The one simple choice that could transform your workday

In 2023, an Australian news presenter descended into helpless giggles when her on-air guest accidentally applied a Zoom filter that adorned him with a tiny pizza hat. While the full recording is lost to the mists of time, I can say with vast confidence that witnessing a bashful man from the Royal Automobile Association flee the screen, thanks to the indignity of his tiny pizza hat, was infinitely more entertaining and joyful than whatever he was there to discuss. Cars, I imagine.

Zoom and other video call mainstays – like Google Meet or the blighted and forbidden Microsoft Teams – have cemented their place in work culture, thanks to the rise of remote work and the legacy of COVID lockdowns.

For many, this means much of your day is spent staring at your co-workers shrunken into tiny grey squares, microphone muted, an open tab with a beguiling lamp for sale demanding your attention.

No matter how exciting, fun or satisfying your career is, the day-to-day drudgery of the 9-to-5 can swiftly become a monotonous bore. The office transforms into a depressing, yoghurt smelling cage, your desk a yoghurt-spattered shackle; and Cindy from HR, a nightmare who keeps offering you yoghurt. It’s easy to get bored. I once worked in an office where a truck got stuck in the street, and we all gathered to watch it fail to budge for about four hours – seriously, a stationary truck was more interesting than our jobs.

This begs the question: why are we letting our video calls remain such a dull punishment when, with just a click of a button, they could easily become a fun and whimsical experience?

For most professional situations, you’re presented with two key video options: the ever-mysterious blurred background or the bold declaration of going au naturel, an untouched background that offers a brief and usually uninteresting window into your co-workers lives, minus the celebrity cameo from an angry, food-begging cat or a glimpse of a snoozing dog.

It’s time to spruce up our video call backgrounds.Credit: Getty Images

The blur is an incontrovertibly untrustworthy move to make. What are you trying to hide from the greedy eyes of your co-workers? A scary hoarder’s house full of filth? Or perhaps you’re “working from home” from a pristine island beach somewhere.

Once, in the early days of the COVID lockdowns, the chief executive of a company I worked for jumped on Zoom to give us a company-wide motivational speech about how “we’re all in this together”. As I watched from my cramped share houseroom, surrounded by a baker’s dozen of housemates queuing for the bathroom, the entire company was treated to the vast expanse of his mansion, which overlooked a sunny ocean. He later tried to make a martini on camera before announcing a round of redundancies.

So, if the boring yet “professional” options for video call backgrounds are already fraught with complications, why not treat everyone to something a bit more fun and funky?

Imagine the joy you might provide your depressed and lumpen co-workers when they log on to find your head awkwardly hovering over a cartoon beach? When we can’t afford holidays, what a thrill to see the pixelated cityscape of New York or Paris and dream of future travels. Sure, it’s no truck stuck in a tight street, but the bar is truly that low. When your job involves wrangling a large and petulant Excel spreadsheet, even the slightest hint of whimsy is like rain on a drought-parched wheat field. So go ahead, set your Zoom background as an asteroid in outer space! No one will actually think you’re floating in the void, but it might be nice for them to imagine.

The pursuit of justice is one of the most serious and sacred institutions in a democratic society (or so I’ve gathered from 8000 hours of Law and Order), but even those hallowed halls aren’t immune to a welcome injection of silliness. In 2021, a county attorney in Texas went viral for accidentally appearing in Zoom court proceedings as a cute little cat. A judge, two lawyers, and a moist-eyed kitten all forced to take a case seriously. Did it impact the pursuit of justice? Did it diminish their capacity to send a criminal to the firing squad? No – all it did was bring a little bit of joy into everyone’s lives, a dash of razzle to a tired old courtroom that they’ll all remember.

A lawyer accidentally left a cat filter on when appearing in court in Texas

Be bold! Use technology to help you become the online personality hire of your workplace. Times are tough, after all, and who do you think will get fired first? The fun and whimsical video background guy who makes everyone happy? Or depressing Cindy and her un-blurred yoghurt-strewn house? The only exception to this rule? If you work in HR, you are banned from whimsy. Nobody wants to be fired by an unsmiling work-cop with a fun tropical island background.