Muted

Nadine Clarke arrived at work a few minutes early. She sat down at her desk, fired up her computer, and sipped the coffee she’d brought from home. She had a Zoom meeting starting soon and needed to prepare. She didn’t understand why she had to come into the office in person to participate in a Zoom meeting, but she supposed she was used to it.

When it was time to join the meeting, Nadine clicked on the meeting invitation, and familiar faces filled the screen. She said hello, but no one responded.

“I must be muted,” she said, even though saying you’re muted out loud was always pointless. She chuckled to herself and checked her settings. She wasn’t muted. She checked her headphones, which seemed to be working. She turned her mic off, then on again.

"Can anybody hear me?" she asked. No one replied to her at all, but the meeting started as it normally did.

She could hear everyone else just fine. Nadine’s boss had the camera pointed at his forehead as usual, because he didn’t know how to adjust his camera. He made a joke about “zooming in” and everyone else fake-laughed. Nadine tried to weigh in with an update, but other people just kept talking.  

Why couldn’t they hear her?  

Oh well. She would just listen for the rest of the meeting. She planned to take detailed notes — at least that was something she was good at — but then Nadine realized there was an AI bot already taking notes. She tried to arrange her face to look like she was still participating somehow.

After the meeting ended, Nadine decided to venture out to get herself another coffee. She went to a café near her office. When she got to the front of the line, she ordered a latte with oat milk. The barista was a young man who looked like he was in his 20s. He didn’t respond to her request (the music was pretty loud in there), so she repeated herself.

“Excuse me? Could I please have a small latte with oat milk?” Nadine asked.  

Nothing.

“Or, sorry, do I have to call it a ‘tall?’” she tried. Still no response.

She turned to the person behind her, a man who looked like he was in his 30s and was wearing a suit.

“Can you hear me?” she asked him. It was a joke; of course, he could hear her. “I mean, it is just me, or is that barista completely ignoring me?”

The man didn’t respond, although he seemed to be very interested in listening to the conversation of the two twenty-something women behind him. Well, maybe he was just absorbed in eavesdropping on a riveting drama. Nadine walked over to where the coffee orders were waiting to be picked up.

“Latte with oat milk!” the barista said.

“Is this mine?” she asked, but no one answered. She shrugged. “I’m taking this!” she shouted as she took the coffee. “I didn’t pay for it. Sorry to whoever ordered it. They’ll make you another one, I guess?”

Nadine hoped maybe her petty coffee theft would at least trigger a response, but to her surprise, nobody did anything as she walked back outside with her coffee. Nadine was usually quite the rule follower, so this was very unlike her, but it seemed like it was the only way she could get a coffee, and she really needed one. A teenage girl was making her way into the coffee shop as Nadine was leaving.

“Excuse me,” Nadine said to her. “This might sound crazy, but can you hear me?”

The girl didn’t say anything, although Nadine realized that the girl had earbuds in. Nadine tried to gesture for her to remove her earbuds, but the girl didn’t pay her any attention whatsoever.

Nadine went back to her office. She said hello to one of her colleagues on the way back to her desk. He didn’t seem to hear her. Maybe he was deep in concentration and didn’t want to lose focus. Still, it seemed like a pattern was starting to emerge.

“What on earth is going on today?” she asked.