One of the many things that drove me nuts about my old job was the number of conference calls I had to be on each day. It seemed like on most projects, we would wrap up the requirements phase and be ready for design when somebody would request a new feature, thus dragging requirements on for several more weeks. This meant daily conference calls to update documents and pore over the importance of each and every word for hours.
The majority of the time, it didn’t even seem like I was even necessary on these calls. I’m a developer, but most people on the call would be business analysts discussing legal implications, ‘what the business wants’, etc.
So, here’s some tips on how to hide through all of these calls without paying attention.
1. Always try to get on the phone as close to the start time of the call as possible, maybe even a few minutes after. You don’t want to be one of the first on the line. If this happens, you will be either engaged with small talk and bad jokes with people already on the line, or they will try to ask you work-related questions. You certainly don’t want this.
2. Once somebody starts talking about something you either don’t care about or don’t need to know about, zone out. I also find that it feels good to roll my eyes and shake my head. Turn down the volume on the call and surf the Internet.
3. If you hear your name or a pause in the conversation where you think you might have been addressed, make sure first. Wait for someone to say your name. After you know you’re being called upon to speak, say either somebody was in your cube or you were getting ‘pinged.’ Make sure your voice conveys how difficult it is to multitask. Ask somebody to repeat what was being said.
4. If somebody asks you a question, either say that you’ll have to talk to somebody else first or that you’ll need to look into it offline.
5. Laugh when other people are laughing even if you aren’t sure why you’re doing it.
6. Participate in the easiest ways possible. If somebody needs a document forwarded to them, offer to do so. If the moderator asks if everybody is in agreement, say ‘Yes’ loud enough for people to hear yourself. This shows that you actually are on the call.
7. If the moderator is scheduling another call and asks if anybody has conflicts, don’t say anything. Hopefully you will have a conflict. Wait until the meeting invite has gone out, then send an email apologizing and saying you can’t attend. In the email, say that you have no issues and everything is on track.
Check out my tips for a long lunch also…
Technorati Tags: conference calls, slacking, avoiding work, slacker
February 19th, 2007 at 3:00 am
This is hilarious. I recently followed these instructions to the letter when dealing with my employer’s parent company. Let’s call them Dunstreet & Bradsworth. That damn company makes money despite itself. If anybody had half as good data and didn’t outsource to IDIOTS (note I didn’t specify a foreign country; just IDIOT) they could take D&B (… err, Dunstreet & Bradsworth) down easily. After weeks of terrible calls I finally stopped dialing in. I highly recommend AGAINST that because afterwards had to attend a video conference about successful teamwork and how to make our cross-functional team achieve success. By the way, I HATE when non-technical people use the word ping.
February 19th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Fortunately, I no longer have conference calls here. During one of my performance reviews at my old job, my manager joked around with me about how on some conference calls, people from the business would ask if something was possible to add to a project and there would be a long pause, and then I would say, “Sure.”
He was like, it’s okay to say you don’t know something. I guess that’s one of my tips, just say you need to talk to someone offline first.
It’s nice that I no longer get ‘pinged’ here either. No instant messenger. Methinks I may have to write a post about IMing soon…
March 4th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
[…] Bits offers conference call tips for slackers. Brad explains: It seemed like on most projects, we would wrap up the requirements phase and be […]