To hate the bit of a Teams meeting where you're waiting for everyone to join?

[Preps]

I'm not great at small talk at the best of times, especially with people senior to me. My strategy to avoid it at the start of a f2f meeting is to ask who wants coffee 😆

In a Teams meeting the 90sec while everyone joins can be excruciating!

Ha - this is me too. Although I have to reign it in a bit as I have a lot of meetings with clients I've never met before and my boss (who sets them up) is pathologically late, so need to try and make a good first impression. It's tough as I can't really even start introductions till my boss arrives. I often do the "whereabouts in the country are you? What's the weather like?" stuff. It is painful though. Also agree with PP about the end. This is almost worse. I'm terrible for doing naff waving 😬

So British, yet so absolutely true! I had a 2 minute conversation with a client this morning. One minute of it was discussing the actual point, and one minute was the weather.

Imagine how much extra time we'd have in our lives if we stopped talking about the weather! 😂

I do agree with you though OP. If I've not organised the meeting, I'll just leave it until the very last minute to join, then keep my camera and mic off until I know others are there.

I ended up on a very awkward call the other week though where I was hosting with a colleague and a client. The client was 15 mins late, so me and my colleague were sat there staring at our screens / at each other, making small talk, while, in reality, sitting about 15 feet away from each other!

I felt awkward, but tend to just brazen it out nowadays and just get on with stuff on the other screen.

Oh and I hate the meeting end buttons on Zoom - Teams you click it once and it goes. Zoom you have to click twice, which I inevitably forget so end up waving with a silly grin whilst attempting to correctly log out.

Our organisation has a policy that you must log on to training sessions 10 minutes before the start time. I do, but keep my camera and microphone off until it starts. We also have to have the camera on for the full training session even if not actively participating. I hate staring at my face for a full day!

I either join just as it's starting (so no waiting) or I just say "Hi everyone, I'll say on mute til we get going" then mute myself until it starts and I need to speak.

Lol - I am the chair on a number of those, and I use this to have a chat with the ones on there. We are a global, virtual team, and having some non-work talk is really important to bring the team together… even if it is about the weather in UK vs Canada/ Dubai/ Hong Kong etc

I love doing naff waving!

Morning everyone, let’s wait for some others to join and then get going.

« put mic on mute »

Job done.

One minute late is entitled behaviour? Jeez

you’d get short shrift from me if you were micro managing your team members by the minute.

pretty poor behaviour of the teams members are so unprofessional and can't be on time.

Where does it stop? Everyone "waits for people to join in first". That can last awhile 😂

Most of us have to finish on the dot because we have back to back meetings. Really can't be bothered to deal with the tourists who can't make the effort to be on time.

accepting back to back meetings every day is poor time management in itself.

When I host meetings they start on time. No waiting, I'll change the agenda order if someone is missing.

Looks like I'm not alone. Expecting people to be on time is not micro managing, it's etiquette. Being late is a sign of someone thinking their time is more important than any one else's.

🙄

not all of us need to faff around and waste time during our working hours ,or are so bored they need to spread out the meetings😂

Oof, wouldn't want to work in these "to the minute" workplaces. My (large) organisation is very chill about it, no micromanaging here, it's expected that people take short breaks, make a cup of tea and have a wee between meetings and chit-chat for the first few minutes. If you were in back-to-back meetings without taking breaks you would get told off by occy health.

I just sit and do some crochet while I wait for people to join. Nbd.

Yep, I am always one minute late - not late enough to be 'late' as it could just be teams connecting, but late enough to avoid that bit

Join, keep your camera off and stay on mute. Type into chat "brb" and wait for everyone to join then type "back" and turn on your camera

exactly. i find those constantly in back to back are often just attending meetings for the sake of it.

Cam off, stay on mute and get on with what I was doing. If someone asks me how I am, they get a "fine thanks" and I go back on mute. If the meeting is in by 5 mins and it still hasn't started, I hang up.

Can't be arsed with any small talk with colleagues.

that's the attitude that forces some companies to bring people back in the workplace 😂, or why others think being in the office with such timewasters is hell

I have a life out of my job personally, I don't waste my working hours, or make my working day longer by "making tea" or gossiping with my colleagues.

I can't imagine someone micro-managing my calendar telling me that I should push a meeting back because I must be a good girl, and make myself a cup of tea 😂😂

Same here, I guess office culture varies a lot. Also a large multinational company. I couldn't bear being micromanaged to the minute, we're all adults. Anyway, our meetings rarely start bang on time - there's always someone coming from another meeting, or making a cuppa. I join a minute late to avoid the chit-chat, not work.

"I'm just going to finish this email while we're waiting for the others to join".

That way you're not holding the meeting up but no-one will expect you to talk.

About a year ago I accidentally started a global townhall meeting due to be taken by the CEO and other senior members of staff.

I misread the time (it covered about 5 timezones) thought I was 15 minutes late, so i thought i'd just slip in unnoticed. I infact started the meeting 15 minutes early. Not even sure how and why I had the permissions to do it?

I noticed immediately and logged off but not before the 300 odd people attending the meeting would have seen seen the hideous "Crunchymum has started the meeting" message pop up. 😂

Thankfully I wasn't the only fuckwit to do it. Someone else did it 5 minutes later and didn't immediately log off so it was much more noticeable - they actually got messaged in the meeting chat to kindly log off as the meeting hadn't started yet and they weren't hosting, so my indiscretion was mainly forgotten.

Unsurprisingly the permissions were changed and this hasn't happened since!!

I couldn't bear being micromanaged to the minute, we're all adults.

Setting up a meeting at a certain time for everyone is not exactly micromanaging.
expecting people to arrive on time at a meeting is hardly micromanaging.
Having to literally pick their hand and walk them to the meeting room, or in front of their screen on the other hand...