A Suggestion to My Colleagues

[bjarvis]

If you're going to join a conference call while telecommuting from home, you may wish to consider muting your telephone while waiting for the meeting to start. While your fight with your wife was mildly entertaining in a slow-moving-train-wreck kind of way, it's not how I'd like to start my morning, especially since I was keen on neither the meeting nor the morning already.

Thank you.

Comments

too many parties to the conference call

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

A proper gentleman does not notice or hear certain things

well of course he doesn't. Miss Manners talks about only mentioning things that can be immediately fixed (the spinach-on-the-tooth rule: so tell someone whose fly is undone, but don't point out that someone's tie has a spot on it, because he can't fix that right now, and will go around the rest of the day feeling awkward as The Man With The Spot On His Tie). Getting spousal equivalent to shuttup is fixable, but perhaps not actually stating that his wife is a little shrill for the teleconference.

Miss Manners offers another similar situation:

Dear Miss Manners: The other day a friend phoned me (I did not call her) and then proceded to eat a carrot throughout the conversation. The pops and snaps and crunching chewing noises were louder than her speech. What could I have said?

Gentle Reader: You should approach this obliquely: "We appear to have a bad connection. Would you mind calling me back? There seems to be a carrot on the line."

Of course, everyone can think that up half an hour after the conversation, the trick is coming up with the comments at the time.

Re: too many parties to the conference call

[kent4str.livejournal.com]

Somewhere at home I've got a Miss Manners I clipped from the mid-eighties where someone actually asked about the etiquette appropriate to when you meet someone, say, at a party, with whom you've had anonymous sex, say in a bathroom or a public park.

Miss Manner's reply was, "You obviously don't understand the importance of a proper introduction."

Love her.

As for this morning's phone issue, I would probably have just not said anything, all the while really, really wanting to chime in on the discussion.