Sometimes Coworkers Need A Mute Button

At work, we’re having a huge meeting that includes both people in a large meeting room and people calling in from other locations. As usually happens with this sort of thing, the speakerphone unit in the meeting room picks up different speakers with varying levels of volume and clarity.

At one point, the current speaker is rather far from the phone, and somebody decides they need to discuss a previous point with a whispered side-conversation directly over the speakerphone!

I break in to say, “Sorry to interrupt, but when you’re having a side-conversation near the phone, we can’t hear anything the speaker is saying.”

A few of the people on the call-in lines agree with my comment, and the whisperers apologize — and then proceed to have their whispered conversation anyway, solving the problem by putting the speakerphone on mute while they’re whispering!