I was watching VH1 when I saw an ad for their new candid camera type show - the premise seems to be that they put a small micro-camera into the car and watch as someone sings or "dances" to the radio... badly.

It got me thinking about various locations where we tend to think we're both invisible and in a sound-proof room. The bathroom and car being the most obvious examples.

So, I figured that I'd start a thread on the subject -
What are examples of other rooms where people think they're invisible or that the room is sound proof? What's the funniest personal experience story you have on the subject?

I'll share mine -
Being a "techie" I go into server rooms a lot. If you've never been in a server room, it's (usually) a huge room with tons of air conditioners, making casual conversation rather loud. It's like trying to talk with someone while standing next to a Mac truck. Not only that, but the floors are raised and the hundreds of 8mm fans from the servers also adds to the general "hum" of the room. So, to talk to someone, you literally have to yell, or at least shout.

Not only that, but the place is usually brightly lit with "supermarket" level lighting. But, if you go into a server room during the dead of night it's sometimes the most secluded and private place you can go.

Soooo.... I was in during a Saturday night maintenance window, around 9pm. It was an easy job, just had to replace some RAM in one server and the power supply of another. I go about my business, pulling out the servers from their racks and trying to figure out the little secret button to unlock the freakin' Dell server's case cover. If you've never worked with Dell servers, they are generally a screwless design, but to compensate for the lack of screws, they create weird "Twister" type riddles in order to open the case - if you don't know the "trick" to open the case, you usually come close to bashing the server open with a club to vent your frustration.

In that "near-clubbing" type of mood, much to my surprise, I hear someone singing Mr. Mister's "Kyrie" - rather loudly and rather badly. Since my server was on the top "shelf" I was on a step ladder, and much like stadium seating, while I could not see well in the rows far away, I could see the first three rows in front of and behind me very well. Two rows away was one of our Operations guys, iPod earplugs firmly in place, and jamming to the song while typing something into the keyboard. He finished whatever he was doing to that machine and moved on down the row in a veritable butt-jiggling, arm flailing tribute to some sort of Amazonian tribal dance. He found his next victim and logged into that machine while continuing to sing (shout?) the song (mutilating the lyrics all the while, I might add).

Not really sure what protocol in a situation like this was, I slowly turned my attention back to my server and went back to work. I do admit, however, I that I often turned back to watch him "dance," much as one stares at a big car wreck to catch sight of the injured.

I finished up my hardware changes, booted up the machines and made sure that everything was "green". As I was leaving, I bump into the guy and he waved happily and continued on with his work, humming whatever song he was listening to instead of singing it, now that he was aware I was in the server room with him.

While I never told the operations folks the story, I shared it with the rest of my "server" team, and I was told that his singing was a "well known secret." His dancing, however, was new, and many ventured forth the next Saturday hoping to catch sight of this rare sighting.

I go about my business, pulling out the servers from their racks and trying to figure out the little secret button to unlock the freakin' Dell server's case cover. If you've never worked with Dell servers, they are generally a screwless design, but to compensate for the lack of screws, they create weird "Twister" type riddles in order to open the case - if you don't know the "trick" to open the case, you usually come close to bashing the server open with a club to vent your frustration.
Dell server cases were a major deciding factor in my switching from hardware to software...lol. I HATED those things.

Anyway, my story.

I was working the nightshift as a network admin at the Chase Manhattan Bank call center in Houston Texas.

There was about 30 reps, 2 managers and 2 techs including me.

It was slow as hell and we got sick of playing playstation so we decided to hit the vending machines on the other side of the building.

As we went through one particularly dark, unoccupied(we thought) section of the cubefarm we heard whispering. We were curious so we stood on top of a desk and took a quick look around. About 3 cubes over from there was a man and a woman making out hot and heavy. We watched for a few seconds and laughed our way to the vending machines.

We got a page and actually had to go do some real work so I never found out just how far they went..lol.

I used to work with a woman who fancied herself a good singer she figured since she couldn't hear herself in the server room, no one else could either. Wrong... her nasty voice carried quite well outside the white noise in the server room. Ugh! People who fancy themselves singers have to be the most annoying people in the world, I can speak authoritively as someone who went to a rather well-known music school. Everyone else has to carry around an instrument and they don't go to parties with cellos or whatever strapped to their backs and break out into a solo at the slightest provocation. In fact, they prefer to retire to a soundproofed practice room because when you "practice" you don't usually sound all that great.

Not singers. Each and everyone one of them thinks they're Maria Callas or something, and they want to gift the public, all the time, with their incredible talent.

I will confess to photocopying my face once when I was working in the Library in college and no one else was there. :p