Working from home has thrown many of us out of our comfort zones. We don’t have a familiar, professional environment to immerse ourselves in when the work needs to be done. We’re stuck in our own living rooms, bedrooms, or, if we’re particularly lucky, home offices.
Remote work has also posed the new challenge of video calling.
More people than ever are now using the likes of Zoom for meetings – and if you’ve used it yourself, you’ll know that the challenge of turning on your screen or sound at the start of a meeting never gets easier.
But for some people, technological video calling issues are the least of their problems – their biggest worry comes from their own family members.
There are so many stories of quarantine conference calls gone wrong, and they’re all as awkward as they’re hilarious.
From screaming children to naked post-showered husbands on a towel hunt, cats climbing over laptops and dogs being sick, we really have seen it all this year.
If it hasn’t happened to you yet, count yourself lucky – most likely you don’t have to be involved with any meetings at all, or, like many people, you would have suffered at least a small form of embarrassment.
Take one teacher from Australia, Deanne Bourke.
She shared a video on YouTube after her boxer dog, Archie, decided that Deanne should be giving him the attention, not the pupils on her call.
She also shared the video to Facebook page Boxer Lovers Australia, along with the caption: “Archie is 7 years old and very happy to have me home while I teach my Year 2 class remotely. But not on this day!”
The video is simple yet hilarious: as Deanne tries to read from a storybook, Archie does his best to interrupt her.
As the video begins, Archie slinks into the scene and sits close to Deanne, facing her with quite a haughty expression on his face.
Deanne deliberately ignores her unwanted pupil and continues to read from her storybook.
This offends Archie, who sits back, almost as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing.
His own mom, ignoring him! He knows he has to take extra measures to get her attention, so he starts pawing her leg.
This continues on for the rest of the video. Archie goes from looking disturbed that Deanne is ignoring him, to climbing all over her and pawing her for attention.
He’s certainly used to being the baby in this family, and he clearly can’t understand what Deanne is playing at.
The funniest thing about the whole video is that Deanne is trying her best to stay professional and completely tune out her attention-demanding pup, which only makes him try harder to distract her from her job.
Boxers are known for being a particularly attention-seeking breed, and tend to follow their owners around wherever they go.
Because of their hilarious expressions, it’s hard not to give in to their demands for your time.
The fellow boxer owners in Deanne’s Facebook group found Deanne’s doggy video interruption hilarious, with one person writing:
“I don’t think the children would have been listening to your story today. Archie was too cute to ignore”
Others told Deanne that she was lucky that Archie had sat still throughout the whole meeting, with boxers being such excitable dogs. It could have been worse!
If you need a pick-me-up today, this video will do it. Scroll down and click “play” below to give it a watch.
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