Had a 3am client call go sideways when my power flickered mid-pitch

I was at my kitchen table in Portland last Tuesday, 3am my time, on a Zoom call with a potential client in London. Halfway through explaining my pricing, the lights dimmed, my modem rebooted, and I dropped off the call for a solid 4 minutes. When I got back, they thought I hung up on purpose. I had to talk fast and offer a free half-hour consultation just to salvage it. So do you push through and pretend it didn't happen, or do you admit the tech fail and turn it into a joke? It worked for me this time, but I'm still not sure which move is smarter.

3 comments

3 Comments

rivera.hannah7d ago

Is it bad I used to think owning the glitch made you look weak? Your story actually flipped that for me, being straight up about the power flicker is way smarter.

thomas.river7d ago

Nah, I don't agree with that. Owning the glitch is just being honest about your limits - @rivera.hannah, pretending you never have issues just makes you look like you're hiding something. Playing it cool fails harder than any flicker ever could.

ray6137d ago

Yeah but I think you're giving owning the glitch a little too much credit. It's not like you have to broadcast every single time your light flickers or your code hiccups, that just gets annoying after a while. There's a middle ground between pretending nothing ever happens and oversharing every little bug.