Black smoke from my laptop charger

I have owned a universal laptop charger for roughly seven years. I had to retire it the other day.

On Wednesday morning, I had a teleconference at 08:00. I took the call on my laptop, with it plugged in and charging.

Just before the call ended, I noticed that there was black smoke coming from the charger. Some of the wires were exposed and touching, which caused the black casing around it to slowly burn. Naturally, I unplugged everything and used another charger.

On my call, the moderator said the following,

"Cutiebootie, do you have anything to add? Are you still on the call?"

I was, but needed to attend to this small incident that was thankfully just that. I unmuted my mic, said what I had to say, and our meeting came to a close.

It's good that it wasn't a video conference. The last thing I wanted folks to see was my laptop going up in smoke!