that is way, **way** worse than me not realizing that my line had hold music/announcements and putting the conference call on hold - and treating everyone to that - to take an incoming call… :eek: So you’re the one who did that. I hate when that happens, because everyone else hears the hold music but since you’re on hold, you don’t. Sometimes you hear someone’s conversation in the room during a teleconference. My company is big on web training, and half the sessions I attend begin with ten minutes of troubleshooting the one guy who’s getting the audio but is not seeing the slides on the screen. So the rest of us (dozens or hundreds) waste our time while they’re trying to figure out his issue. And the company also had the terrible practice of having people call out their names at the beginning of the conference so they could check attendance. This also wasted time but also when two people called out their names at once, the meeting organizer couldn’t hear one of them. ---
**Author:** ![Bartman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@Bartman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bartman)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-webex-ever/591342/12 "2011-08-04T00:36:32Z")
> [@Dr.Woo](#): > > After hearing this story every single person in my group has taped over their webcam to avoid any accidents. Not the worst idea in the world. We had a WebEx where the presenter was halfway across the world and running it around 2am her time from her hotel room. Unfortunately for her she chose to run it in a state of total undress… and accidentally turned her camera on. Her manager called her pretty quick on her cell, and the camera was shut off, but not until after everyone on the call (around 50-60 people) found out that she was indeed a natural blond. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Woo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7c8e57/32.png) [@Dr.Woo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Woo)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-webex-ever/591342/13 "2011-08-04T20:04:22Z")
> [@Larry\_Mudd](#): > > Where do you work where people are so worried about getting caught out having a wank during meetings? Heh. Our meetings would kill any thoughts of a wank for me, but my company does allow us to work remotely. The other attendees do not need to see my pajamas (best case) nor my uncombed hair. Or as **Bartman** noted, my true hair color. ---
**Author:** ![SCSimmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@SCSimmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCSimmons)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-webex-ever/591342/14 "2011-08-04T22:20:18Z")
> [@Bartman](#): > > We had a WebEx where the presenter was halfway across the world and running it around 2am her time from her hotel room. Unfortunately for her she chose to run it in a state of total undress… and accidentally turned her camera on. Her manager called her pretty quick on her cell, and the camera was shut off, but not until after everyone on the call (around 50-60 people) found out that she was indeed a natural blond. OK, I hereby declare the OP’s claim that the WebEx meeting there described was the ‘Best Ever’ officially debunked. ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e4f/32.png) [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_is_the_new_Analog)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2011, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-webex-ever/591342/15 "2011-08-05T02:01:53Z")
I have WebEx sessions scheduled for all day tomorrow. I was really dreading it until I found this thread… -D/a