Conference Calls....

[Hotsauce]

Who here has to deal with daily, weekly conference calls?

I have to do at least 4 a week, each one lasting up to 3 hours...no joke.

I have one Monday mornings, Wednesday monrnings, one Friday morning at 7am, and another at 3pm (which seriously went to 6pm a couple weeks ago).

Needless to say, some of these asses who set that calls are in different time zones....3pm on Friday...Really????

The thing that pisses me off, is that 80% of the same people are on all of the calls, and we seriously talk about the SAME thing every call.

"what did you sell", "what are your success stories from the week", "share any sales opportunities for other reps in the markets."

[Davidson Deac II]

The long conference calls usually don't bother me. I just put on my headset and ignore the parts that don't apply to me.

Its the international conference calls I don't like. I once had a conference call with a brit, a frenchwoman and myself. The language barrier was interesting to say the least. The brit was annoying, wanted to talk politics on a technical call. The frenchwoman's english was not very good, but it was a damn site better than my french. :)

I had no idea what we were suppose to do after it was over, but we did manage to clarify things thru email later on.

[mr beauxjangles]

I usually have about two or three conference calls - about one hour each - every week. But these aren't massive conference calls with tons of people. Usually just me, maybe one coworker, and a few staff members from a client. Definitely not too bad in the realm of conference calls. ALthough I do hate it when we have clients in the mountain or pacific time zones and have to coordinate. My girlfriend has to coordinate conference calls with folks in Shanghai and Seoul. That's a nightmare. Conference calls at 9:00pm. Effffffffff that.

[sharkkiller]

I have a daily call with the client, as well as a weekly business review. I have a daily call with my manager back in the states. I have another weekly call with another client, and a call to prepare for that call. Seriously.

All told, I spent at least 2-3 hours a day on conference calls, and up to 4 hours twice a week.

Most of the calls do not apply to me, and are all about what we did last week.

[Niner National]

I don't have conference calls, but my boss does like to call us into the conference room about once a week and tell us the same things over and over.

[logic1977]

Every single day, roughly 60% of my job is conference calls. share the pain with the multiple time zones. Most of the people I work with are central or pacific time, and they like to have calls that last until 6 or 7 eastern.

[Panthro]

Friday at 3pm? If I was in sales and was far exceeding my numbers I'd tell them that I'll be fishing/golfing Friday afternoon.

If you want me to tell your other crapass sales people how to sell I best be compensated for it.

That being said...it's Friday and I need to make some coldcalls :)

[sharkkiller]

The best part is that I am an hour ahead of EST now. So they schedule calls based on EST. 5pm calls are at 6 here. And when they decide to have a call that is after their normal day, it starts at 7pm.

[Scrumtrilescent]

10-12 a week. A majority of them with native Indian, Chinese, Europeans that speak English as a second language. I don't want to hear your complaints.

[Guest]

God, do you all work for Bank of America or something? I used to bang a girl who "worked" there, all she did was join conference calls.

[Scrumtrilescent]

Yes. Wait, no.

[pstall]

While at BofA I swear all I did were conference calls. The ones I led

were fast and furious. I would say some joke to start and after the first laugh I would zip through.

My favorites were the super large ones. I almost never gave my name when you first dial in.

I would use everything from Ben Bernake to Lars Johnson to John Holmes. The payoff from either hearing someone laugh a few rows down to getting massive pings from people in other countries telling me I made their day.

[Davidson Deac II]

God, do you all work for Bank of America or something? I used to bang a girl who "worked" there, all she did was join conference calls.

Any large corporation or government agency does a lot of them nowadays. When I worked at Joint Intelligence Center Pacific, we would start every morning off with a video conference call that linked all the major commands as well as several in DC. Just a basic "this is whats happening in the world today that isn't on CNN" to wake up to. :)