During a company-wide video meeting, I was listening quietly while pretending to understand a presentation full of charts. Then my partner appeared in the doorway and whispered, “There’s a mouse in the kitchen.” I thought my microphone was muted. It was not. I immediately shouted, “A real mouse? Where is it? Why are you standing here? Close the door! What if it comes into this room?” My partner tried to calm me down, which only made me louder. I started suggesting increasingly useless solutions, including putting a laundry basket over it and calling our neighbor. Eventually, I looked back at my screen. More than a hundred people were watching me. The meeting chat was filling with cheese emojis and pictures of cartoon mice. The presenter waited for the laughter to stop and then said, “Before we continue, could everyone please check their microphones?” I muted myself and remained completely motionless for the rest of the meeting. For several weeks afterward, coworkers kept asking whether the mouse had accepted our job offer.