My phone has now been on mute for 45 minutes as I dutifully await my turn to add my two cents then retreat once more. Conference calls are the purgatory of business interaction. They have all the real-time contact of a group face-to-face meeting without all the non-verbal cues and actually recognizing if participants are asleep. On my current call, a senior leader of my company is speaking with a possible partner while scores of employees on both sides take notes and/or set their fantasy football lineups. Could this exact call have the same effective outcome as a one-on-one conversation with both participants summarizing to their side afterward? Of course. But then both sides would become more productive and might not have time to undertake this GREAT PROJECT.
Conference calls for an employee are annoying but great in their own way. Never having been a smoker, I don't take advantage of cigarette breaks. Conference calls are my smoke break. Need a half hour to work on your résumé? Finding a pair of shoes? Upping your Snapchat selfie game? Make sure you get in on that call. Not only does it give you time to completely zone out, but your boss will think "HEYY this kid wants to jump in with both feet!" and you'll gain shooting star points as you browse cat pics on Twitter.
At some point, though, the balance shifts from greatness to annoyance. Today, I was in THE ZONE in an econ model and had to put it all on hold so I could hear guys tell lame jokes and pat themselves on the back. I started to ask myself why I agreed to join this call. Why am I here? This sucks. Then it hit me: Kübler-Ross's grief model fits perfectly well with this stalwart of old-school commerce.
Denial
More than just a mythical river in the movies, denial is real on conference calls. You call in, identify yourself, make some small talk with the two of eighteen people who are on-time with weather discussion mandatory. ("Man I heard it was cold up there in New York. 31? Wow. I think if it were 31 here the city would shut down!") For a brief moment, you can convince yourself that the next 30 minutes (YEAH RIGHT SUCKER) will be something other than a monumental waste of time. You're prepared. Your talking points are in order. You know who all is going to be on the call. You know that Steve, that god-awful oversharer from Sales, will call in ten minutes late and email you for a recap. But you're ready. This call is different.
Anger
You were wrong. This call is the same as every one prior. 45 minutes in and on at least four occasions people have tried to talk at the same time which is then followed by four seconds of mandatory ear-shattering silence. The agenda has vanished into the ether. The same three people who monopolize every call have taken over this one because there's no greater sound in the world than one's voice projecting onto a captive audience. Your talking points, so dutifully prepared and possibly practiced out loud in the bathroom and to yourself at your desk, were already steamrolled by someone else. Why did you invite yourself onto this call? How can this happen again? Why didn't you quit this job six months ago when your friend had that great start-up idea that crowdsourced dog haircuts? WHY DIDN'T YOUR PARENTS WARN YOU?
Bargaining
75 minutes in and your venomous anger has turned into helplessness. In the middle of an internal meltdown, your boss asked you an impromptu direct question and contempt spewed through your phone as you answered. "If I thought this project was a good idea, you'd already have your projections." Silence. The weight crushes you. You start cycling through your inbox looking for any excuse to remove yourself from this organized groupthink session. You look through your phone to make sure you don't have any missed texts, or emails, or snapchats, or Facebook vampire invites. Literally anything to take your mind off of being on this call. What would you give to be off of this conference call? Would you pay $10? Would you strangle a baby duck? Would you finally go out for drinks with Darrell, the weird, smelly IT guy, if it meant you could leave right now?
Depression
You've now been on this call for 90 minutes and realize there's no escape. I mean, who would your $10 even go to? That's dumb. Call participants are now re-hashing what went down at the very beginning of the call, and Steve emails you back saying your summary of what he missed sucked. You glance out the nearest window, which might as well be miles across a vast, open space of other cubedwellers, and imagine a world beyond these walls. A world you'll never know. There are no emails in your inbox more pressing than this because no one at the company trusts you to do anything on your own. You didn't get any text messages from your friends. The only one you got was from your grandma, who's currently on a seniors cruise in Aruba. You close your eyes and imagine being on a Caribbean beach, but all you see is Meemaw in a speedo. You shudder. Darkness washes over you.
Acceptance
Approaching the two hour mark and you've become a puddled mass in your chair. There are so many Chrome tabs open that your seven-year-old Dell begins to audibly wheeze under the load. You don't even know what's going on anymore because you stopped listening 20 minutes ago. You're 70% sure the call is still happening, but it's possible you tuned out the hold music and have been hanging on to the abyss. You realize that conference calls are a part of your existence, and that the demands of a comfortable life require you to put up with such things. Sure, you could've spent the last 120 minutes working or, more likely, catching up on Walking Dead recaps, but instead you had to deal with the indignity of sitting in your air conditioned office and listening to people talk. It sucked, but it could be worse. You text your significant other that you're ok, and that you love them. They text you back "r u ok? ur being weird." They have the luxury of not knowing what you know - that you just wasted two hours of your life. Everyone's voice gets higher, because that's what happens when people say goodbye and also when people get excited they don't have to do whatever it was they were just doing for the last ever. You perk up, say goodbye, and hang up. You smile. You made it. You catch your boss's eye as she rounds the corner. "What a waste of time that was." It was. The past tense has never sounded so sweet. Now back to Twitter to ask for lunch recommendations.
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