Phone Meetings

I have started announcing random people at meetings. I sit in a row of cubes that's relatively quiet, but one row over is a group of developers who thinks the H-shaped wall dividers, or maybe the plants, constitutes an impenetrable sound barrier. Because of this barrier, they feel the need to shout at each other, even though the combined distance between their two farthest people is over 15 feet (but not 16, that extra foot is a killer!).

This makes conference calls horrid to be on, as you have people trying to convey information on one end, and people screaming at each other about baseball (and they're old enough they STILL think the entire 'Who's on first?' routine is hysterical. Even after the 20th time this week).

Because of this, I have started to get up when they're yelling at each other, walk over until I'm literally invading their personal space and announce to my conference call,

"Hey guys, sorry to interject, but Dave here apparently has something that's so incredibly important to say that he needs to scream it out to the floor, so I'm just going to put him on." And I had the phone to him and walk away.

Plain-old Aggressive Office Toy Of the Week: USB Missile Launcher