And With Us On The Call Today
Of all the parts of my former jobs that I don’t miss, conference calls would be pretty far up on the list. I’m someone who still finds speakerphone an entirely uncomfortable experience – You’re just talking into thin air, people! – so the idea of doing conference calls somehow always freaked me out; we’d be there, two or three of us in a room, on speakerphone to a client somewhere, and it would always seem like this strange half-real, half-virtual conversation that felt like watching a movie that was entirely performed in mime. There would be non-verbal cues within the room as we tried to decypher and anticipate what we were hearing, notes written and passed around as we, inevitably, played defense and not get into whatever trouble was on offer that day.
(I’m writing this, and thinking: That makes my old job, and my old company, sound inept and like a disaster permanently happening. Which isn’t entirely true, and on the occasions when it was, it was often true for reaons outwith our control. Nonetheless, even when things were going well, we’d somehow always end up getting into trouble from clients. The VP of sales would always appear after these calls, where we’d know that we were doing everything right and succeeding despite being told that we weren’t doing enough by the clients, and sagely announce that the clients were more than likely completely clueless and that’s why they came to people who did this for a living. It helped, for about two seconds.)
But the worst part about the conference calls was always the part where not everyone was on the call, and you’re there, stuck making smalltalk before you can properly start. The feeling of dread mixed with the need to say something would always result in the most awkward, uncomfortable conversations where I’d always say the wrong thing, much to the amusement of everyone else on the call. I’d never know what the right thing was, though, and so my mouth would take over and suddenly I’d almost always feel the need to apologize before moving on.
There are countless reasons why I didn’t belong in corporate America, but the threat of the conference call was always one of the biggest.
Related posts:
“The VP of sales would always appear after these calls, where we’d know that we were doing everything right and succeeding despite being told that we weren’t doing enough by the clients, and sagely announce that the clients were more than likely completely clueless and that’s why they came to people who did this for a living. It helped, for about two seconds.)”
So you were in Mad Men?
My most favorite conference call story (I have several least favorite) is pretty amazing. We were doing a kick-off call for a project, which basically means us and our point of contact get on the phone, and then the poc calls their studio and we discuss what they want in a project and out of us.
So we get on the phone, and our point of contact was in the office, which is rare, and we dial up a studio. We get transferred in to studio, we say our hellos and before we even get introduced to the guy, he says– “I don’t want to interrupt or anything, but I think you should know that I gave two weeks notice a week ago, so I’m done as of Friday.”
Awkward.