The Conference Call

I had an amusing conference call this morning. Yes, I’m being facetious. By their very definition, there is nothing amusing about a conference call. I loathe them actually. There’s always somebody that loves to talk to an audience of folks , just because he has an audience. Furthermore, they always drag on much longer than they should have because said blowhard just can’t wrap it up. If those conference services (we use Raindance) wanted to add a useful feature, they would add what I’ll coin as the Academy Award Feature. Chatterbox’s filibuster shows no signs of reaching its conclusion? Start the music…bring the MC out to make a joke about his diatribe.

My pre-occupation and fatigue got the better of me. Pre-occupation? Yeah, I’m bad enough in a meeting when we are all face to face. I have quite a “portfolio” of doodles, some worthy of tour to some of the world’s finest museums: The Van Gogh, The Prado, The Louvre…. Some of them are as random as the day is long, related not at all to whatever is being discussed in the meeting. Some even contain caricatures of the principals in the meeting. But, I digress. On a conference call, I might be surfing the web, instant messaging, writing a blog....

I totally wasn't paying attention and twice, it was my
turn to speak and there was a long silence before I
chimed in. Another time my boss said, "right, Destah?"
and I said "RIGHT!" without having heard what he said.
I made a quick save and gathered a couple action items
at the end of the call. I took the lead and did the
summation before we all got off the phone. I then made
a beeline for one of the RF engineers
(oh..sorry...that's radio frequency) and asked my
question. For one shining moment, I had an Electrical
Engineering flashback as we began to discuss bandpass
filters and propagation and ..oh..nevermind..i know
its not interesting. I then returned to my desk and
quickly called back this customer to report back about
my findings.

Techie Dan Rather

I'm on the phone with a guy that has the voice of Dan
Rather and the knowledge of your basic computer nerd.
While being very well versed in the technical arena,
his story-telling capabilities and the runs of his
soliloquys are very Rather-esque. He is one of those
guys that is answering his own questions. (Why did the
chicken cross the road? I'll tell you why...").When I
inhale to start to address his question (or whatever I
perceive to be the question), he starts talking again.
At the end of all this I say, "Yes! Exactly."
I keep getting lost and think he's giving me
information about Baghdad or Fallujah and then when
there's a silence, I know that it's my turn to talk.
I'm really not motivated to be here today. But at
least I'm finding humor in this...

He's from Philly, so I get him talking about
cheesesteaks and hoagies. He's giving me the
particulars on where you get the appropriate cold-cuts
to make the best hoagies. He even told me about a
"survival kit" service in which people in other places
can order express-mailed hoagies by phone.
The single most entertaining moment in the whole
conversation was this statement: "This has been great.
You've answered alot of questions for me..."
It was kinda like in "As Good as it Gets" when Jack
Nicholson stands up and leaves just as Greg Kinnear
starts to open up to him and says, "..this was
great...I'm glad we had this little talk..let's do it
again sometime..."
And then Mr. Rather got off on another one of his
rants and talked non-stop for another 6 minutes.
At the end of his rant, just when I thought that there
was no possible way that this could get any better, he
came outta left field with:
"Hey...do you have sinus trouble? I've got this
incredible medication for that. I found it on this
herbal remedies website..."
And that's your news for Friday evening, October
26, 2007. I'm Dan Rather, and this has been CBS World News,..TONIGHT

The Reference

This lady just called me as a reference for a guy that
I managed at a former company. I would imagine she was
an HR type that was supposed to check references so
that they could formally extend an offer and hire him. You know the type...knows enough buzzwords to stay in the conversation, but can't go into depth about much else if you deviate from the script.
Such experiences are never painful for me, especially
when I am talking about such an outstanding former
co-worker.
This one was painful. It was like giving dictation to
my 8-year old. She would ask me a question, and I would
answer, giving the appropriate detail for each
response. For example, she asked the following
question:
HER: Describe what his role with your organization
was?
ME: "Chris served as a Field Support Engineer as
well as a Telephone Support Engineer. If an issue
warranted his flying somewhere to fix it, we put him
on a plane and he resolved the issue..."

There was about 30 seconds of silence on the phone. I was wondering if she were still there, or if perhaps our call had dropped, since my Verizon service is so incredibly reliable. Finally she mumbled something to her self, but audibly enough for me to hear it.

HER:"...served......as........a......feeeeeeeeeeeld.....sup.....port....
...in.....gin......eeeeeer...as...well...as..."
I just knew at any time she was going to ask me, "How
do you spell FIELD? Is it F-i-e..."

Ear Hustlin'...

A guy (Alan) 2 cubes over from me just got the following phone
call, probably from his daughter.

ALAN: "Hello? Hi Pumpkin"
Kid: (apparently explained the story , which was some
kinda crisis, which required some adult assistance
because, clearly, the kid had run out of ideas)
ALAN: "Where's your mother? Did you try calling her?"
Kid: (explains further, mom's not home, not answering
her cell)
ALAN: "What do you mean Austin broke the damn
doorknob? How did he do that? He's locked in the
bathroom?"
Kid: (i dunno, blah blah blah, i dunno...i can't get
him out...we tried to do this, we tried to do that...)
ALAN: "Tell him to try putting a screwdriver in the
little hole and jiggle it a little..."
Kid: (we tried that, but we'll try again...maybe we'll
hit it with a baseball bat...Austin's crying)
ALAN: "Where's your mother? You know what you need to
do--Go get Dave. Just go knock on his door and ask him
to come over and help you. Nothing I can do for you
from over here. Bye" (hangs up)

Alan subsequently rings his wife's cell phone
unsuccessfully. He makes another call, presumably to
some older offspring...
ALAN: "Where's your mother? Is she there with you?
She's shopping??!!!"
Kid: (blah blah blah...she's here...i'm at another
store in the mall or something...call her phone..)
hangs up.

Alan rings her phone again...no answer. Calls the
daughter back, and with a little attitude this time.

ALAN: "WHERE IS SHE? DID YOU SEE HER YET?"
Kid: (yeah..blah blah blah..she's here...i told her
you called...she forgot her phone at the house...)
ALAN: "WHY THE HELL DID SHE LEAVE HER CELL PHONE? PUT
HER ON THE PHONE!"
Kid: (hands the phone to mom)
ALAN: "YOU NEED TO GET HOME AND GET AUSTIN OUT OF THE
BATHROOM"
Mom:(blah blah blah...WHAT?...WHY?...)
ALAN: "I DON'T KNOW. HE's locked in there, and they
are about to take a baseball bat to my doorknob!"
Mom: (waWAwaWA wa wa...sure..i'll take care of it)
ALAN: "Bye!"

Alan calls kid #1 back at the house and says that mom
is on the way.
ALAN: "DO NOT DO ANYTHING WITH THAT BAT!"
Kid: (yeah..whatever dad...bye)

Alan stands up, sighs, walks out of his cube, turns to
Randy and says, "let's go grab some teriyaki
downstairs..."

consultants: the cunning linguists of the corporate world

No matter how much I despise them, there is always the possibility that it cannot be avoided. Yes, once again I was stuck in a late afternoon meeting. Contrary to my usual apprehensions, I did not think that fatigue would play a role as I was relatively wide awake and downright anxious to leave work on time to catch Game 7 of the Spurs/Pistons series. If I had to pinpoint one single element of this meeting that had me feeling a tad uneasy, it would have to be the unknown. Hopefully, this unknown would not cause me to miss the tip off at the local sports bar.

I really had not heard of this client before, nor was I clear on exactly what my contribution to the meeting would be. In the end, to my delight, I discovered more amusing material for my archive of ostentatious observations.

Consultants were the subject of the day. You’ve got to love the consultant. Everyone thinks they need one but no one is ever quite sure what they do. Even the consultant cannot tell you precisely what it is that he or she does, but will be quite clear about the cost of having it done. Want some issues raised? Want a very admirable perception of the obvious? How about a sense of having engaged an expert for the task at hand? The consultant is your guy. If you want a definitive analysis or a decision made..well…

Perhaps I’m being to hasty with the generalization. Yes, too hasty indeed. There are plenty of consultants that do actually roll up their sleeves and provide a valuable service to those that enlist them . However, just as in other “relationship building” professions, there are plenty of consultants that rarely get their hands dirty, choosing instead to operate within a very Seinfeldian, “show about nothing” framework. Such was the case with the subjects from this meeting. Almost immediately in this meeting I found myself wondering, “so what is it exactly that you’re going to do here?”

It bears mentioning that while I was not compelled to add the “emperor’s new clothes” that this pair was pushing to my wardrobe of client projects, I was quite taken by their style and technique. Like a classical musician admires a melodic run of a jazz composer, like a ballplayer gives “props” to another with Game, like a thespian pays homage to the work of another of much lesser fame, it took significant effort for me to contain my appreciation of their skills. After all, it took an extreme amount of chutzpah to step into this conference room and attempt to out-hustle three hustlers (my boss, my ceo, and me). That’s what we do, isn’t it? We hustle. We know there’s money to be made selling this stuff, and we try to figure out new and inventive ways to give that money a new home on our side of the fence.

But these were hustler’s hustlers. One would play straight man, while the other would provide the slapstick. One would be grease man to the other’s tactician. One would play warm hearted, bleeding heart socialist, while the other played capitalismic magnate. So impressive was their range that it could consume this whole narrative, but I will instead highlight three of the most spectacularly entertaining arrows that they drew from their proverbial quiver.

First was the incessant name dropping. Surely a successful run at this would leave us basking in the glow of the degree with which he is connected in the industry. However, the languishing of a dimming bulb is what ensued. One exchange went as follows:

“What is your background…Where did you get your start?” said John to our CEO.
“I was VP of Marketing at Cascade in the Northeast, “ stated our CEO.
“Oh! George Franklin and I play golf together…and that Mike Stephens is quite the go-getter isn’t he… “ John blurts out smugly
“I’m not familiar with those two gentleman. Cascade IS quite a large company…” quips our CEO.

In an another attempt to garner favor, establish some credibility and just overall impress us with the breadth and complexity of his knowledge, John pulled the multi-lettered acronym card. Having just reached my tenure in the high tech industry, I take pride in staying on top of the TLA’s (three lettered acronyms) that are often called out as frequently as…well..names in some other less technical circles. The Cistine Chapel came to mind when he uttered his 5 lettered masterpiece. The three of us were supremely perplexed when Michelangelo’s broad brush strokes coated us with T.B.R.P.F (later defined as Truncated Broadcast Reverse Path Forwarding). Thirty-six hours later, I still have not realized the relevance of this obviously very high level field of study.

Finally, in what would prove to be the make or break moment of this meeting from a “how serious should we take you” standpoint, our consultant friends stumbled mightily albeit quite gracefully. When asked about their overall knowledge of our specific industry , with respect to the players, the merits of various products, and where any of them may fall short as they pertain to the needs of their proposed project, the two of them paused as if on queue and with the appropriate amount of cloak-and-dagger stated in unison (at least for the first half of the sentence), “We’re talking to several others right now and will continue to diligently research this before we arrive at a decision.” Translation: We’re clueless. You’re the first ones that we’ve talked to. We really don’t have a clue right now how your product might conform to the needs of the application in said project, but we were intrigued by the buzzword “wireless” and the fact that your company was geographically closest to our offices so we thought we’d check you out first.

All of this proves once again that I am so easily amused.

Afternoon Meetings...or true lies

As I may have mentioned before, afternoon meetings are the bane of my existence. I have to resort to all sorts of 
interesting tactics to even stay awake, let alone be productive in them. Today's strategy started with 
writing down stuff just for the sake of writing...just to appear busy and attentive. I even supplemented that 
with a timely "hmmm.." or a quizzical or enlightened facial expression as I wrote. When that stopped working, I switched to writing cursive. It was pretty much all down hill at this point. 

Why? Well, because through my extended stay in the American university system, I have perfected the art of writing while falling asleep (and probably even after my eyes are  closed, the pen continues...). So, this is when I excuse myself from the meeting for a "bio-break". 

I didn't really need to use the bathroom. I really just wanted to splash some cold water on my face. When I 
returned, refreshed (well, not really), I changed course yet again. Inspired by the common phrases that 
you hear in the corporate world, I decided to write down some of the good ones. 

#3. "We've heard that request before, and will take it under advisement." 
 What this actually means is, damn...why won't people stop asking us about this. Maybe if we hold our
breath, and pretend we're invisible, they'll forget the question and we can move on.

#2. "..that feature is not yet available, but should be in the next release of the software...Q1 of next year, most likely.."

Translation: Shit! We hadn't thought of that. But, by your matter of factness with the question, its clear 
that this is a do or die type feature that you must have or you won't buy from us. We'll get right on it.

And the best one of the day...

#1. " ..it should be fairly straight-forward.."

In other words, in addition to me not really ever having completed this myself, the explanation of it is 
too long and convoluted for me to get into right now so let's move on to another topic. 

Finally, I found myself starting to think about ways to better my spaghetti recipe. Hmmmmmmmm...what if I melted a hershey bar into my sauce and then simmered it with the other seasonings for about 30 minutes? 

OKAY...WAIT! I was clearly very hungry at this point and promptly excused myself from the meeting, citing 
that I needed to get started on the field demonstration that this customer would be observing tomorrow.