The Meeting Started While I Was Getting Into the Meeting

A video meeting is supposed to be easy. Click the link and talk to people. The whole point is that nobody has to travel anywhere.

Then you click the link.

Your browser asks whether you want to open the meeting app. You do. The app announces that an update is available. Fine. While it updates, you look back at the browser, which is still asking whether you want to open the app. Yes. That remains the plan.

Once the app opens, it needs permission to use your microphone and camera. Fair enough. It would be a strange meeting without either one. Then you get a preview of yourself, where you can check your audio, choose a background, and decide whether you look like a person who should be seen before noon.

You came here to hear about the schedule. Now you’re adjusting the lighting like you’re about to address the nation.

After that comes the waiting room. You have successfully opened the link, updated the app, granted permission, and reached the meeting. You are not yet in the meeting. Someone inside has to let you in.

This makes a certain amount of sense if the meeting is confidential. It feels slightly grander when the subject is who’s ordering more printer paper.

The strange part is that everyone treats this as the quick option. No commute, no conference room to find, no hunt for a chair. Instead, each person handles a small technical inspection at their own desk. The meeting hasn’t eliminated the trip. It has turned the trip into a series of buttons.

And you can’t really do it too early. Join fifteen minutes ahead of time and you’re sitting alone in a digital room, wondering whether your microphone is quietly broadcasting you clearing your throat. Join right on time and the app may decide this is the moment to download a new version of itself.

Eventually you get in. Somebody is sharing a screen, so all you can see is a spreadsheet and six tiny faces. You hear the last half of a sentence. Was it important? Nobody knows. You can ask everyone to repeat it, but now the meeting is about you getting into the meeting.

I’m not arguing for driving across town to discuss printer paper. This is better than that. I’m just saying that when a meeting requires an app update, three permissions, a camera check, and admission from a host, “click the link” is doing a lot of work.

And then somebody says, “Let’s give everyone another minute to join.”