The meeting starts at 2:00. It’s 2:00.
Seven faces appear. Nobody speaks.
Three full seconds of silence. In video call time, that’s a geological era.
The Opening Gambit
Someone finally goes: “Can everyone hear me?”
Four people nod. Two people say “yep.” One person says “yep” a half-second late so it lands in the silence afterward, alone, like a dropped plate.
The Collision Protocol
Two people start talking at the exact same moment.
Both stop. “Sorry, go ahead.” — “No, you go.” — “No, please, you had something.”
Neither goes. The floor is now unclaimed. A third person, sensing a vacuum, jumps in with something unrelated.
The original two never get to say their thing. It’s lost. It might have been important. We’ll never know.
The Mute Casualty
Someone has been talking for forty seconds. Passionately. With gestures.
The chat fills up: “you’re on mute” / “MUTE” / “🔇” / “can’t hear you!”
They see it. Their face changes. They unmute and say “sorry — I’ll start over” and then deliver a version that’s noticeably worse than the first one, because nobody can perform the same speech twice.
The Frozen Face
Someone’s video locks up mid-sentence with their mouth open and eyes half-closed.
You are now staring at the worst possible frame of a colleague you have to respect. It stays like that for ninety seconds.
Nobody mentions it. Everyone’s thinking about it.
The One Guy Who Isn’t Muted
Somewhere, a dog. A leaf blower. A distant conversation about a return at Home Depot.
The sound follows the meeting like weather. Nobody can identify the source. Everybody’s checking their own mic just in case it’s them.
The Ending Ritual
“Okay, I think that’s everything. Anyone have anything else?”
Nobody does. But nobody says so.
Then: “Alright, thanks everyone!” — followed by six people saying “thanks!” “bye!” “thank you!” in an overlapping cascade, plus one person raising a hand and waving at nothing.
Everyone hovers over Leave. Nobody wants to be first. Nobody wants to be last.
The Straggler
You leave. Two people are still on. You’ll never know what they said.
Probably nothing. Probably they were also waiting.
The meeting could have been an email. Everyone knew this. It went 34 minutes.