conference calls

I was sitting on a conference call recently and started thinking about observations I have made on these calls over the past couple of years. A sampling of what I came up with follows.

• If there are more than three people on the phone, at least one person will forget to hit mute and will breathe heavily into his or her phone the entire call.
• If a call is scheduled for three o'clock in the afternoon, most people will join the call between 3:03 and 3:10.
• The two things that people know to talk about while waiting until 3:10 for everyone to show up are the weather and sports.
• A lot of people think that conference calls are a panacea that will automatically cure any complicated issue.
• No matter how many people are on the call, only one person will ever get any action items. That person will get all the action items.
• People who use speakerphone don't always realize how many of their side conversations other people on the call can hear.
• The worst kind of conference call is the ambush conference call. This is where someone calls you without warning and says, "By the way, I am conferencing you in with such and such group of people right now. (click)" I question whether the people who do this have souls.
• The best kind of conference call is the one someone else has to join.
• A fun game to play is to write down the names of all the people on the call and randomly pick names to ask them what they think about what is being discussed. A high percentage of people on any given call have no clue about what is being discussed or aren't paying attention, but they don't want to announce that to the world.
• Finally, a quick story. One of my first work conference calls was late at night and one person involved was apparently not a night person. There are few things more humorous than someone snoring on a bridge line.