I had to take part in a conference call this afternoon. Sometimes it is easier to get people together on the phone for a discussion rather than schedule diaries for a meeting. Whilst a phone call doesn’t allow you to read people’s expressions and reactions, it does mean you can decide whether a meeting is worthwhile.
Back in January / February I did some work for a company and put together a technical specification regarding a new service they wanted to bring to market. As is often the case, these things then go a little quiet and then all of a sudden deadlines change and things pick up pace.
So, I find myself on a phone and web conference this afternoon, where the host has the ability to share what they see on their own desktop with the other participants. After about 40 minutes talking about merchant service accounts, HTTP interfaces and all manner of clever things to make quite a good service even better, I was given the ability talk through a Visio diagram (drawn by yours truly) that the host had on his own desktop.
As he was then trying to find something else, he was flicking through the various programs he had open at the time. Bear in mind there was myself representing my business and his web developer / pseudo distributor for this product and all three of us could see what was going on on his computer.
He then flicked through his open programs to Internet Explorer, which had a somewhat graphic porn site on display. Suddenly my web conference had gone from Visio diagram to hard core porn.
The sound of this guy backtracking and making excuses reverberated down the phone, and I swear that for about 10 seconds, time stood still and a tumble weed rolled through my office.
Tomorrow I am putting his price up. Somehow I think he’ll be good for it.
How brutally amusing.
hahahaha! That’s hilarious! You’ve officially made my day!
Price rise is a definite requirement!
Oh my word!!! That’s the best story I’ve heard in a long time!
I just had a terrible thought. What if this guy was working from home and had been *entertaining* himself prior to the conference call?
I think I need to go and find some mind bleach now.
Eurrrrghhhhhhhhhh oh no, that’s got to be the worst thing that would ever happen to him ever ever ever. And if it’s not, there’s something wrong with that man.
Yick.
Is it just me or isn’t the first thing you think when you go to do an online conference using your own PC as the host “I must make sure nothing embarrassing can be seen”? My thoughts would fly to emails of ‘the wrong type’, documents saved with obvious names like ‘grovelling apology to customer x for the cock up.doc’ and the ‘My pictures’ folder which is wont to hold all sorts of delights I would not necessarily wish a client to see whilst I am trying to convince them I really *am* worth my huge fee.
I spend a lot of time remoting into customer’s machines – my colleagues and I have endless fun with people’s desktop backgrounds and their accounts package (which they always seem to leave open on a truly awful set of figures) – despite each of us reading a disclaimer to the client: “in a moment I am going to ask you to click on a button which will allow me to take control of your computer. I *will* (emphasised) be able to see *everything* (emphasised) on your computer screen so if there is anything you don’t want me to see then please close or minimize it now”. They typically immediately say “yes” and click on the button….
Absolutely! The first thing I’d do as a matter or privacy would be to close my email client and my web browsers. It is just common sense at the end of the day!