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

You need your own office space out of sight or earshot of other humans to WFH.

You and your husband might both work efficiently in shared office spaces when you go into the office, but there you only share with other people from the same company - so at home it has to be one company, one room.

I’d be surprised if they heard your husband , my dog has gone crazy at the postman many times when my mic is on and when I’ve apologised people have said they didn’t hear anything. I’d just make a joke of it , tell them you’ve locked the dog in the kitchen and muzzled your DH

I work in a really laid back company, we're all mostly remote, lots of teams calls with people in their scruffs, all quite relaxed. The odd child/ dog / cat/ husband has made an appearance.

I still think this would look pretty bad, especially first week in. It's more the sitting on the sofa thing. I have an office space at home but do fairly often sit on the sofa if I'm doing less intensive stuff (especially in the run up to Christmas, I wanted to look at my tree!), but if there's a meeting happening or I get a call I move quick sharpish to my desk or at least the kitchen table. DH also works from home and we're both sensitive/ aware of the fact the other might be on a call/ in a meeting. We all have a set background which helps.

I don't think it's a sackable offence but I'd be cringing and making plans to set up a suitable workspace, at least for meetings, and get your background blurred or set to something suitably neutral.

If @BoringSilentHill worked in a dedicated workspace with the door shut then her husband wouldn't have to worry about being quiet

The sitting on sofa would be a red flag for me

It’s a bit unprofessional but I think it’s fine as a one off. As long as all other meetings are quiet and professional. I have meetings with clients from big companies where some people are clearly at a desk in their bedroom or in a quiet corner of a cafe so the sofa wouldn’t bother me. Pets also don’t bother me as long as not making noise. I probably would’ve laughed, but I don’t work in a serious field (if something like cancer research or child abuse then probably wouldn’t have laughed). Tell DH to shut the hell up for further meetings and it will be fine

I bet you really cheered everyone up! If people work from home you can expect normal homely things to happen, surely?

I wfh most days and have a dedicated space with a desk, monitor etc. In my direct team this would just be laughed off but Id be sure it didn’t happen again!
Sometimes if I have an admin/email day I will set up on the sofa. DH is very senior at work and they dont do video calls at his work, just audio so his WFH days he is based on the sofa and he will use dd’s room if he needs an additional screen or a room with the door closed.
In 2020 we had an all team call with director and everyone was laughing, because DD was behind me doing the walrus with breadsticks. But in lockdown I think there was a bit of an expectation that children or pets may appear.
my puppy did join a teams call once and it totally derailed the call because everyone wanted to see him. Also embarrassing!
As a one off I expect your line manager will just check in on your WFH space. Im surprised they didn’t before now tbh? Its the first thing my new line managers have checked

I’m pretty laid back but would be concerned if my team member didn’t appear to have a dedicated work space away from distractions such as a dog and people playing music. Regardless of whether he thought I was on a teams call my DH wouldn’t blare music in the middle of the working day unless we were on a lunch break together.

I'd have been vaguely amused but I'd also be thinking that you weren't taking the meeting very seriously or showing a great deal of respect for the time of your colleagues.

I don't think it is unreasonable to expect someone attending a meeting to do their best to ensure that they are somewhere they will be undisturbed for the duration. If it were me, I'd have let whoever was in the house with me know I was going to be on a meeting and have the dog in another room. Otherwise there is a danger that people will think you are taking the piss working from home on the sofa with your dog and husband distracting you.

Oh give over
Unclench a little!

Absolutely hilarious 😂 sorry I know this probably wasn't the answer you were looking for but really made me laugh 😆 the DH singing just to put the top on it !

I’d just say to you if I was your LM to please have meetings with closed door/ away from animals and ppl etc

It doesn't really matter whether its Rule, Brittania or the Ace of Spades. It's an unprofessional and irritating distraction.

But surely it depends on what the meeting was about? The OP said an important meeting but there’s no other context to judge. A meeting about their company losing a shit ton of money meaning jobs are at risk and the speaker was distracted by what was going on with the OP and others were worried, no I wouldn’t be laughing it off. Quick informal catch up meeting with a known team, yeah laugh it off this one time.

I’d be worried that someone had the meeting on record and now your clip is on social media as comedy gold. Pets hilariously gatecrashing zoom meetings seems to be a whole genre, I’ve seen loads.

So one meeting would be funny. However, you do need to do your meetings in a space which is quiet and where the dog and your DH cannot disturb. After a while if I were your Manager, I would find this irritating and I would question how productive you were being from home.

Haha, this would have made me laugh but I wouldn't think it too serious. I'd seek out a more private area for when you WFH where you won't be disturbed by the dog or your DH, so that you can reassure your line manager it won't happen again.

To make you feel better, I was on a Teams meeting a few years ago and one lady, waiting her turn to give her update on the round robin catch up, took her laptop with her while she went to the loo. Tragically she had her camera on and the PC facing her in the loo. I'm just relieved I was multi-tasking and missed the show!

Like others I think:
Sofa not ok
Dog fine, as a one-off, but it sounds like the whole situation was probably exacerbated by you being on the sofa and so dog being able to 'wrestle' you
Husband not fine

What's wrong with Rule, Brittania? The choir were singing it, after all. I think it would have been fun to be in the meeting and everyone will laugh it off.

Part of the reason this has irritated me is that it plays into every single stereotype about home workers being lazy, flaky work-dodgers.

I've had loads of judgement over the years from people about working from home, and this was mainly in the pre COVID days when I had to do it sometimes as a single parent and I used to get loads of not very kind ribbing about not being in the office.

People who work from home get enough grief from the stuffed shirts who believe everyone needs to be bums on seats in the office all the time as it is. It doesn't help if people like OP play right into their hands with dogs on camera and comedy husbands.

In fairness, OP may be quite junior and not have realised this. But it does harm other home workers when people behave like a bit of an oaf.

😆😆😆

I feel ya op.

Last week my 88 year old mother photobombed an important Teams call with a valued client with “have you seen daddy his incontinence pants are on the floor”.

She doesn’t understand what Teams is, and being rather deaf didn’t hear I was even on a work call. (Father has late stage dementia and he was out with carer).

I always remember attending a Teams call during Covid and one of the external
participants, who was chairing the session, was clearly sat up, fully dressed, in bed. It was both bizarre and came across as really unprofessional.

It really depends on who you work with and what you do.

MN in general is really envious of people WFH and doesn't understand different ways of working and teams and assume everyone is taking the piss so you'll get answers that reflect that.