AIBU to not care about pleasantries with colleagues?

100% this.

Oh for goodness sake. OP just wants to do her job. She's not there to sort the mental health of her colleagues.

I agree OP, managed to get a lot of chat during daily catch up calls with my remote team. We don't need an hour long (!) social call.
30 mins every 2 weeks if they insist would suffice and conversation needs to be more structured to keep flowing

Totally agree. I loathe these type of things. We had virtual coffee chats like this during Covid. They were voluntary fortunately so we could dip out. Ours was hijacked by the same people who monopolised it. I'm not interested in your dog or your children. Surprisingly some people don't want to share their private life. Yours sounds even worse. Luckily they've stopped now we're hybrid. I have friends at work. The others are just colleagues and I just want to get on with my job. If people are lonely at home they need to get a job outside the home.

I don't think chit chat really works over teams. Especially if it is more than maybe 4 people. We have a weekly voluntary coffee break with the team. I attended once and it was so not organic and everyone didn't have space. Reason coffee break works is that you can have several small conversations

Trouble is that your 20 minute kitchen description takes up most or all of it, then somebody else goes on about their instaworthy life, but some of the less confident but wanting/needing to communicate or connect with people (and plenty of ND people do want to engage & can & do develop skills in the workplace environment that they didn't previously) just won't ever get to the point of being able to say anything.

I would hate it too but would think of the money instead, to get me through it. I would try to think "at least I'm getting paid just to listen to this and nod occasionally". There are worse ways to earn an hours pay.

Id rather do a quiz or bingo than endure the conversation and I love a chat.

You struggle with the concept of collective, yes?

They aren't being asked to do it outside of their working hours, and it isn't an unreasonable expectation.

YABU. I've just spent a day working closely with my team in a quite high pressure task, but we relaxed & had an hour off for lunch, and I thought how lucky I was to be working with such decent nice people. I know this because we chit chat & tell each other about bits of our lives - we're normal sociable humans (as a species humans are social animals). Nothing heavy, but pleasant.

Swapping stories or bits of non-work related information makes work better &v easier.

The only thing that I think your team should think about changing is that it's an HOUR long Teams call. That's too long & it could feel pressured. What about starting one meeting every couple of days 15 minutes earlier for catching up, so that it's a quick chitchat every few days?

1hr a week is too much for just non work chat. Why not have a team meeting once a week and tag 15mins on the end or do this once a month?

@Notaboozy well this is part of the reason why employers want workers to actually come to work rather than WFH.
We are at risk of becoming isolated pod people.

It’s a duty of care and mental health thing more than anything else. You may have a DH and children and a full social life of people to speak to on a daily basis and that’s great for you, but there could equally be a member of your team who lives alone and speaks to absolutely nobody for days on end and when wfh misses out on any office chat. It’s important for those people.

@HelplessSoul all she says is she doesn't want to share her private life and isn't interested in other people's. Yep...ok.
But she is being PAID to zone out for an hour and say something that's not exactly an invasion of her privacy like "Yep still halfway through the Bridgerton books....not done much else this week" and then go back to Zoning out.

Sounds extremely tedious! These things are completely unorganic - it does not emulate normal social interaction in the slightest. I would have something else up on my screen and be quietly reading that until 'my turn'.

Re-read the OPs post.

OP has been clear why they think its a waste of time (and I agree).

@HelplessSoul well I don't know what the OPs job is so I can't comment on whether it's useful to her job or not.
I just don't see the issue. If her required work gets done and this is part of her paid day then why is it such a problem?
I used to be very shy and a one point in my life I would have struggled with something like this - but also in my job this wasn't something we could really do at work so at work I often felt isolated and lonely.
I now realise how important things like this can actually be and would have loved to be paid to chat about watching Bridgerton or the last book I read.

I agree and I am not a chit chatter. The challenge is that if it becomes optional, the people who really need it will suffer. Perhaps reframe it as being part of your job, social responsibility or something. If the minutiae of people's lives is boring can you do something else, virtual quiz/virtual bingo. It will be a lifeline to some people in your organisation.

Yes, but what the OP is discussing here, in work time, is NOT work at all.

Its off-topic BS and divulging personal stuff, which the OP doesnt want to do, nor should be forced to.

Your remark would carry more weight if this was actually work related, but it isnt.

Its an hour of forced chatting shit time.

@HelplessSoul yes but a lot of what you have to do at work people don't often like or enjoy.
If it's affecting someone's mental health then they should seek help (which I had to do when I couldn't cope at work).

Did you miss the bit where the OP says she does NOT want to partake in this bullshit?

And by forcibly having to attending this crap, it can and probably IS affecting the OPs mental health. 🙄🤦‍♂️

It's very forced and kind of counterintuitive, as the conversation doesn't flow as it does in real life.

You have to wait for people to finish their sentence, each person takes a turn at talking, no little cliquey conversations begin like they do in real life, all those little squares looking at you, etc.

But what's your alternative? In office chit chats?

Yes, as I said above, I would find this kind of forced interaction a bit awkward. But I wouldn't personally ever choose to work in a wfh job.