An embarrassing thing that can happen on an office call

I fell asleep on an office video call last week.

This probably tops the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen on an office call. The call had about 10 folks including my manager. When I woke up I did not even know if I slept after the meeting or had dozed off during the meeting. I was really hoping no one noticed.

The same evening, my manager Brian and I had a pre-scheduled sync up..

[Brian]Are you ok? you look tiered? How is your son now?

Brian knew my son was not well. I had to end our last 1:1 abruptly because I got a call from his school. Ananth had a fall at school and needed to be taken to the emergency to get stitches.

[Krishna] I am not ok Brian. We hardly slept yesterday because Ananth was up most of the night because of pain and high temperature.

[Brian] I realized somethings must be serious when I saw you doze off at the meeting.

[Krishna embarrassed] Damm, I am really embarrassed. I was hoping it was not during the meeting..

Brian realized I was feeling awkward and tried to lighten up the moment with an inside joke.

[Brian] Do you folks still co-sleep with your kids at night?

[Krishna] Ha ha.. Yes Brian, we still do.. Its probably too late to change the routine now..

[Brian] Hey I am kidding... Sleep is super important. I know last few weeks have been busier than usual at work. And when personal challenges come up at the same time, we tend to compromise on sleep. I have done this mistake myself. I brought this up to let you know that you have my support to do what ever is needed to find your balance. Encourage you to take time off around the holidays next week.

Lesson learnt.
1. Respect your body. Don't try to be a super hero when you are sleep deprived. I should just have taken the day off to begin with. Specially when I have plenty of time offs left, and when I am blessed to have an awesome team I could rely on.
2. A supportive manager can make the world of difference when thing are not going your way. Probably one of the many reason I have been happily reporting to Brian Hanley for 7 years now..


PS: I am sure last couple of weeks have been crazy for a lot of folks in our industry with the Log4j and AWS outage and life outside work. I heard crazy fire fighting stories from several companies at my bootcamp.

I am grateful to my team who took care of fronting all these challenges last week to take care of our customers.. 🙏