That giant sucking sound

I could discuss at great lengths all the things I enjoy about working from home. But lately I've found some serious disadvantages. For one, since our organization within the company is so spread out, we have to completely rely on conference calls for all meetings. A lot of times, this is wonderful; if I'm not an integral part of the call, I can zone out and nap while listening for my name. However, I'm apparently more important than I used to be, because I've had to actively participate in a lot more calls the last few weeks, enough to notice some serious fundamental flaws in conference calls.

For one, it's too easy to skip a call. When your whole organization works in the same building, there's nowhere to hide come meeting time. Your coworkers have seen you around the office, and everyone is expected to show up. But if your coworkers are in Texas and California and don't even know what you look like, it's a lot easier to justify ditching the meeting and taking an extra-long lunch. This has led to me having the exact same conversation five different times with five different managers in the last two weeks, which could have been avoided had they all attended the first conference call like they'd agreed to do.

Second, there's no subtle, polite way to tell someone to shut the fuck up. When everyone's clustered around a table, it's easy to tell when you're carrying on a bit too long. People start shifting in their chairs, fidgeting with their pens, avoiding eye contact, etc. But on a conference call you actually have to cut people off by yelling at them, which I don't have the authority to do at this point in my career (when I do get to that point, look out).

On a related note, nobody listens anymore. And why would they? Ninety percent of these conference calls are taken up by bloviating gasbags in love with the sound of their own voices. I spent two hours today answering a dozen slightly different phrasings of the exact same question, because every time someone asked it, they rambled in corporate-speak (teaming, strategic partnerships, deliverables, blah-de-blah) for so long that everyone else tuned them out. At least I was only on a conference call, so I could gesticulate wildly and give the telephone the finger repeatedly.

Moving on.

It's far too late to make any meaningful comments about the elections, but a friend of mine raised a very valid point when he asked, "Why don't victorious politicians and campaign managers shower each other in booze like athletes do when they win a championship?" Clearly, there's no valid reason for this not to happen, and it's not too late for Obama to pour champagne all over Biden.

No other thoughts on Obama, except that he seems to be my generation's JFK. I fit (barely) into CNN's Young Voter Demographic, and had never really understood the fascination with JFK and the other Kennedys that my parents have until now. Obama's the first politician I can remember that people seemed genuinely excited to vote for. Or maybe I'm just getting less cynical in my old age.