Disastrous Teams meeting - is it as bad as I think?

You need to be more professional.

Everyone has been on a meeting with a pet or another human making an appearance. Don't worry about it.

When I am working I sit at a desk with the study door shut

That would prevent all those issues

Totally agree. Sitting on a coach, dog in face, clearly not a good working environment with husband close by blasting music. I would be concerned a week in how seriously you were taking your job.

I wouldn't be bothered about the dog at all, unless it was a regular occurrence.

Sitting on sofa is slobbish - do you not have a desk and chair?

Husband in the room (plus being loud) would not go down well at all with my employer as our work is confidential. I can't have our cleaner around if I'm WFH. Your employer may not be so strict but it still looks pretty bad and distracting to you and anyone else on the call. Tell him to stay out of the room.

I mean it’s interesting for a new starter but if it’s just a one off I really wouldn’t worry about it. Change your set up and keep on moving.

I would be wondering if you had a proper WFH set up tbh. Sitting on the sofa for an important meeting isn’t very professional and with a bouncy dog and a DH around how likely are you to be distracted on a regular basis. If I was your manager I think I would be increasing your office days for a while if that was contractually possible until I got to know you better.

When lockdown first happened and we were all “making do” with our WFH set up, I did a teams call with one very senior colleague (my boss) and someone from HR only to realise after approx 20 mins that I had a MASSIVE dildo on the shelf behind me.

That being said no one will care about it in the long run!

Sorry but it’s pretty bad. It sucks but if you’re going to WFH and you don’t have a home office you need to be tucked away somewhere eg in your bedroom or a spare room. These both happened because you were in the middle of the house. You obviously can’t expect your husband (and dog) to keep quiet all day. And get a headset, for everyone’s sake.

To be honest you sitting on the sofa would be the bit I wouldn’t have been impressed by. You need a professional space really.

This made me laugh 😆 OP you will be fine!

If I have an important teams meeting I make sure I’m in a shut-off space where I’m not going to be interrupted by anyone, including animals. It was pretty unprofessional to just sit on the sofa in an area of your house where you could be (and were, twice) interrupted by other inhabitants of your home. Totally your fault.

By survival I mean they kept their jobs. Consequences yes (not including sacking), plus a varying degree of anything from good natured teasing to 'please make sure they're not in charge of anything important' largely depending on how senior, useful and/or generally well behaved and dependable the individual was.

😂I would want to be your friend.
As long as it didn't happen daily.

Why were you on a teams call on the sofa? Very unprofessional. Working from home, especially video teams calls, should be from a proper WFH space - whether that be an office room, desk in another room. At the very least the kitchen table! It’s things like this that are making companies return to the office.

mic*
and where's the rest of the story? Everyone clapped and said "what a legend" or they were seen as unprofessional/fired? It's not much use to OP if you tell her that other people have also had bad meetings without saying what happened next (also I am nosey lol)

When you say you have seen people "survive" that - presumably there were consequences (unless you're exaggerating for comedic effect). Being offered drugs while at work would be sacking offence in my profession but I'm sure in others would at least merit a very serious meeting. Skiving off to listen in the bath is nearly as bad. Underwear is unprofessional (stern email time). Obviously accidents can happen in any setup so I can't see anyone caring about knocking a webcam over. It doesn't scream "I am taking the piss by pretending to work" like the others.

I agree with this. The whole “laughing at children bursting in” was a lockdown thing when everyone was making the best of a situation with no time to plan. So people were wfh whilst homeschooling and balancing laptops on ironing boards and sharing office space with partners. A lot of people were working much less effectively from home than the office, but the alternative was doing no work at all a so there was a high-level of tolerance and acceptance.

Now wfh is definitely a privilege and the expectation is that if you cannot do it as effectively (due to lack of privacy/space/childcare issues/wifi connection) then you work in the office.

I’ve heard people go to the bog with the mike on.

I’ve seen people asleep and snoring, with cam and mike on.

Agree with most of it but unsure whether seniority is relevant.
If the person was very junior I would question whether they understood how to behave in the workplace (OP doesn't say, but this might be her first job - in light of the lack of adequate homeworking set up and husband not understanding that work is quiet time).
If they were senior I would have concerns about trusting their judgement with anything important.

Important work call and sat on the couch don't really go together tbh, if anyone says anything at work perhaps it would be a good idea to be prepared to reassure them that that's not your usual WFH setup (and make sure it isn't!).

However, to reassure you, I've seen people survive cats knocking their webcams off their PCs, spouses or kids walking in and making noise mid-call, underwear left hanging up to dry in the background, housemate wandering in and offering them a spliff and a slice of pizza mid-call, and one poor lass who thought she could get away with listening in on a large meeting on her phone while shaving her legs in the bath (and could have done if she hadn't accidentally turned her camera on).

I'd be less bothered about the pets & Husbands (both out of your control to an extent) and least impressed by you sitting on a sofa.

If you don't have a desk & chair, you're not equipped to WFH.

Do you have a dedicated work space?
Working from the sofa with pets and your family around you is not very professional.
I think it's accepted and tolerated that anyone WFH may be interrupted now and again but if you can't sort out a quiet time for meetings it's going to look quite poor.

Why was your dog not put in another room while you attended this important meeting? Why didn't you tell your husband you were in an important meeting.

TBH, if I'd witnessed a new colleague do this it wouldn't make a good impression.

I have WFH for 15 years, much of that as a lone parent so have had to arrange for my children to be out of the way. It's an informal, academic environment and have plenty of non-work talk but also know when we need to be professional.

Yeah I think this kind of informal setup with family and furry friends interrupting was one thing during lockdown etc when everyone had to work from home and we all understood that no everyone was set up for that.

Now I think if you want to work from home it’s on you to make at least some effort to do so professionally, especially for an “important meeting”. That means NOT on your couch and making at least some effort to keep pets under control and privacy from family members. We all get that stuff happens and I’m pretty relaxed and love seeing people’s pets and family, but I think one week in this doesn’t make a good impression.

Your one mitigation is given this was a Sunday of working from home in this setup is unusual and all only happened because you had to dial in out of hours. Even so though I think I’d have expected you to try to find somewhere a bit more quiet and private than your living room for it.