Sometimes I wish I could go back to being a stressless stamp licker at my office, because my well earned promotion into junior management has me involved in some very wearing tasks, one of them being the introduction of the conference call.

Now, I can fully see the benefits of well organized conference calls, but everyone seems to think that what they have to say is more important than the next man (or woman), and as a consequence, these calls often end up sounding like barroom banter as all voices talks over one another. I actually lost the plot one Monday morning and told a dominant sales executive at our head office that god gave us 2 ears and only one mouth, so perhaps it was more important to listen than to speak. Well, you can just imaging how that went down.

Weve since had training in conference calling and conference etiquette so we can have more productive and orderly meetings via this system. To be fair, the dreaded conference calls are nowhere near as bad as they were to begin with, but they still get a little overheated from time to time. I think the hardest job has to be that of the secretary, who diligently attempts to take the minutes of these meetings. Sometimes her face resembles a British bulldog chewing a feisty wasp as her pulsating ears endeavor to decipher the executive squabble.

Along with the success of our company comes the latest technology (not always for the better, I hasten to add!) and at last weeks conference meeting the company director announced we are to invest in a video conferencing system. Now this should be really interesting. Let the dog see the rabbit so to speak. Im only guessing here, but I would imagine that when you can actually see the folks in conference, their behavior will improve drastically.

In my honest opinion, I think conference calls are a huge waste of time. A one on one meeting I can understand, and even a small group of 3 or 4 people would probably work, but when theres 8 or 12 individuals spread around the country, as is the case with us, its nothing less than chaos. In fact, we probably waste more time than we save. Usually, after these meetings, most of us return to our desks and spend the rest of the morning sending emails back and forth as we try to make sense of the dialogue weve just had. Oh, the wonders of technology!