Dear Poor Lucky Me,
Why are people consistently such idiots on conference calls? I’ve worked at a lot of places with a lot of different kind of people but one thing is always the same: there is always at least one complete idiot on every conference call.
What’s so hard about it? Keep quiet until some one asks a question, then answer said question. You just have to think of it like a real meeting. Actually don’t do that. Real meetings are full of idiots too.
What’s the problem? What am I missing?
Angrily,
Let’s Demand Conference Call Training
Dear Let’s Demand,
I, for example, fall into the latter category. You would think that trying to fly under the radar would prevent me from sounding stupid. But no, because occasionally there is something I do need to hear. Or worse, some one will ask me a direct question, like “What time works for you” or “Did you see the schedule”. I don’t have the kind of confidence to say that I don’t know what’s going on because I was trying to remember how to make a cat’s cradle out of some string I found in the trash can. So I say things like “The schedule needs to be reformatted, who can we assign that to” or “This isn’t an issue of time, its an issue of content god dammit”. Both are terrible answers and make me look like a total turd instead of some one who just wasn’t paying attention.
Sincerely,
There are two types of people: People who pay attention on conference calls and people who don’t. Unfortunately, both types can end up sounding like idiots on the call, but their intentions are to either impress people or sit quietly and fly under the radar.
I’m afraid one answer is video conferencing. It’s more annoying but keeps people at least looking attentive. Other than that, try more interrupting when annoying people talk and more frequent direct questions to the people you know are playing Solitaire during the call.
Poor Lucky Me
