Arranging meetings/web calls at work

[Irish_Tom]

If you need to arrange a meeting or web conference call at work, do you email the relevant parties to agree the date and time and then send a calendar invite, or do you just fire off an invite, hope that everyone accepts and then rearrange if necessary?

We have a client who fires off meeting invites completely out of the blue without checking our availability first and I find it really odd. There’s usually no message with it either, just a title like “marketing call” so we have to guess what they want to discuss…

Is it me, or is this unusual?

 

[Irish_Tom]

Thanks all, glad it’s not just me.

All-caps messages in the subject line and meetings about meetings make me feel slightly better, it could be worse!

 

[Irish_Tom]

Thanks all, more great replies.

We're only a small team (five of us, and there are usually at least three in the office at any given time although I'm 99% remote). We all have a shared Google calendar so we can check availability. There's not enough of us to warrant a "find time" plugin (although that does sound useful).

Sounds like it's the external meetings/calls that are harder to schedule for everyone but I'm glad my experience in the OP appears to be unusual. I must say, none of our other clients do it.

 

[Irish_Tom]

Not only unusual but whoever is responsible for managing that client isn't handling them very well. They probably ought to have a word with them individually, get some details of what they want to discuss figure out who actually needs to be involved in the meeting and then schedule a mutually acceptable time for it.

It's a waste of people's time if you're turning up for a meeting you're not able to prepare for and for which you might not even be needed.

I’ll have a word with my boss.