Face Time

How can I get shit done when you keep inviting me to more meetings?

Or the alternate title, me goofing around with excel instead of doing all the work I should be and am complaining about being overwhelmed with.

But really, the chart design elements in Micrsoft's Excel 2007 are pretty sharp. They make my data look like Fucking Data, man! I'm easily impressed. But then most of the people who read my powerpoint presentations share that same quality.

Ways to f@# a conference call

What is life but periods of restlessness and waiting in between thrilling conference calls? If you'd like to frost my cookies with your incompetence, here are some great methods:

• Call in with your crappiest, off-brand cell phone, preferably with poor reception wherever you are
• Call while driving so you are distracted
• Bonus points for revving your engine, leaving the windows down, listening to the radio, and yelling at other drivers
• Don't bother to use the mute button, we know it's difficult, and we all love to hear your background noise
• Call in from home where we can hear your kids and dogs in the background
• Bonus points for any reference to a comfy chair and good dinner being made that rubs it in for the rest of us still in the office
• If you're going to call in from a conference room, sit as far away from the phone as possible
• Talk quietly if the phone is far away from you
• Scream into the phone if you're holding it to your ear
• Get distracted doodling and make everyone repeat the issue for you when your status comes up
• Eat while on the call
• Preferably something loud and crunchy or at least loud packaging
• Talk to passersby without muting your phone, hey Joe! Have a nice weekend?
• Let us all know what important meeting you really need to get to, we certainly have nothing better to do
• If sick sniffle constantly and sneeze loudly into the receiver
• Assign work to people who couldn't make it to the meeting and forget to tell them

That's all for now. I expect to see a comprehensive powerpoint on this on my desk in the morning. I don't care if you have to work all night, but I can't pay you overtime.