Have you ever startled yourself because you opened your phone and – oops! – left the camera in selfie mode? It’s an extremely unflattering angle. No doubt you’re looking down at your phone when you do this, which means you’re frowning over a double chin and your eyes look closed and/or you have resting bitch face.
That is among the top reasons I hate video meetings: I use a laptop so my webcam is capturing my image from almost the same awkward viewpoint.
I guess if I was going to just sit there immobile and stare into my webcam (optionally smiling), like some people (my manager, for example) seemingly do (I swear, on yesterday’s webcam I thought it was a still picture until I saw someone moving behind her), I could put my laptop on a stack of books so the webcam was at eye level and I was looking straight on.
Except still, when I look at my computer screen or at other meeting participants, it would still be about as unbecoming as taking a mirror selfie (in my opinion…because even if it’s a super-fox celebrity, they look like a narcissist, which is a total turn off…sorry to everyone who follows Kim, Kylie, and clan…this is MY opinion).
Recently someone sent me a Webex invitation for 8 a.m. Really dude?
Another time my manager asked me to join a video meeting, “just for the part I am presenting,” since she was going to be explaining to her new manager what our little team of five did, since we all work remotely, from home. Somehow, we ended up staying on the video meeting ALL DAY. Surprise!
As if that wasn’t dreadful enough, we had to do it again the next day.
I hadn’t planned for that, either.
Our new manager called me out for “sleeping” (I don’t know if I was just looking down or I had yawned or both) and for talking to someone in the next room (I had muted my phone but she could see that I was looking away from my laptop). OMG! I felt like I was in 5th grade the time I was accused of “clock watching.” Grrrrr!
Again, I hadn’t planned for this meeting!
I can see how video meetings might be okay for people as an alternative to traveling…for people who are already working in an office in business clothes. But for someone who works at home in sweatpants and a hoodie (with no makeup and Medusa hair) (and who realized during on video meeting around Easter time that the Christmas stockings were still on the mantel behind her desk chair), this is a step in the wrong direction and reason number two that I hate video meetings.
When I began working remotely for this company in 2006, my new manager suggested, “Hey, we should all get webcams!”
As my kids
I waited for someone else on the team of all women to tell him, “No, thank you.” And I have successfully steered clear from video meetings, until now.
Sure, I can get dressed up from the waist up and make sure everything behind me in my office area is seasonally appropriate, and try REALLY hard to look happily at the camera and keep my dogs out of the room, but…
…that means I have to sit there for the duration of the call.
I realized how much of a habit it has become to get up and walk around during meetings. Dialing the phone is my cue to get up and stretch my legs. Reason number three why I hate video meetings is that I am tethered to my desk. I can’t get up to get a coffee, get a snack, go to the bathroom, switch the laundry over, let the dogs in and out, or do any of the other things I do when I am “in a meeting,” including painting my nails.
I cannot multi-task.
If you’re typing, you’re not going to be looking at the webcam.
If you send email, chances are you’re sending it to the people you’re in a meeting with and they’ll see the timestamp.
You can’t look at your phone.
You can’t leave your desk. Though I did do that yesterday. I closed my webcam cover and walked away.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
I hate video meetings!
What are your thoughts about video meetings?
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