Early in the pandemic, most of my 50+ year old coworkers didn't even think to mute, so nearly every meeting started out with this horrific reverb that was so bad that you couldn't understand what was being said. That is, until five minutes passed and 15 messages came in through the chat asking people to mute and we could finally get the boomers to comply. After a couple months I started to feel awkward and like I was becoming the, "please mute your mics" guy, because I'd say it at virtually every meeting, but it was so bad you could hardly understand the person who was speaking. You'd think after a week or two, you'd learn that you needed to mute. Apparently not.

It seared into me that I need to make sure I'm muted at every virtual meeting where I'm not the one talking.