One time, I got all four of my wisdom teeth pulled out at once. I spent the next 3 days drooling in a braindead Perkoset daze. Coincidentally, I was actually MORE productive during those 3 days than I or anyone else has ever been during a conference call. I’m sure whoever invented them had good (read: ego-maniacal/finding more opportunities to hear himself talk) intentions, but participating in a conference call is pretty much like attending the audio-only version of the annual moron parade. The ratio of morons to non-morons in the world at large is so hugely skewed towards morons that 3 heads are not better than 2 heads are not better than 1 head when any and/or all of the heads are rotted out and filled with vanilla pudding and cotton candy instead of brains. And trust me, those are the heads on your conference call.
There are so many problems with conference calls that I barely know where to start. First of all, if you happen to be an immigrant with sub-par English skills and I can’t understand you when you’re 2 inches away from my face, what the hell makes you think I’m going to have a clue what you’re talking about when you’re 8,000 miles away in your home village on the outskirts of Calcutta, wiping your ass with cow cud and fixing Dells? Newsflash- I don’t know what the fuck you’re saying, Nareesh Patel. Your accent is NOT TRANSLATABLE over the phone, the end, shut your face.
Also, the first 15 minutes of conference calls are inevitably wasted by either a.) waiting for someone to dial-in, b.) showing your technologically incompetent boss how to dial-in, c.) waiting for everyone to awkwardly say their name, d.) all of the above. I once had to partake in a weekly conference call that included about 7,904 people. The role call was longer than 600 vertically stacked black peens. Here’s what I accomplished during these calls:
- I made arts-and-crafts projects. My best work was a pencil holder that I welded out of an empty popcorn container. I labeled it Whitney Houston’s Office. I don’t know why.
- I organized gchats with the smattering of other non-idiots on the call in order to bash all of the idiots on the call.
- I learned the ins-and-outs of the mute button.
- I tried to figure out who was breathing like they were in the middle of a fat person’s orgy, who was eating the receiver, why my boss the human megaphone wanted to stand 80 feet away from the phone only to scream into it at such high decibels that her voice became mere static.
- I came up with emergencies to avoid the call. Emergencies included having to pee for 100 minutes, pretending I was having a miscarriage, pretending I was dead.
Speakerphone is also totally abused. Here’s s a fun fact for my technologically challenged [read: old] peers- there is no direct relationship between the amount of people to whom you are talking and the volume level at which you need to speak. My old boss used to raise her voice by 40 decibels for each new person added to the conference call. She was a natural screamer to begin with, so as soon as there were more than 4 people on the phone at once, she might as well have been shouting into a cheerleading megaphone that was umbilically attached to the telephone. Because this call happened every week for a year, I am now 57% deaf in my right ear.
I think the biggest problem, though, is that I actually just hate working in an office. I bet burger flippers, pizza delivery people, and hookers never have to get on conference calls.
