What’s your meeting room buffer?
- Thread starter Scam
- Start date
Yeah see that’s the thing at our place too. The fact he appeared at 4pm then disappeared must have subconsciously given me the idea he’d gone to find another room. People do that quite often especially if you’re on your own as the one coming in. To reappear 2mins later and bust in.. yeah not cool.
So you’ve never had a meeting overrun by a few minutes as people try to wrap up? We can’t all be robots like you
I’m gonna book all my meeting rooms with a 10min buffer and thus make them useless for the next half hour slot. That’ll learn ‘em…
Going to have to side with the view that if the other guy had the meeting room booked for 4pm, you should have been out of the room by then. If he knocked on the door at 4pm he had probably already been waiting outside for you. A lot of people expect meetings to start on time and even if you finished your meeting bang on 4pm, by the time he has got into the room and connected he will already be running late.
Possibly the funniest scenario I encountered was back in the pre Covid days when I had booked a large meeting room for a face to face meeting of about a dozen people. I had actually booked the room starting 15 minutes early to ensure that it was vacant. I arrived to find two guys in it, both stood up, looking angry and having what appears to be a full blown argument. I point out that I have the room booked and one of them snaps a terse reply at me that they will be out in a minute, strides over and slams the door. The people for my meeting arrive and we gather in the corridor, listening to the raised voices coming from the room. The minutes tick away and it goes past the start time of our meeting with no sign of the guys coming out. My group are getting impatient so I tell everyone we are going to walk into the room and sit down around the conference table. I open the door and walk in, the two men are still stood there in full flow and seem absolutely outraged that I have dared to enter. Finally they realise that they need to leave and storm out with decidedly bad grace. I never found out who they were or even exactly what they were arguing about and why they needed to do it in a conference room.
Possibly the funniest scenario I encountered was back in the pre Covid days when I had booked a large meeting room for a face to face meeting of about a dozen people. I had actually booked the room starting 15 minutes early to ensure that it was vacant. I arrived to find two guys in it, both stood up, looking angry and having what appears to be a full blown argument. I point out that I have the room booked and one of them snaps a terse reply at me that they will be out in a minute, strides over and slams the door. The people for my meeting arrive and we gather in the corridor, listening to the raised voices coming from the room. The minutes tick away and it goes past the start time of our meeting with no sign of the guys coming out. My group are getting impatient so I tell everyone we are going to walk into the room and sit down around the conference table. I open the door and walk in, the two men are still stood there in full flow and seem absolutely outraged that I have dared to enter. Finally they realise that they need to leave and storm out with decidedly bad grace. I never found out who they were or even exactly what they were arguing about and why they needed to do it in a conference room.
I’m lucky in that I don’t need to book a room but if I did I would book it well in excess of the actual call duration so I would have ample time to comfortably wrap up any over runs.So you’ve never had a meeting overrun by a few minutes as people try to wrap up? We can’t all be robots like you
I’m gonna book all my meeting rooms with a 10min buffer and thus make them useless for the next half hour slot. That’ll learn ‘em…
I’m sure I’m not the only one that works in a relatively large office with not enough meeting rooms.
I jumped into a meeting room today at 3.30pm and saw it was booked for 4pm. No worries, my Zoom call was only booked for 30mins.
Fast forward to 4pm on the dot as I’m trying to wrap up (a company was demo’ing to me, so kinda tricky) and there’s a sharp rap on the glass door. I wave saying “yep wrapping up”.
2mins later the guy busts open the door whilst I’m mid sentence and says something along the lines of “I have a meeting” and a small argument ensues. I don’t know who he is, he doesn’t know me. Rude, no?
I’d never be offended if someone was 2-3mins late to a virtual meeting, or even an IRL meeting. It’s life, previous meetings overrun, other people’s watches are different. But to bust in on someone’s meeting and turf them out?
Cue, stand and bang comments
On the contrary, i have hard cut off times and expect people to be punctual. Meetings should be time boxed and time checks given so the meeting can conclude on time.
When tou have back to back meetings through several hours the day you cannot have meetings over run a few minutes.
It is a huge loss in efficiency for many people to be waiting for for stragglers.
If you are blocking other people's meeting then it is especially problematic . They probably have an agenda and timing will already be tight. It might only feel like a few minutes to you but that might be 1 topic of conversation that there won't be time for in the next meeting .
There is also a practical side effect of being strict in meeting times in that it forces you to focus on the most important items, concise replies, etc.
Lastly, what if the other person had a call with a customer or someone very senior. Ot would not look good to be late.
The OP has set out the scenario that meeting space is limited so, no, they can’t just meet somewhere else.
You must create great working relationships
I said externals, usually companies that want to sell their wares, that I may be interested. It's not hard to say to someone "we've got until 2pm for this demo/meeting" if you actually follow through
Ideally there should be a gap between bookings to allow for changeover etc.. let people get in ahead of their slot etc..
If he's booked a room for 4pm then "bursting in" or rather entering the room he literally booked after 4pm is perfectly fine, especially if you hadn't booked it yourself, if you're going to jump into a meeting room at the last minute and you already *know* it's been booked in 30 minutes time then you should let the person you're going to have the meeting with know that you have less than 30 minutes *and* it's on you to be proactive and start wrapping up *before* 4pm.
Starting to wrap up the meeting only after 4pm, when you know someone else has the room booked is really bad form and if anything the meeting being interrupted ought to prompt a quicker wrapping up - like literally pick up your laptop and start walking outside to wrap it up IMO as it's you who has overrun.
If he's booked a room for 4pm then "bursting in" or rather entering the room he literally booked after 4pm is perfectly fine, especially if you hadn't booked it yourself, if you're going to jump into a meeting room at the last minute and you already *know* it's been booked in 30 minutes time then you should let the person you're going to have the meeting with know that you have less than 30 minutes *and* it's on you to be proactive and start wrapping up *before* 4pm.
Starting to wrap up the meeting only after 4pm, when you know someone else has the room booked is really bad form and if anything the meeting being interrupted ought to prompt a quicker wrapping up - like literally pick up your laptop and start walking outside to wrap it up IMO as it's you who has overrun.
It’s hard enough to get a room with a “straight” 30mins/1hr slot. If you start looking at weird times like 3.20pm or ending at 10 past, it’s very unlikely you’ll find anything.
Well that’s a contradiction because it was only 2mins. And again, we all seem to agree it was annoying my meeting overran but I’m interested to know if everyone else thought what he did was out of order.
It’s clearly a different industry/office culture. What if you’re back to back and it takes 5mins for you to walk from one meeting room to another? Do you demand to leave your first meeting 6mins before the end even if it’s not yours? Everyone’s busy, life is busy, people stop you in the corridor, you need to pee, grab some water etc. Heck if it’s a Teams/Zoom/whatever and you have computer/.tech issues that can easily waste 2-3mins. Or your watch is slow
Like I said, we’re not all robots. As above I already started wrapping it up before. The one thing I’ve learnt here is that if you’re waiting for a room don’t disappear from view otherwise they may think you’ve gone to a different one.
But hey, I can see that I work in a very different office environment to a lot of folks here. So I’m sure this thread will go round and round in circles. Funnily enough my other half works in a very more corporate environment, when I told her she pretty much agreed he was incredibly rude. And she’s obsessed with being on time for stuff too.
I don't think it's particularly rude to enter a meeting room you have booked when someone else is overrunning their booking by several minutes - it's certainly more rude to continue to occupy a room that others have booked for several minutes after it should have been available to them.
That's something you should report to your employer as it sounds like you don't have adequate resource to operate effectively.
A different culture indeed, but it makes sense. I've always found it intriguing how many highly skilled, educated, and capable people fall into this culture and flail around in it for years. By that, I mean booking a day of solid back-to-back meetings, with no consideration for moving between meetings or preparing for the next. I used to hate hosting meetings towards the end of the day as these victims would drip feed in up to 15 minutes late, profusely lamenting about their impossible diary, whilst the meeting and everyone else's schedule is disrupted as a result. Such wilful incompetence is just downright rude and those who participate or enable should be called out on it. I tolerated it for a long time but towards the end of my tenure in that particular role, I would close the meeting on time whether we had business finished or not, and would record in the minutes that the task could not be completed due to the tardiness of certain participants - who were named. It cheesed them off, but I was surprised by the overwhelming support I got from my team who felt the same but never wanted to rock the boat as it was usually senior managers who were guilty.Well that’s a contradiction because it was only 2mins. And again, we all seem to agree it was annoying my meeting overran but I’m interested to know if everyone else thought what he did was out of order.
It’s clearly a different industry/office culture. What if you’re back to back and it takes 5mins for you to walk from one meeting room to another? Do you demand to leave your first meeting 6mins before the end even if it’s not yours? Everyone’s busy, life is busy, people stop you in the corridor, you need to pee, grab some water etc. Heck if it’s a Teams/Zoom/whatever and you have computer/.tech issues that can easily waste 2-3mins. Or your watch is slow
I confidently walk into any meeting room when it's my booking time. I don't bother to check numbers in the room or who's in it. The awkwardness is on them. I've done it and it's been the CEO before, who politely apologised and asked for more time. People need to be better at time keeping generally I find.
So for me, no it's not rude @Scam, the rudeness is your poor time keeping. Meeting booking systems can only function properly if people don't abuse the timings. That's...kind of the whole point.
So for me, no it's not rude @Scam, the rudeness is your poor time keeping. Meeting booking systems can only function properly if people don't abuse the timings. That's...kind of the whole point.
Probably
But technically it wasn't my meeting so I wasn't in charge of the agenda or timekeeping The problem was that the onus was on me to suddenly end the call when it was clear they weren't beginning to wrap up.Judging by my colleague's responses here absolutely 100% of them thought it was incredibly rude to bowl into a meeting that is finishing. That includes my SVP. And the clues are in the details, he knocked before 4pm and I made it clear I saw him and was wrapping up. So I showed every intention of getting out asap.
I already have. This room was actually not bookable by any group on our floor, only (I presume) his group round that side. It was available though, the iPad thingy outside showed it clear hence why I used it. (And I was entitled to, btw) That probably explains why they were using it as their own private office and he was so protective over it. So I've already raised that it doesn't make sense to have rooms not bookable by the entire floor, as we are so short. I can see that the room was clear all day before that time, so it's not being used very well.
Again, the rudeness is down to individuals. I'd imagine a lot of the people you confidently walk in on will privately disagree with you. And as above, it wasn't my meeting.
And also, on the flipside, if you book a room/meeting for 30mins does that not mean you get it for 30mins? By the very nature of allowing time for setting up, joining the call there's a minute or so grace around the changeover time. Hence why in my office people are fairly chilled about that. Like I said before, it's just work life. Happens all the time.
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I can’t stand people who aren’t considerate of my time.
If I book a 30 minute meeting it’s running for 30 minutes.
If I book an office room for 30 minutes, I’m walking out at the 30 minute mark.
I think it’s arrogant and self centred to think it’s acceptable to be on a call when somebody is waiting for access to the room during their allotted time.
It doesn’t matter why it’s over running, the fact is you’ve let it, and have caused the other person to be late to theirs.
Overall, it requires some better time management.
Something like “I’m really sorry to cut across you, but I need to be out of the room in 5 minutes. I feel as though we have more to discuss, so can we use the next couple of minutes to find another time to continue our discussion?” Would have been a good place to start
If I book a 30 minute meeting it’s running for 30 minutes.
If I book an office room for 30 minutes, I’m walking out at the 30 minute mark.
I think it’s arrogant and self centred to think it’s acceptable to be on a call when somebody is waiting for access to the room during their allotted time.
It doesn’t matter why it’s over running, the fact is you’ve let it, and have caused the other person to be late to theirs.
Overall, it requires some better time management.
Something like “I’m really sorry to cut across you, but I need to be out of the room in 5 minutes. I feel as though we have more to discuss, so can we use the next couple of minutes to find another time to continue our discussion?” Would have been a good place to start
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I think it's common courtesy, and everyone's responsibility to plan meetings according to available time in a room. If your room booking ends at 3, you're out by 3 - you don't start wrapping up at 3.
Agree his tone was not helpful or professional, but I don't think coming in and giving a polite "Sorry, we have this room booked from 3" is unreasonable in general.
Agree his tone was not helpful or professional, but I don't think coming in and giving a polite "Sorry, we have this room booked from 3" is unreasonable in general.