I offer this evidence to the contrary.
Yesterday: I’ve been working offsite for a little over a month and I realized yesterday, on my own, the the button I’ve been thinking was the mute button this whole time is actually the speaker phone button (which does nothing when I’m listening in the headset). This mean that on all those conference calls in the last month or so (2-4 a week, average of 10 people per call), while I thought I was flying under the radar, everyone could actually here me breath/type/yawn/make whispered lunch plans with my coworker. And nobody ever said anything. My hope is that (a) there were too many voices on the calls to actually hear me and (b) I was being pretty quiet anyway, rather than there being a whats-with-the-new-girl-should-we-say-something-to-her email chain going around.
Today: I was feeling all sassy this morning when I dialed into my call early and pressed *6 to mute — until roll call time came and #6 did not unmute. On one end of the line was my boss was having a serious Ferris Beuller moment (Schmieder? Schmieder?), while on the other was me frantically pressing #6 over and over again and shouting “Erin’s here! Erin’s here!” for the benefit of my cubicle row. I followed this up by sending an email to a few people explaining I was indeed on the call but that “for some reason I could not turn off the mute.” My boss sent one back saying “OK…..thanks.” As an act of resignation, just before the end of call, I pressed #6 one final time and received the “Your call has been taken off mute!” message. I pressed *6 to mute again.
Of course, my real fear is that I am actually an adult and this is just how it’s going to be.
