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?

I'm retired now, but I remember the tedium of Teams meetings and how they were enlivened by random cats, children and crawling fathers-in-law.

If the call was that important the door should have been locked.

My former MIL appeared behind me on a teams call, naked. This was all part of her “women shouldn’t work and be home with the kids all the time” protest. She said she thought what I was doing “couldn’t be that important.”

That’s true, but in this instance the OP does have a room, and it seems a laptop they can easily move into their own bedroom/another space. If it were a huge setup with multiple screens and heavy duty IT equipment, that is somewhat different & not ideal (as is the case for us).

Work does involve more than technology. I have a laptop, but if I were to move away from my workspace to work elsewhere for any length of time I would have to move several files, some lists of information that I use frequently, a notepad, pens, sticky notes, stapler, hole puncher etc etc. And I'd still have to go in there to use the printer.

I think you have to appreciate this is an alien world to people of that generation. It is made equally difficult by that being his space when he is with you. I wouldn't be angry, but I would perhaps have a chat about it. You could also take action, like blurring your background so it wouldn't make any impact at all.
Last year, my DM was seriously ill and I spent considerable time WFH at their home. One day I was in a significant Government meeting and my DDad came in with a cup of tea. I was mortified. And, they were human. They knew why I was working there, they appreciated my commitment and they asked him to make them one!

I'd much rather need to vacate a guest room / home office for most of the day than sleep in my host's bedroom.

OP sounds like a perfectly hospitable host (not least because the guests presumably know the deal before they come), and FIL sounds kind, albeit not all that tech-savvy!

I'm now off the Teaching Register, but still did supply last year. Our Professional Development Sessions were done on Teams.

My home laptop just about copes with Teams but is a 12 yr old Macbook Air and its operating system won't let me update to the extent where I can blur backgrounds or insert virtual backgrounds for Teams and Zoom.

Maybe I am thick, but since retiring from my permanent post and going onto supply whilst dealing with other matters I do find the tech side of things more challenging. (And no, I couldn't afford to buy another laptop on what I was earning on one day a week to supplement my reduced pension. Mind you, I now live on my own, so it's highly unlikely that someone would appear behind me.)

As I mentioned above, I joined virtual church services during lockdown and you'd often see bits of hands or whatever coming in and out of view even when people had managed to use virtual backgrounds or to blur.

I do now participate in some social activities online, but still can't blur or sort out a background. The program tells me that I require a green screen, which I don't have.

Bloody hell! She did that deliberately?

My thought as a woman in her 60s is that (a) she's horribly vindictive and (b) she must be rather overconfident in herself.

ETA Yes, she's probably younger than I am. Even so...

So many people with cat's-bum faces telling the OP what a terrible host and bad DIL she is!

It's family, not a state visit by the Emperor or a room someone has paid ££££ for and is then not allowed into.

I work at home and no I am not setting up a desk in my bedroom for the 2% of the time we have a guest. It'd be cramped and inconvenient, and I want to see pone room work-free.

It's a simple thing to understand: 'I will be on a call and the room out of bounds from 10–11am, so make sure you take with you anything you might need.'

He could and should have planned in advance, or waited a bit for his precious trousers.

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 colleague

HOW did it take a minute to see someone in the same room, crawling on the floor?

It doesn't make sense.

Have you not been able to understand?
It IS her office. It just functions as a guest room for about 20% of the time they actually have guests.

My dad does this... will go and stand behind my DP when he is on zoom calls and just be in the shot...
We ignore him. He doesn't understand technology.

YABU - he is old, doesn't get tech, and no one said anything

You are unreasonable for saying he is too old at 73 to understand tech.

My DH is that almost his age and builds our own desktop computers from scratch.

We are both 70s and highly proficient with tech, thank you. As are most of our generation. .It annoys me when you youngsters think people my age are decrepit.

Swap bedrooms, give him yours and then you can work peacefully and do the leopard crawling :)

I love seeing people’s dogs in meetings.

Yet another poster thinking that 73 is unaware of tech.

My H and his colleagues, now in their 70s , managed and designed huge IT systems internationally for decades, systems that controlled oil rigs, gas pipelines, nuclear power systems.

Please stop this ageism.

Amazed people think our entire lives should be rearranged for my hubbys dad
Working from another room for a few days is not exactly rearranging your entire lived though, is it?
Even if it is from your bedroom. And yes, you have a whole setup, we all do! How long to move your laptop, screens etc? 10min?

How long would it take him to get the things he needed from his room before the OP went into her meeting? Two minutes?

Well if it doesn't suit he can stay elsewhere I would have thought.

If I stay with someone I don't expect them to rearrange things & I fit in around them.

My parents absolutely don’t get the concept of being on Teams calls etc. and I’ve had similar happen, it is what it is and everybody on that call will have seen something like that multiple times I imagine.

What if she doesn’t have space in another room? I don’t have a desk in my bedroom to hold all my equipment the office is a spare room with a daybed.

Yep DH is a WFH graphic designer, his screen is massive and he has a powerful computer, thus housed in a tower. Not all jobs are laptop friendly, some require big screens or multiple screens.

😂😂😂😂

I was focusing on my call?

When the pandemic started and I started wfh DH didn’t really get Teams Meetings. We had to have a Proper Talk when he “came into” a senior client meeting in his too-short dressing gown, plonked down a cup of tea he’d made for me, and had a (justified) go at me about some minor domestic issue.

It took about a year for people to stop asking me when they should expect the tea break.