What Do You Do During Conference Calls?
from the too-easy... dept
John writes in with confirmation of what most people already knew. For years people joke about how telecommuters can work in their pajamas (or, um, less than that), as long as they have a nice shirt on for video conferences. Of course, if there's no video involved, why bother at all? A new study shows that many people don't pay attention to what's happening during conference calls - and, in fact, many "weren't fully dressed" (though, that seems to be most popular in Hong Kong). As for what people are doing during conference calls, it seems to vary by geography. The Brits are doodling (I do this all the time), the Germans are surfing the web, and here in the US, we're talking to someone else entirely.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
I usually do the obvious thing...
Thank god for speaker phone and mute!
I have two conference calls a week. 1 usually lasts an hour or better and the other anyhwere from 10 to 40 minutes. At a bare minimum, I will fill out my electronic timecard during this period. When fully disengauged by uninteresting topics that don't directly involve me (10 other sites conferenced in at the same time), I return calls, catch up on voice mail, write letters, program and do daily system administrative tasks.
Of course, there's always the smart-ass that googles for solutions to problems other people bring up during the call. That's alway fun, but I usually have too much work to get done.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I had a co-worker....
Depending on who you ask, this can range from downright unromantic to kinky. His wife didn't speak english very well, so I guess it didn't distract her.
The guy was a perv (suffed pr0n at work and the whole 9 yards), so I never really doubted him.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]