This article explores the ways in which participants organize their activities in order to set up the beginning of a meeting. We focus on video meetings, and in particular on the problem of absent participants, which is often considered a reason for delaying the official beginning of the encounter (Steven et al. 2014; Caspi 2020; Lehmann-Willenbrock and Allen 2020). We investigate one of the resources that the participants have to deal with this problem: that is, reaching the absent participant by phone. We analyze how recourse to the phone is prompted by the moderator and offered by the participants. The recourse to the phone by one of the participants implies that s/he has been authorized to leave the meeting in order to make the phone call. Moreover, we observe how the participant who has left the meeting then returns to it after the call. We study the ways in which departures from, and returns to, the meeting are accomplished.

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