Preliminary Finding on Calendar Call Migration
If calendar call migration happens twice, the call must treat it as etiquette until someone risks objecting.
OFFICIAL APPLICATION FOR REVIEW
Re: Calendar Call Migration, Behavioral Status and Potential Escalation
Filed: December 2022
Nature of the Application
This application requests a formal review of calendar call migration as currently practiced and asks that the review body consider whether the current trajectory requires intervention or whether the trajectory has already become too established for intervention to be legible.
Description of the Observed Behavior
Someone moves from one video call to another without standing up between them. The transition takes approximately four seconds. The previous call ends. The next call begins. The person's physical position does not change. Their face reappears in a new grid.
Statement of Concern
The concern is not with the behavior itself. Sitting is efficient. The concern is that the behavior, having been adopted without discussion by a majority of participants, now functions as invisible requirement.
First consequence. The first case of calendar call migration changes one small decision without being discussed. Someone who had planned to take a short break between calls does not, because ending one call and immediately joining the next has been established, by volume of example, as the correct approach.
Second consequence. After repetition, other people begin adjusting their behavior around calendar call migration. Breaks between calls become unofficial absences requiring unofficial explanation. The explanation is given. It is received without acknowledgment. The acknowledgment is not required.
Third consequence. Eventually calendar call migration acquires an unwritten enforcement system that everyone denies creating. Being visible in the next call within an acceptable transition window is now, functionally, punctuality. Being late is now defined in part by whether another call can plausibly have caused it.
The relevant absurd rule: meeting etiquette is valid whenever enough people copy a behavior before anyone names it. Nobody named this. It is named now. It will not change.
Requested Action
The application requests that the review body acknowledge this finding and take no action. No action is the appropriate response.
Application submitted in the spirit of documentation.