Internet Excuses for a Work Meeting

Broadband is the only workplace variable that everyone accepts without evidence, largely because everyone has been on the other side of it. You have watched a colleague turn into four frozen rectangles mid-sentence. You have heard the word 'sorry' arrive nine seconds after the thing it was apologising for. This is a shared national experience and it buys enormous patience. The details are what make it real, and the details are usually true. The router is from 2016 and has developed opinions. There are two people in the house on calls and you have discovered, empirically, that the limit is two. The provider's status page says 'we're aware', which it has said since nine o'clock this morning and which is doing a lot of emotional work for a company that is not, in fact, aware. The move that turns a bad connection from a problem into a non-event is offering a fallback in the same breath: video off, phone dial-in, or following in the chat and answering in writing. A colleague with poor bandwidth and a plan is fine. A colleague who buffers silently for eleven minutes is a meeting derailment. Below are ten internet excuses for a work meeting, plus twenty in the generator.