Chapter 15: People Who Have Problem Communicating

Maintaining relationships in a company is not an easy task, especially if you have got hundred over colleagues. It is true that not everybody can be the gregarious one who has no difficulty talking to anybody about anything. Not everybody can be the handsome/pretty guy/gal who is admired and liked by most. Not everybody can be the charismatic one who has the power to influences and motivates. However, we should at least try not to be the one that is loathed, avoided, or worse, cursed by all.

In a large company like ours, it is almost unavoidable to have some fellow colleagues who like to do things that allowed them to be loathed, avoided or cursed by others. The slick ones did those things due to office politics, the insensitive ones did those things because they thought that something that works for them will work for others as well, while the blur ones did those things because they just did not know what they were doing.

Organizing meetings and conference calls is one place where these people go wrong. They are usually organizing meetings and conference calls at the wrong time like nine o’clock (which means the participants have to be at the office before their usual time), one o’clock (which means that the participants have to rush through their lunches) and five o’clock (which means that the participants have to go home late). Unfortunately, there were two culprits in our team who were guilty of organizing meetings and conference calls at the wrong time. They were Rose and Dawn. Both loved to organize meetings and conference calls at one o’clock.

One day, I received an email meeting invitation from Dawn for a one o’clock meeting. She followed up with a message on the MSN Messenger, as usual…

“hi, I’m organizing a meeting tomoro for the completion of the online trading project”
“yeh, I saw ur email”
“the meeting’s FYI only, but I think it’s good for u to attend. And anyway, big boss is attending.”
“but why is the meeting scheduled at one?”
“oh, becos big boss has another meeting at two”
“are everybody busy attending some other meetings the day after tomoro?”
“no, everybody seems to be rather free the day after tomoro”
“then why didn’t u arrange the meeting to be on the day after tomoro?”
“oh, becos the project has finally been completed and so I thought it’ll be great to let everybody know more abt it asap”

If Dawn was bad with her time management, Rose was worse. She loved to organize a meeting or conference call that ended at twelve o’clock and another one that started at one o’clock. To make matters worse, most of the time, she would have talked so much that the twelve o’clock meeting or conference call would end at twelve thirty. This meant that we had only got enough time to grab a bun for lunch before the one o’clock one started.

And Rose loved to organize meetings and conference calls. Any product launch, any change management, any other matters warranted a meeting or at least a conference call. To Rose, emails were not the most efficient way to communicate. She believed that meetings and conference calls would have allowed all parties to ask any queries that they might not send via emails.

One day, Ju emailed the team regarding the new branding that the company was incorporating in a few months’ time. As usual, Rose requested her to organize a conference call to explain to everybody about the new branding. So during the conference call…

“Hi, everybody, let’s start a Netmeeting. My IP address is 25.120.140.34,” said Ju.
“Okay, I’ve shared my desktop. Could everybody see my screen?” asked Ju.
“Yes,” replied by some.
“What you see now is the new branding that we’ll be using starting from March. As you can see from the screen, these are the new colors and fonts to be used in your PowerPoint slides. And this is the new font and size to be used in your Words documents. Any questions?”
“What’s the difference between the PowerPoint slide that you show here and the one that has been emailed to us?” asked Choi.
“It’s the same slide,” replied Ju.
“Oh…”
“Any other questions? If no, let’s end the conference call now.”
“No questions?” Ju asked again. “Okay, thanks everyone for attending, bye!”

Attending a meeting or conference call scheduled at the wrong time of the day, or attending one that is not even required, may leave you feeling miffed. However, when some people have problem complying with email etiquettes, it can really make you feel exasperated.

Some people may be highly educated and holding a high post with great responsibility. However, they could be dafter than you can imagine when it comes to using emails. One day, a Capital Markets colleague sent out an email to a distribution list which was believed to comprise of email addresses of all colleagues whose job were related to FX. But apparently, some colleagues were mistakenly included in the list, so these colleagues replied to this Capital Markets colleague that they should not be included in the distribution list. The problem was, these colleagues had chosen to click on “reply to all”…

Colleague A replied all: “Please remove me from the distribution list. I’m not working with FX products and this message does not concern me.”
Colleague B replied all: “Please just reply to the sender instead of clicking on reply to all.”
Sender of the email replied all: “Colleague A, you have been removed from the distribution list.”
Colleague C replied all: “Please remove me from the distribution list. I’m not working with FX products and I don’t need to know about these messages.”
Sender of the email replied all: “Colleague C, you have been removed from the distribution list.”
Colleague D replied all: “Please do not click on reply to all! You people are jamming everybody’s mail!”

Usually, the process would be repeated till everybody in the distribution list had received more than a hundred emails and they will be busy deleting these emails throughout the whole day in order to clear their mailboxes.

There are others who are not jamming mailboxes due to their stupidity. There are the people who do it in the name of office politics. These are the ones who will email to his/her boss, everybody else in his/her department and anyone else who is loosely related to his/her works about every single piece of task they have accomplished. These are also the ones who will email you about an escalation due to your mistakes or your inability to notice the problem, and cc the email to his/her boss, your boss and every other person in your department.

One day, both KZ and I had a meeting and a conference call back to back. By the time our one o’clock meeting finished, we were fifteen minutes late for a two o’clock conference call. And sitting in our mailboxes was an email from the conference call organizer…

“Hey KZ and Beng, where are you? We are waiting for you guys!”

This email was cc’ed to everybody who was attending the conference call, including our boss.

Then there are some people who love to email out queries and tasks five minutes before they log off for the day. I had received emails at six o’clock from people who had queries for the following day’s nine o’clock meeting. Apparently they expected me to stay back to answer their queries so that they could read them in the morning before they attend the meeting. These type of things happened even if the meeting invitation and agenda were sent out a week ago.

There was also this colleague from another department who loved to delegate jobs to her subordinates via email minutes before she left the office. I was skeptical about the kind of work quality produced when her subordinates had to stay back to finish the jobs. Besides the problem of low morale, because she was not there to guide her subordinates when they had doubts while doing the jobs, wrong assumptions might have been taken.

Using MSN Messenger the wrong way could cause a person to be loathed or avoided too. There are some people who acted like mosquitoes. If you ignore their presence even after they have circled and make noise around your ears, they will sting you. These are the ones who are unable to understand that you are too busy to reply to their messages, so they will send you a nudge once in every few minutes. But if you could bear with the shaking screens, these people are only pure annoying.

There are another group of people who acted like houseflies. No matter how hard you try to ignore their presence, they will continue to make noise around your ears, or worse, fly around your nose. These are the ones who are determined to send you a message against all odds. Dawn was one such person.

One day, I set my MSN Messenger status to “busy”. But Dawn still sent me a message: “are u busy?”

Another day, I set my MSN Messenger status to “be right back”. Dawn was working from home, but she still sent me a message: “hey, where are you?”

And another day, I set my MSN Messenger status to “away”. Dawn was working from home, but she still sent me a message: “hey, are you away?”

Yet on another day, I set my MSN Messenger status to “on the phone”. Dawn was in the office and she could see my headset on my head, but she still sent me a message: “hey, are you on conf call?”

Finally, I blocked Dawn from my MSN Messenger. A few minutes later, my phone rang and I picked up. It was Dawn.

“Hey Beng, is there something wrong with your MSN Messenger? How come you’re offline?”