u/sexybabyxox

I'll start. We had a company wide Zoom last year and one guy on our team joined from what was clearly his car in a parking garage, bad lighting, engine sounds in the background, the works. His actual house was like a 10 minute drive from the office. He just did not want to be on camera in his house for reasons he never explained and nobody asked about.
Another coworker used a virtual background of a generic living room for 6 months until someone accidentally screen shared during a call and we could see her actual background was the exact same virtual background image she'd been using. She had downloaded a photo of her own living room and was using it as a filter over her actual living room. To this day nobody knows why.
I've also seen someone fake a frozen screen for so long that the meeting actually ended before they had to speak. Just sat there totally still for 40 minutes. Not frozen. Just committed.
The length people will go to just to avoid being seen or having to talk is genuinely one of the most relatable and unhinged things about modern office life and I need to hear your stories because I know I haven't even scratched the surface here

This happened about a week ago and I haven't been able to shake it so I figured I'd post here.
Some background, I've been at my current job for about 8 months. It's my first corporate office job after spending a few years in retail so I'm still getting used to how things work here. My manager is generally fine, not warm but not mean, just kind of a by the numbers type.
Last Tuesday we had our regular weekly team meeting, 9 people including my manager. About ten minutes in she brings up a report that went out to a client last week with a formatting error in it. Nothing crazy, a table was misaligned and one figure was in the wrong column. Fixable, not catastrophic. The client noticed and flagged it.
Instead of just addressing it generally she looked directly at me and said "that report came from your desk so I want us to use this as a learning moment for the whole team" and then spent probably four minutes walking through exactly what was wrong with it while everyone sat there looking at me or very deliberately not looking at me.
I wanted to disappear into my chair. I apologized in the meeting, said it wouldn't happen again, and she moved on like nothing happened.
Afterwards two coworkers separately came up to me and said that was uncomfortable to watch and that she didn't need to do it that way. So it wasn't just me being sensitive.
I know I made the mistake and I own that fully but I've never been called out like that in front of a group of people and something about it has just killed my confidence since then. I dread going in now in a way I didn't before.
Is this normal in office environments? Was this appropriate on her end or was there a better way to handle it because to me it just felt like public humiliation dressed up as a teachable moment

So this is going to sound bitter and maybe it is a little but I'm mostly just confused and looking for a reality check.
We had an opening for a team lead position on our floor about two months ago. I've been at this company for 3 years, know the systems inside out, have covered for our previous team lead probably a dozen times and was told by my manager last year that I was "on the right track" for a leadership role. I applied, had the interview, thought it went well.
They hired externally. Fine, that happens, I was disappointed but I moved on.
The woman they hired, I'll call her Jess, seemed nice enough when she started. Little quiet, still figuring out the basics, asked me pretty regularly how certain things worked. Normal new hire stuff.
Three weeks in they announce she's being bumped up to senior team lead, a position that didn't even exist before, with a direct line to our department head. Not the role she was hired for. A brand new role they created.
Now here's the part that made my stomach drop a little. I've started noticing she and our department head have a very different energy than he has with anyone else. Lots of closed door check ins, she laughs really loud at things he says that are not funny, he brought her coffee once which he has literally never done for anyone. Last Friday they both left within five minutes of each other at 3pm and neither of them mentioned leaving early to the rest of us.
I'm not trying to start drama and I would never say anything at work. I just genuinely don't know what I'm looking at here and it's making me uncomfortable coming in every day. Has anyone been in a similar situation and how did you handle it mentally

I've been at this company 3 years. I actually fix things. I troubleshoot, I write the documentation nobody else wants to write, I train new hires, I catch errors before they become problems.

Karen (not her real name but honestly it suits her) sends one email every Friday afternoon at 4:55pm that says "here's what the team accomplished this week" and then bullet points stuff that's already tracked in the project sheet we all have access to.

She got exceeds expectations. I got meets expectations. For the third year in a row.

When I asked my manager about it he said Karen has "excellent communication and visibility with leadership." I asked what that meant. He said she "keeps stakeholders informed."

So what I'm hearing is that the trick isn't doing the work. It's making sure the people with the power to promote you, knows you're doing work, whether you actually are or not.

I'm not even that mad at Karen honestly. She figured out the game and she's playing it. I'm mad that the game exists.

Starting my own Friday 4:55 email this week. Wish me luck.