Our work project meeting took a break for lunch, and while I did turn off my video, I did not mute. For the past three years this would have been fine, because lunch is when you do the laundry, and make dinner. Who stays at their desk listening to the phone at lunch?
Who? People at work in the work building having the same meeting from inside a big Zoom-enabled meeting room.
I spent my lunch hour having not one, but two, loud arguments with Gary. And then I came back to my desk in the guest room and saw a teams message that said “Everyone can hear you.”
Oh no.
I immediately got on and demanded to know what they’d heard. They claimed they coukdn’t really hear anything. I said, “But you heard The Tone, right?’
They admitted they heard a tone, yes. It only occurred to me after that they could have been listening to Gary bellow as well as my snippy responses.
I later found out that my team leader was also sitting in the meeting room as everyone enjoyed the entertainment and said, “Out of kindness, can we just mute Ellen’s audio?” which was kind.
I survived it, I learned from it, and I don’t have to see those people for a few more days.
7 responses to “Kindness”
Oh noooooo.
But yes, 1. you will not have to see these people quite yet, and 2. it’s kind of nice sometimes to have a reality check. Sort of.
Also good to know that there’s someone kind enough to mute the audio!
KC – I realize I gave credit to my team leader for the mute when technically it was my scrummaster. Never thought I would live in a world where I would have a “scrummaster.”
Oh good heavens you have a scrummaster. Unit testing and all the rest of it?
KC – not all of it. Agile light.
Fascinating. How is it compared to whatever you guys had in place before it, from your perspective? More maddening, less maddening, or only differently-maddening?
(I suppose that could be a whole blog post except this isn’t a tech blog except this is an everything blog, so probably you could get away with a post on it?… maybe)
KC – Oh, much better than what we had before. (And it’s a little too much insight into our company.)
So glad it is better than what you had before! Sometimes companies adopt The Latest Silver Bullet Fad and do it badly – or it is simply the wrong Silver Bullet Fad for them.
(and yeah, fair)