[Ipg-smz] Your conference-call horror stories & banalities, please.

Wed Oct 10 16:59:09 UTC 2018

I'm moderating a webinar.
And let's back up a year. My spouse decides she wants a cockatiel. I don't
care what animal she gets as long as she takes care of it. Of course, I end
up taking care of it -- I'm home all day. The things are social and as long
as he's sitting on my shoulder Life Is Great For The Cockatiel. Week 1 of
owning this bird nearly every shirt I own has bird poop on the right
shoulder. Why? Because he is unhappy on my left shoulder. Week 2? Michael
Jackson had his sequined glove, Taylor Swift has those shorts-thingies, and
I have a rag over my right shoulder. It has become a part of my identity.
So. A year later. Webinar. Tunneling in cable modem termination systems or
proactive maintenance on the DOCSIS 3.0 platform or something -- let me
know and I'll send you the link. And I want to stress this -- this is far
from either my or the bird's first webinar. We are, at this point, webinar
veterans. Fifteen minutes into this particular webinar, however, the
cockatiel, hanging out on top of his cage, for no reason goes from 1 to 11
on the Agitation Meter. Or maybe it's a she -- I really don't care. Anyway,
"Tweet! Tweet!" says the cockatiel. "Tweet! Tweet!"
Normally, what calms down the bird is the opportunity to poop on my
shoulder. So I hold out a finger as a perch, which thus far in Our Life
Together has only meant but one thing -- "next stop: right shoulder."
A message pops up in the Webinar Chat Window. It's from the sound engineer
with the webinar hosting company. It says "Does anyone else hear a bird?"
It's cool, though.I have my finger in position. I got this.
The bird cocks its head, hops and takes flight, soars over my finger and
starts doing circles around the room, screeching "TWEET! TWEET!"
I am confused. The finger has always worked before. I stand up, helpfully
displaying my finger to the crazed cockatiel, whose name is Pluma. Pluma
wants none of it. "TWEET TWEET TWEET!" He's flying like it's Independence
Day and he's Dennis Quaid's unhinged little brother trying to make a virtue
of his unhingedness in the last major motion picture he'll ever be hired
for.
A message pops up in the Webinar Chat Window. It's from the guy with the
webinar hosting company. It says "Brian, we have the bird isolated on your
mike."
I scream -- in my head mind you, only in my head -- "I FUCKING KNOW!" This
is an accurate, word-for-word quote, which you can attribute to the source.
After another 30 seconds of screeching tweets and frantic flapping, the
situation,  for reasons known only to the cockatiel, de-escalates. He
alights on top of his cage -- or maybe it's a she, I don't really care --
and goes all quiet contemplation on me, like a Zen Master demonstrating
Cosmic Stillness.

I have told this story to a hundred people. Every single one of them asked,
"Why didn't you just put your microphone on mute?"
For the hundredth-and-oneth time: because I'm an idiot.

On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 9:13 AM Tim Walker <tewalkerjr at gmail.com> wrote:

> These are great, Tom — thanks.
>
> On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 10:38 AM Tom Henderson <thenderson at extremelabs.com>
> wrote:
>
>> From my ugly conf call memories:
>>
>> 1) PR and Company CEO think they're on mute or haven't heard my entrance
>> tone. PR company is in the midst of a long diss of the publication I'm
>> representing, calling out chapter and verse for each of their top staff.
>> Epithets and expletives abound. CEO is digesting the background. Oh, you
>> heard about X from Y pub? Five minute story about taking two journos on a
>> drunken #MeToo experience. Said he caught a case of something. PR person
>> snickers. I clear my throat. You'd have thought a completely different pair
>> of individuals were subsequently on this call.
>>
>> 2) Had a nine-person conf call. CEO/founder, VP marketing, product
>> manager, geeks from Israel and India on speakerphones, PR person
>> desperately trying to manage the call, and a product engineer. Fortunately,
>> they knew how to use mute controls. The rest: Total mayhem, with mayhem
>> slides, then the app demo that switched back and forth between machines,
>> and nothing worked at all, period, for the entire wasted hour. Nine
>> sheepish goodbyes.
>>
>> 3) We have a conf call to tell a product manager that his stuff actually
>> doesn't work, and why. This is impossible for him to believe, so we switch
>> into view screen mode. He watches the problems with his own eyes. He yells,
>> "FU A$$holes" and terminates the call. An hour later, a request from the VP
>> to do a conf call. Rinse repeat the demo from our side. "Hooooolleeeeeeyyyy
>> F" is his response. Next morning, another and final conf call, final
>> because we don't get paid to teach vendors their mistakes. It's the coder.
>> I fixed it, he says. A week later, we've checked it. Nope, not fixed,
>> smoking crater with scents of sulfur. They were bought by a certain three
>> letter company two weeks later for almost a billion dollars.
>>
>> 4) Product manager in Israel does a skype conf call. Very late in the day
>> for him. He didn't realize his cam was on. Naked, of course. Very hairy
>> guy. Eventually, he realizes this and the screen goes blank, but not the
>> audio. I hear a scramble while he's talking. Call is cut short. Oddly and
>> perhaps for the same reason, he leaves the company not long after.
>>
>>
>> Tom
>>
>>
>>
>> On 10/10/2018 10:11 AM, Tom Geller wrote:
>>
>> Funny you should ask this, because Cracked.com had a somewhat-related
>> listicle yesterday:
>>
>>
>> http://www.cracked.com/pictofacts-1104-21-hilariously-cringeworthy-moments-from-live-tv-shows/
>>
>> It includes the famous "baby running into the room" conference call (#19)
>>
>> #21 had me rolling on the floor.
>>
>> ---
>> Tom Geller  *  Writer & Video/journalist  *  http://tomgeller.com
>>        Rotterdam, The Netherlands, +31 (0)6 87071468
>>             Oberlin, Ohio  *  +1-415-317-1805
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Tom Henderson
>> ExtremeLabs, Inc.
>> +1 317 250 4646
>> Twitter: @extremelabs
>> Skype: extremelabsinc
>>
>> --
>> Ipg-smz mailing list
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>>
>
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