Conference Call

I have a phobia about participating on a conference call and unfortunately these dreaded conference calls are scheduled on a regular basis at my place of employment.

First of all, I can't stand hearing several voices and being unsure of who's speaking and where they're speaking from. Even worse, is when one person tries to talk over another. It's completely confusing and annoying. When I'm talking to a single person on a regular phone call, I don't have this problem.

But when I'm tapped in to participate in a conference call, trying to match names up with voices drives me crazy. Sometimes the organizer of the call will think ahead and send out a list of all participants. Even better, sometimes one poor soul will be given the task of keeping notes which are then distributed to all participants. If I had my say, I'd just receive those notes and skip the conference call altogether.

At work, every Tuesday morning they have something called a 'round table'. Except, we are not meeting at a real round table. We are crowded around a conference phone in my boss's office, straining to hear comments made by other members of our team spread across the country, no doubt crowded around their boss's desk straining to hear what we have to say.

Just recently, my work invested in a video conferencing system. At first I thought this was a great idea that would put an end to my frustration with our regular conference calls. At least with a video conferencing system, we could see who was saying what.

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However, after our first video conference, I was even more ill-at-ease. We all spent that hour trying not to look at the screen so as to avoid our own images, while peering out of the corner of our eyes, trying to get a gander at whomever was speaking at that instant. We all found the video conference call even more unnerving that a regular conference call.

In my mind, conference calls tend to mostly be a big waste of time. Generally, one or two people blather on while the rest of the team zones out, only offering token comments when absolutely necessary. When conference calls are deemed absolutely necessary, in my opinion they should be kept short and sweet and to the point. Much valuable time is wasted, it's a bad way to start your day if you have misgivings or personal hang-ups about conference calls, and most of the information shared is usually not pertinent to more than one or two individuals participating in the call.