So, who besides me has absolutely no desire for endless conference calls? You know the drill: everyone says something (just for the sake of saying something), dogs can be heard barking in the background from other participants, and others are participating in multiple conferences at the same time and, of course, confuse what is being talked about in each case.

If it is not an important call, yet you just have to be there again, just because you have to, then you might as well make a joke out of it. In most cases, at least two participants should be involved and conspire together.

You don’t have to surf long to find sounds for downloading. For example, the mooing of a cow, or the approach of a local train at the Boston station. Rooster crowing or snoring sounds are also very popular. Simply play these sounds during the conf call from time to time, and the colleague who has ideally allegedly dialed in via mobile phone has the task of coming up with good excuses for the various background noises. "Der Spiegel" recently wrote so beautifully about telephone conferences, under the title "And suddenly in the background you hear the toilet flushing”. It’s just that someone can, of course, also do this intentionally. :)

What is really good is playing inappropriate music, let it be a hit song or even the theme music from Star Trek. Then you both repeatedly each accuse an unsuspecting third party, and ask them to please switch off the car radio because it is interfering with the call. This can be quite entertaining, especially when competitors are participating in the call. They often cannot bluntly defend themselves, and suddenly you receive text messages in addition to the conf call, asking if you have completely gone bonkers.

A well-known game is “Bingo”: you give five notions to your partners in crime, for example, "monkey, sesame bread, a state of war, wig and snail", and these words must then be incorporated into the discussion. That's not so easy when it comes to the fiscalization of POS systems in Austria. Try it once.

John Lefevre (of the Goldman Sachs elevator blog) writes in his book that he used to always enjoy dialing in ten minutes earlier from another line. Most systems require you to say your company’s name, and in his case, being from the banking world, he would say, for example, "Deutsche Bank" (the name of a competitor). In case an unpleasant requirement came from a customer, he could simply hang up. The conference voice would then announce “Deutsche Bank has hung up and left the conference call”, which regularly lead to hasty justifications by competitors (not a good impression with the customer, and then what’s really stupid is when the competitor has simply switched his phone to mute, is taking a shower and does not notice anything).

And that's why there is hardly videoconferencing, because everyone would be forced to really focus on the conference and work would stop. Nothing is worse than getting a FaceTime call from the boss, causing you to move the wineglass and the ash tray from your desk in a panic. Plus, you cannot even shave undisturbed during the conversation. At the latest then it becomes obvious that you are more often to be found at the pool than in the conference room during strenuous technical seminars in Las Vegas.

In fact, most conf calls usually end with one of the participants being made to take minutes on the “decision criteria”, which should have been discussed and decided upon during the call itself.

But, we would rather make a joke out of it.