Starting Teams meetings 5-10 minutes early

[MagicStarrz]

Where I work, we have a lot of meetings on Teams, and certain people (not the meeting hosts or chairs, just attendees) will join the Teams meetings 5-10 minutes early which means everyone invited will get a notification that the meeting has started.

If you join early you just end up making pointless small talk with other attendees. I would understand this if it's people who want to have a social catch up but it's generally people who don't know each other so why to they join so early? Today it was 13:52 for a meeting scheduled to start at 2.

AIBU for just waiting until 13:59 or even 2 pm and then joining to avoid the pointless chat and also because I have other things to do?

lighthearted

I've always logged on a few minutes early to make sure I haven't got technical issues to sort out. I didn't realise it triggered a meeting has started notification. The meetings never actual start until the designated time anyway so i find it easier to set up, log in and put everything on silent and then get a drink and finish getting prepped.

Or maybe they are just more organised and efficient than others?

Indeed!

I always join early so I can talk to people "face to face' for a couple of minutes.

You know, in the overhead projector

The issue isn't people joining late, it's people joining early 😁

I don’t really classify 100 plus people as a meeting. Well I suppose a ‘town hall meeting’.

you are right, chairing these sort of events online is a nightmare - people drop in and drop out, half the people aren’t really even listening!

but I think it’s rude to be late to a proper meeting where you are exchanging information and are expected to contribute and add value.

I have one team member who will always log on ten minutes early. They have a lighter workload than some of the rest of us and accept that the rest of us won’t log on until the minute before.
If I’m presenting then I’ll log on 10 minutes before to deal with any inevitable questions so they don’t run into other people’s time.

Tangentially, I work in a large org and in our unit (ca. 150 people) our default is that ALL meetings start at 5 past the hour or half-hour, to give people time for a brew/loo break between back to backs. (FWIW we have at least one meeting a week with the whole unit.)

At first I thought it was weird but it's strange how quickly you get used to something like that. When we have to go to other people's meetings we're all quietly horrified at the vulgarity of the on-the-hour start times, as if everyone was doing Teams nekkid or something.

I join bang on the start time unless it's a small meeting with people I can't be arsed making small talk with, and then I join a minute late to avoid the chit chat ("sorry, got stuck on another call") 😂

Phantom was saying that she logs in early as the host/meeting chair in order to get sorted, she wasn't talking about the attendees

Definitely people who don’t have enough work on. I couldn’t join a meeting earlier than the start time if I wanted to! If I see it’s been started early I join at the meeting start time.

I'm not office based so teams meetings are after work/unpaid. Hence not being used to them in daily life I click to join well before the time just to make sure I'm doing it right! I've found we're all just waiting for meeting to be let in, which happens at the exact time?

That’s insane! I get annoyed even if people join 1 minute early

This never happens where I work. Most of us have a number of back to back meetings so you are (figuratively now it is all on teams - it used to be literally over 5 sodding floors!) running from room to room.

I chair a 100 people meeting a couple of times a year. We used to log on early to go through everything but then we had the odd person joining us which was awkward (my jokes are barely funny the first time, by the second they are rubbish!) so now we just book a separate meeting for the half hour before where we go through everything and then log onto the actually meeting at 1 minute to.

I join at the time the meeting is supposed to start.

I notice anyone who does that is usually the most inexperienced in the meeting.

I click the link, check my camera, microphone etc a few mins early.

That's because I've had cases where Teams wasn't working and I had to restart the app. But I only click join about 1 min before so I'm on time. No interest in small talk.