Have you ever been on a conference call with twenty or so people all jabbering about how unimportant their jobs are when, all of a sudden, there is this horrible echo when people talk. It starts with the screeching sound of speaker feedback. Shortly after the feedback ends, the echoes begin. Everyone continues talking for a moment, ignoring the fact that they sound like they are spelunking in a deep cavern. Finally, someone says “does anyone else hear that echo?” Then the whiny lady who is on every conference call says “yes, it’s just awful. I think my ears are starting to bleed.” Others confirm that they also can hear the echo and eventually it is agreed that everyone should hang up and dial back in.
Has that ever happened to you?
If so, there is a really good chance that the cause of that horrible echo was yours truly.
I will know divulge my secret. Here’s the scoop on how it’s done.
The How
Simply dial into the conference call on your desk phone as you normally would. When you’re ready to f-up the entire meeting, take out your mobile phone, dial into the bridge, and hold the mobile phone upside down up against the receiver on your desk phone. Hilarity ensues.
The When
There are more that a few indications you should look for when trying to determine when you should reduce the conference call to shambles. A few keys that I always use are as follows:
- Use the Bastard Ratio. Calculated by determining whether the makeup of the participants on the conference call include greater than a ten percent portion of bastards. So for instance if there are ten people on the call, only one bastard would be required to trigger the false echo trick. This is a guideline, not a rule. Use your judgement. Sometimes the presence of only one uber-bastard on a call with twenty attendees can be grounds to spark the false echo action.
- The one person who is critical to the call joins twenty minutes late and triggers a complete rehash of the entire call thus far.
- While listening into the call, you find yourself curing your boredom by doodling images of skulls and desert landscapes.
- Someone on the call says “we should really have one of these sessions daily until we gain traction on these issues.”
- Someone says “can everyone open a Netmeeting so you can look at the rambling and pointless presentation I’ve put together.”
I just realized that every item after bullet one is really just a derivative of the Bastard Ratio. That’s really all you need after all.
The Why
Why would I do this you ask? Why would I deliberately ruin a useless meeting. Three reasons:
- It’s fun.
- It’s evil.
- It’s evil fun.
Let’s face it. The only real fun any of us ever had in our lives has been evil. Have you ever really had good clean fun? Not if you’re honest with yourself. Anytime I have a chance to have some evil fun I jump on it. So should you.
I have known a few people, that will remain nameless, that would initiate the echo to get at their boss… Its always fun when everyone hangs up and calls in only to find it’s still there.
my god. i love this blog!
The good old dayz
We once had fun by recording the sound made when somebody joins a conference bridge, then messed with people by playing it and then muting our phone again so it would cause a chorus of “Did somebody join the bridge? Is there someone there? Hello?”