😂 that would be funny!
Or stand behind them and quietly start undressing…
An approach taken by a candidate on a GDPR training one of our team attended this year. Apparently the other webinar attendee thought she had switched off her camera and so started going for a full change...All other candidates were muted and so the chat erupted but the course lead was not looking...
Suspect a posh bloke using big words off here in a cafe is going to annoy you regardless of how he’s conducting his conversational discourse.
But yeah, depends really. One of the joys of remote working is being able to sit somewhere that serves nice coffee and cake while you work. I tend to try and avoid combining meetings and cafe but it sometimes happens and I just try use an accent and words no-one overhearing will understand.
On the one hand - we seem to now operate just do whatever you want these days. (I like old fashioned etiquette though.) And the person is hopefully spending money keeping the coffee shop going.
On the other - I mean, it's a coffee shop, stop pretending it's a working environment.
I don't mind; cafes are public spaces, and the public use them. I should think that café owners don't mind the business suit in the corner making calls, it's probably better for custom than an empty café after all.
If someone's being loud and obnoxious on the phone then I'll do the British thing and tskk to myself, I may even do a Paddington Bear hard-stare. But beyond that, isn't it just mild inconvenience? I dunno, maybe they flat-share and its the sharee's turn to have the lounge space to themselves, maybe their spouse works from home, maybe they've been told by their boss to drop everything and get on the call...
I've done it once when I was waiting to have my windscreen fixed (short notice and day before I was going on holiday so didn't have the luxury of picking a time), luckily the meeting I was in I was mostly listening, but I hadn't realised how noisy a cafe is even with headphones. Not an experience I wish to repeat in the future.
We also can't use public wifi so have to make do with phone hotspot
I just try use an accent and words no-one overhearing will understand
@thebunk Later today Cafe meeting 😉😊
Don't see what the problem is. Cafes are supposed to be busy places with people popping in and out. Trains also Ok with me. Firm no to restaurants and driving of course.
Why is it OK in a cafe but not a restaurant? What if the cafe also serves meals?
I don’t mind; cafes are public spaces, and the public use them.
Playing devil's advocate with the 'public space' logic, then you'd also be OK with someone having a teams meeting on their laptop in a church? A GPs waiting room? Your local bike shop?
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you btw, just wondering how the boundaries of acceptable/unacceptable are defined. I know these have been blurred a bit in recent years with WFH etc.
If you're discrete, but the people who have a phone at arms length and on loud speaker during calls.................
We are not allowed to use public wifi for work
Same here. I find this a bit odd as we use a VPN and even without that, things like Teams use encryption for data in transit and at rest. Maybe @cougar can provide some insight into this
Because not everyone is savvy or disciplned enough to use it consistently.
There is a lot of middle aged angst in this thread. 🙂 People doing new things!
I find that the loud music in most Cafes and coffee shops round here make taking teams calls impossible.
I don't know why they all have to have it.
Infuriated of Perthshire!
Have a meeting every Monday morning a participant of which often joins from a train 🤷
Errr, that's surely entirely normal?
The best thing about traveling by train is being productive and not spending several hours of my life that VW/Ford/Vauxhall/Citroen/whoever make a nice place to sit and waste several hours achieving nothing.
I have the same issue with folk having conversations with other folk sitting at the same table. Surely everybody should be sat in complete silence?
Most people:
- Use a volume level that you'd use in any other meting to project across a room.
- use either airpods or the laptops mic, neither of which are the right tool for the job. To stand a hope in hell's chance of differentiating your voice from the background the mic needs to be as close to your mouth as possible, and it decays by the square of distance, so your airpods 6" from your mouth are hearing it 36x quieter than a headset mic 1" away, to your laptopo a couple of feet away it's 576x quieter.
Surprised at the angst on this. Surely <i>most</i> are dialling in expecting to listen rather than speak, or do anything terribly important in a noisy environment? Presumably Dom Joly phone calls far more egregious as they’re two-way?
Cafe owner’s space so their rules, but it would be a curious list. No electronic devices, no phone calls, regulated conversation volume, limitations on conversational content … Or maybe leave alone the poor bugger having to whisper into a Teams call in the corner with a coffee and crumbly croissant?
Saying that, calls on trains in quiet carriage boil pee (cue aforementioned Paddington Bear stare).
My team used to be spread out and the weekly team meeting was when people were driving home. Some of us would have a 2 or 3 hour drive home.
On one team call I remember shouting "FU****" at the top of my voice as a tanker vered into my lane as I was about to pass. Meeting broke up soon after that!
I stopped talking on the calls after that and just listened in.
I stopped talking on the calls after that and just listened in.
I'll happily listen to a call that I have zero participation or need to see visuals in on the hands free while driving. - daily operations updates that kind of thing.
Anything I have to contribute to no chance.
Cafe depends on the cafe really. Costabucks .... No worries but I'll do it using the phones data.
I am a big fan of headsets. Even at home. Pet peeve in calls is people who think their laptop mic is an appropriate piece of hardware for a conference call. Newsflash You sound like a potato.
Pet peeve in calls is people who think their laptop mic is an appropriate piece of hardware for a conference call.
Infuriating.
Currently imagining a coffee shop scene where each and every chair is fitted with a hand brake and the clientele are ask just ratcheting them up and down like crazy while forking smashed avocado and pouring yak milk lattes down their throats.
I think I see the problem.
You're confusing cafes and libraries.
Trains also have quiet carriages, you're quite welcome to use them if you don't want to hear other folk working. If it's not an option then you were never going to have a quiet trip anyway.
I have occasional meetings in cafes via Teams or Webex and don't perceive that it is a major annoyance for other users, Reduction of background noise has reached a very advanced stage. I have seen demos of Webex where someone is on a meeting and someone else was using a vacuum cleaner a couple of feet away and that noise was completely inaudible to people on the call.
People working from diverse locations is only going to increase and, if they are considerate I cannot really see any issue with it.
