What’s your meeting room buffer?

Scam

Scam

Scam

Soldato
Joined
20 Oct 2002
Posts
18,857
Location
London
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 :p
 
Stu999 said:
Sorry, you should have been out of the room. Why is your meeting more important than his?
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That’s a simplistic way of looking at it. It’s not about whose meeting is more important. If so, what’s to say mine wasn’t more important than his? Do we compare notes?

My meeting was supposed to be 30mins, yes, and I was wrapping it up and intimated to him that I was doing so. To blast in as I’m trying to wrap it up is just rude. He didn’t know who I was speaking to.

Do you guys hang up if people are 2mins late, too? Most meetings with 10+ always start with a grace period and even if it’s a 1 to 1 I’d be fine waiting 5mins. Life is life, these things happen.

d_brennen said:
I always tell externals my hard cut off time and sometimes hang up on them
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You must create great working relationships :D
 
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If a room is booked from a certain time and you're using it beforehand, it's rude to overrun your time, you should be out and it's on you to manage your time (and the expectation of your meeting attendees where appropriate) properly to make sure you are finished in time.

I wouldn't be happy with someone else making me look incompetent / unable to manage my time by causing me to turn up late to meetings because they're too rude to vacate a room promptly.
 
Book more time than you need in the future, if it's a public calendar then you can always change the booking shorter if you finish early in case someone else can make use of that time
 
Scam said:
Do you guys hang up if people are 2mins late, too? Most meetings with 10+ always start with a grace period and even if it’s a 1 to 1 I’d be fine waiting 5mins. Life is life, these things happen.
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Dude you are seriously relaxed with time. If someone was approaching five minutes late I would leave the meeting.

Meetings with my MD always overrun as he has no idea how long they are because he doesn't use a calendar. I'm used to it, but it's incredibly annoying.
 
I think the best way to approach this was to wrap the call up within 30 minutes and if needed schedule another time to finish what was discussed ?


Also you could book an hour slot next time for a 30 minute call and if it runs over alittle it wouldn’t matter ?
 
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He may have handled it in not the best way but as everyone else seems to be saying this was on you
 
Before starting my own business, I mostly worked from home or had my own office. But on occasion if using a meeting room, it was mainly because the CEO wanted to talk to us, the SMT so secretary’s handled the rooms bookings, however I must admit we sometimes did over run, but because we were SMT, no one dared say or do anything.

I quite often let staff use my office when I was WFH, otherwise it was a waste of space.
 
If you only start wrapping up after your time has finished, you didn't book enough time. You should've booked it for 45 mins in this case, or started wrapping up after 20-25 mins not wait until your 30 mins are up.
 
Shoza said:
Definitely your problem and very inconsiderate. Book more meeting room time or manage your time better. You aren’t the centre of the universe.
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I’m pretty sure he was thinking he was the centre of the universe, not me. Maybe our office isn’t as strict as others but if you’re unfortunate enough to be waiting outside a meeting room for the previous one to finish, there’s a certain etiquette to getting your point across rather than barging in one someone’s Zoom call and interrupting them.
Stu999 said:
That's irrelevant to him, you don't know what his meeting was about.
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And he didn’t know what mine was about either. Like I said, in our office it doesn’t often happen but I’ve been in a group of 15-16 waiting outside a meeting room for the previous group to vacate. This stuff happens, meetings overrun a bit. That’s life. Quite often rooms are booked and people don’t show up anyway, so it’s not unusual for people to not wrap up bang in the hour etc.
tom_e said:
He may have handled it in not the best way but as everyone else seems to be saying this was on you
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And I apologised to him. I’m totally fine with being in “the wrong” as most seem keen to point out. What is not cool is barging in one someone’s meeting and demand you get out when I’m already fully aware I need to get out. I think barging in on a meeting you have no idea about to kick someone out is way more unprofessional than accidentally going over your allotted time by 2mins. Or joining a meeting 2mins late. Heck people spend more than 2mins trying to plug into the monitor or use the to/conference IT gear in the meeting rooms. Had I been 5mins over then yes I’d get very annoyed as well.
MichaelAwkward said:
If you only start wrapping up after your time has finished, you didn't book enough time. You should've booked it for 45 mins in this case, or started wrapping up after 20-25 mins not wait until your 30 mins are up.
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It wasn’t my meeting. It was a company (that I already work with ) giving me a demo of some new functionality. So they booked it for 30mins. I couldn’t find a room with any more time so I had to jump in there anyway. And we did start wrapping up at 5mins to.

Anyway, my question was less about who was in the right. More if anyone else thought it was pretty damn rude, as I did.

And yes we are pretty relaxed on timings in our office. Maybe too casual when it comes to things like this, maybe he went to the Ocuk school of work time management :p
 
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