On a recent work call, Cleo Ravariere found her colleagues discussing an unlikely topic: the state of her bed.
Its pink and gray and peach blanket was nicely spread over the mattress. Its pillows were arranged tidily at its head. Nothing about the scene struck Ms. Ravariere, 27, as exceptional—but her co-workers were astonished. Did she actually make her bed like that? Every single day? Yes, she said.
Half-a-dozen more chimed in, saying they rarely made theirs. “They’re like, maybe once in a blue moon. I was like, y’all are making me feel like I go overboard,” says Ms. Ravariere, a project manager for staffing firm Randstad in Atlanta.
With millions of Americans working from home amid the coronavirus, many are getting an unexpectedly close-up peek into colleagues’ lives, as conference rooms morph into living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms. For some in corporate America, that’s meant a new pastime: parsing their co-workers’ loungewear, head-scratching wall art and varying levels of tidiness, now all on intimate, occasionally uncomfortable, display.
Cleo Ravariere works from her apartment in Atlanta.
Photo: Cleo RavariereNot everyone is camera-ready: On one call, one of Ms. Ravariere’s colleagues joined wearing a beauty mask, saying sheepishly that she hadn’t realized how long she was supposed to leave it on. (She later turned off her camera and reappeared barefaced.) Another colleague, trying to find a quiet place, has been doing calls from the closet, clothes rod clearly visible.
Sometimes home décor can raise eyebrows. “There’s been some really bad wallpaper," says Steve Ross, 35, who works in information-security compliance in Los Angeles, including some florid pink wallpaper that reminded him of a late-’70s aesthetic. One colleague called into a conference from an all-white room he says had a “dystopian” medical vibe. He’s also observed large collections of model trains, planes and bobblehead dolls.
Mr. Ross says he and colleagues don’t comment: “In the security business, we try not to ask a lot of personal questions.”
Some embrace the mundane thrills. Ryan Sigler, 37, says one of his colleagues has made a point of doing video calls from different parts of his house to enliven the proceedings. “Today it was his dining room, yesterday it was the living room, and tomorrow we’ll see something else,” says Mr. Sigler, who works for West Virginia University.
Lindsey Fisher appeared on a video call accompanied by a picture of her ‘celebrity crush,’ hockey player Roman Josi. She hid her colleagues’ identities using emojis.
Photo: Lindsey FisherThere are moments of sweetness, Mr. Sigler says, like when he spied a co-worker kissing her partner before he went out for a walk. “It was a nice little insight, like people actually like each other,” he says. On another occasion, a dog owned by one of Mr. Sigler’s co-workers started barking, setting off a dog that belonged to someone else on the call. “They could hear each other on the video, and that just made it worse,” he says.
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For the camera-shy, video calls can be anxiety-producing, while others find the sight of co-workers’ faces in close-up—not to mention their own—distracting. And keeping up appearances can be stressful: Cueponi Cihuatl Espinoza, 27, an academic coach at the University of Iowa, says video calls make her uncomfortably aware that her rented duplex isn’t as nice as that of her colleagues. “I’m mortified they’re going to see the stains on the wall,” she says.
Many have turned to software options to blur their backgrounds or sub in customizable backdrops. At actuarial consulting firm Milliman Inc., after a principal set his Zoom background to a virtual beach, others quickly followed suit. “Everyone is all of a sudden on the same beach with the same tree,” says consulting actuary Dane Hansen. Since then, the company has also virtually assembled in the Colorado mountains, the Maldives, and Springfield, the fictional American town where “The Simpsons” cartoon takes place.
Some add an element of wish fulfillment: During a recent video call with colleagues, Lindsey Fisher superimposed herself over a photo of hockey player Roman Josi, so it looked like his arm was around her. “He’s my celebrity crush,” says Ms. Fisher, who’s based in Nashville, Tenn., and works for the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.
Lizet Ocampo, who is working from home, inadvertently showed up on a video call as a potato.
Photo: Lizet OcampoOne boss recently found herself in the spotlight after a staffer tweeted a photo of her attending a videoconference meeting styled as a potato. The tweet quickly went viral. Lizet Ocampo, political director at nonprofit People For the American Way, says she had inadvertently activated the filter during a Monday morning meeting with her staff and couldn’t figure out how to undo it. “I was very confused,” she says. “After a while I just gave up and finished the meeting as a potato.”
A person’s choice of background sends a message, says Rick Anderson Jr., 34, of Harrison, Tenn. As director of admissions at Southern Adventist University, he’s noticed academics like to do their calls with bookshelves behind them, offering a learned feel. For his part, when working out of his home’s spare room, Mr. Anderson positions his camera so that a trio of guitars hanging on one wall is visible.
“I think it shows I’m creative,” he says.
Not all backgrounds are so deliberate. For a while, one of Mr. Anderson’s co-workers was doing calls with a kitchen visible behind him, which frequently bustled with activity as his children popped in and out and his wife prepared meals or did the dishes. “People kept asking so much about what was going on,” he says, that the co-worker eventually used a software filter to blur his background.
Therapist Valerie Douglas uses a photo of her actual office for her virtual background.
Photo: Valerie DouglasOthers have tried to channel the familiar. In Palm Beach, Fla., therapist Valerie Douglas is using a photo of her office as her virtual background while seeing clients for remote sessions from her apartment. Her clients find the sight reassuring, she says.
Jodi Samuels, 24, who works for a tech company in Washington, D.C., had joined her company only a few months before the pandemic hit, sending everyone home. Since then, she’s glimpsed all kinds of things on calls: co-workers’ children, the curiously oversize clock in a colleague’s living room, the hummingbird nest outside someone’s home.
In a funny way, she says, the things she’s seen have made it easier to get to know her new co-workers. “I never would’ve learned about any of those things if I just stayed in the office the whole time,” she says.
—Kathryn Dill contributed to this article.
Write to Te-Ping Chen at te-ping.chen@wsj.com
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