FiL crawling round on work video call

[RuralStyleless]

Am I being over-sensitive here?
I was on a video call this morning when my 73yo FIL came to get some things from the room. I realised, muted, said I was on a call and assumed he would wait until I said I was free. A minute later, I realise he has come inside and is crawling around trying not to be seen (he absolutely would have been seen). It was an external call, so not even colleagues I could laugh it off with). I'm absolutely livid.

For context, my study / home office is used as our guest room. This is not normally an issue. I had also warned him I was starting work and had to be on video calls 30 minutes earlier.

YABU - he is old, doesn't get tech, and no one said anything
YANBU - what sort of idiot does that?

No one is being entirely reasonable, here.

My home office is our overflow guest room and it would never occur to me to keep using it for private work activities while guests were staying there - I move my set up to my own bedroom when it becomes an active guest room, especially if the guests are there for multiple days. Honestly if I was your guest I would probably take this set up as a hint that I'm not genuinely welcome (is that the case?) and make different plans if at all possible. I'm also fairly amazed that in 2025 anyone is doing client-facing video calls from home without locking the door internally... have we not all witnessed enough of the resulting bloopers to pay for the £15 privacy lock?

But none of that makes his choice reasonable or acceptable. Assuming he wasn't retrieving lifesaving emergency medication he was being an absolute plonker and should apologize.

And they do unblur when people are in them- the smart camera tries to find the people. I forever remember a naked top half of a man suddenly appearing in and out of the background for an external call with some clients, the clients partner must have been dressing or something as that torso was twisting around. Nobody said anything 😁

Exactly, having a background on almost makes this kind of movement more obvious 🤣
OP, I feel like you're having a bit of a hard time here, I don't think your setup is unreasonable. My FIL of a similar age would be mortified if we gave him one of our permanent bedrooms.

Poor old chap!

This could've been so much worse. At least he had some trousers on. I agree with other posters that it is not practical to use an office as a guest room at the same time. I would never remember to take out everything I needed for a whole day. I think a lock for while you're on calls is the only answer (if not possible to take your laptop elsewhere).

You have given me a laugh though, but I can understand your annoyance.

I totally understand why many people like working at home. Incidents like this highlight how it does pose certain challenges which we have to learn to navigate.

ExDP used to work full time at home in the living room, which meant I could never relax in the living room during the day. I really resented his office taking over our living room.

If you've got a background on and your camera is directly in front of you I doubt it picked him up. People only tend to pop into view when the go right up next to or behind the person talking.

Yabvu, still working from the guest room when you’ve a guest. Really poor tbh.

Is this the first time he's stayed with this set up?
It is quite restrictive to anticipate everything you might need for the whole day.

Is there anywhere else guests can leave their things and just sleep in the office, rather than keeping their things in there as well? Then they have access to their belongings whenever they want and won't need to disturb you.

It sounds to me like he genuinely didn't think it would be a problem. I think you should have a conversation with guests if you're working during their visit where you make it clear that being on a call means nobody is to enter the room unless it is to tell you that the house is on fire. There's no sense expecting him to telepathically know that is what you mean by "I'm on a video call" especially if it's not something he has personal, professional experience of (which is nothing to do with age except that of course he may have retired before this became a more common thing).

He might have thought you were warning him that he may appear in a video, letting him know why you weren't acknowledging him so he didn't think you were rude, or you were requesting that he stay quiet and unobtrusive, which it sounds like he tried to do. Unless you specifically said in advance that "I'm on a call" means do not enter, not everybody will assume that.

The blurring btw is likely to have kept him screened. It only unblurs if it sees a face, it's not tuned to look for people crawling on the floor. DH used that setting a lot in lockdown when there was plenty of crawling on the floor by the DC because he was working in the living room.

That is hilarious, I would have been crying with laughter. I had to switch my camera off when a very serious client fiddled with his settings in a call and ended up with some kind of filter that made it look like his head was a smiley emoji!

He was getting his trousers? Look on the bright side, he might have been in his underpants 😁

If you have someone over, they’re entitled to a private space during the entirety of their stay if you’re putting them up in a room. Especially an elderly relative - very rude of you.

He shouldn’t have commando crawled, but it is a funny sight.

Don’t you have an organisational/other background or a blur effect on? I don’t ever have my surroundings on view.

I think you are having a sense of humour failure, TBH.

Hilarious ! The poor man 🤣.

Have you told him execs in the global sphere have all seen his antics and will be viral soon ?

Pop a fake background on if you'd rather not share your actual background.
Then he wouldn't have to crawl to accommodate your call.
Win-win.

As Sister Michael would say, that’s actually quite funny.

This is funny but I feel bad for your FIL!!

You can’t deny guests access to the room they are staying in!

My rule is that if a guest is staying, the room they re using is their room and I would not even go in there without asking first.

The opening post of the thread says

"...said I was on a call and assumed he would wait until I said I was free...."

The assumption would appear to have been incorrect.

The others on the call are unlikely to have seen much and even less likely to have cared. If you were sharing a screen at the time they probably weren’t even looking at the video of you, or you were a small box. They’d have been more unimpressed if he’d made a noise!

Meh. Granted I work in a not very corporate industry but it happens from time to time. I’ve had glimpses of the partners or kids of people I’ve been on calls with (not internal meetings) and last week my toddler made an appearance on a call with me; granted I’d agreed to join an important call on my day off and it had been scheduled for nap time, but toddlers will be toddlers so of course he woke up just as it started. I just apologised while he waved hello to everyone and then turned my camera and mic off until I needed to contribute.

Most families don’t have room to give someone a whole spare room for a week. It would be a major reorganisation for anyone to move out of their bedroom at home. A week is a long time: fish and guests go bad after 3 days as they say. As someone the same age as OPs FIL, I wouldn’t stay this long in anyone’s house. I would stay in a nearby hotel. It gives both the guest and the visitor a break from each other at each end of the day.

I'm sorry I voted YABU as it was too funny to criticise him. You paint a vivid picture 🤣 an the old boy must have been pretty stressed/ unsure of the etiquette to be dropping and commando rolling at 73. You really need some new tech in case of a future adventure like this!

Kick a rubber wedge under the door when you are on call.