Hey, is the mic on?

[easysurfer]

...

Back to the OP, maybe referring to Sue Simmons. What surprises me about that is how cavalier the language may be near a hot mic. We rarely swear at work, and we don't have an audience of 12 million.

No, not Sue Simmons. This was very recent and not directed at someone.

Looked up Sue Simmons and see why she got fired though.

I remember watching the morning news years ago during the movie review piece but the editing department forgot put in the bleeps. So the station ran the unedited version, F-bomb and all. The guest's jaw dropped as well as the other anchors. Finally, one of the anchors apologized and said this is live TV. I think the station got fined or warned by the FCC. Then about a week later they got warned again. During a innocent piece about a lion and the lion family, but on anchor said what was intended as a nice comment but could be taken the wrong way .

 

[harley]

Once work was having an IT emergency and I was part of the group assigned to handle it. I was working at home, which required a 24/7 continuous group call on speaker phone. As things happened people would just start talking into the already open line. This was my first experience with such a call. I flushed the toilet with an audience.

A long, long time ago (pre-pager, much less cell phone), I got called in the middle of the night for an emergency conference call. It didn't have anything to do with me, and at some point in the call I fell back asleep. The phone was lying beside me, and everybody on the call could hear me snoring. That land line was our only phone, so there was no way to contact me again and wake me up. Eventually they had to end the call and have everyone (except me) call back in. Someone told that story at my retirement party 20-some years later. It's good to be a legend.

 

[marko]

Once had a customer call me to demand why his order was being held up which, in turn, was impacting his ability to ship. He had his customer on speaker.
I strongly suggested that he pick up the phone
"Anything you want to tell me you can say to my customer!!"
Again I suggested he pick up. Nope!
So....I had to tell him in front of his customer that he was on credit hold for non payment and was 180 days in arrears.
He had always been a jerk so it was kind of fun.

 

[travelover]

Back in the day, if you called someone to set up a 3 way call and they did not answer, the remaining duration of the call between the other parties would be recorded on the answering machine of the absent participant. I've heard some interesting conversations this way.

 

[pb4uski]

I can't believe that people didn't know that... we would always hang up and have one person call the other person back.