The passive aggressive fix for this is to meet in the conference room and put him on the big screen. In the before times I worked on teams with just 1 or 2 remote and this practice was (unintentionally) awful for them.
> Have some cookies, croissants, pizza delivered right as the meeting starts
I've been in the position of being the sole remote guy (technically in office but working from a satellite site) and this happened soooo many times. The meeting would start and a box of donuts would be on the table and I'd hear "sorry, we'll mail a leftover to you!" followed by uproarious laughter.
It almost made missing the 1-1 asides and whiteboard visuals worthwhile. Declining junk food in person is much more challenging than simply having it 1000 miles away and obviously out of reach.
> If possible, have a whiteboard way at the back of the room where it's visible but incomprehensible.
Bonus points if it's at a steep angle from the camera, making only one side of it slightly comprehensible, as the other side diminishes into unreadable scribbles
But you're assuming that one likes cake/pizza/whatever cheap mediocre food product that's been mentioned. If I was that manager, I'd raise your cake/pizza/whatever with a freshly grilled filet and baked potato with a nice glass of wine. Remind them just what possibilities they are missing for being in the office like peasants! After all, isn't that the point of having direct reports being in the office while you're at home?
If you get decent enough video conferencing equipment (e.g. microphone/camera designed for this kind of setup) and have good internet connections then this can actually work pretty well.
I recently moved in to a new office, centrally located in Malmö (which is an incredibly easy to navigate city by bike, foot or public transport).
However, my company is remote first, and when I saw there was a conference room I didn't even think twice about the fact that I would put a large conference table in there and the best A/V equipment that I could afford.
Then I went to Paradox's leaving drinks[0] and met a founder of Frictional Games[1]; they too are remote first but from long before the pandemic, and had a lot of people asking for advice.
I was no different and asked what he learned; He told me, in no uncertain terms, (and without prompting about what to do with my new conference room- merely what worked well for him): that a conference room no matter how well equipped creates implicit asymmetry in meetings.
When I thought back on my career, I realised he was completely right. I have used some truly excellent video conferencing solutions (those big Microsoft TVs that fully integrate with Teams- JAMF boards, the best that logitech as to offer), but it was always more friction than it was worth, and often there was a recap once the "meeting" was over IRL anyway.
