What’s your meeting room buffer?

[Scam]

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

 

[Scam]

Sorry, you should have been out of the room. Why is your meeting more important than his?

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.

I always tell externals my hard cut off time and sometimes hang up on them

You must create great working relationships

 

[Scam]

Definitely your problem and very inconsiderate. Book more meeting room time or manage your time better. You aren’t the centre of the universe.

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.

That's irrelevant to him, you don't know what his meeting was about.

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.

He may have handled it in not the best way but as everyone else seems to be saying this was on you

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.

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.

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

 

[Scam]

Meetings over run sometimes, they often do at our place sometimes by a lot. If the meeting room is busy you use another room or wherever you can.

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.

yes, i thought it was pretty damn rude, of you.

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…

 

[Scam]

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.

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.

Have to agree, if a room is booked for a time I expect it to be available at the time. A couple of minutes late is generally OK but I know plenty who can't stand it.

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.

On the contrary, i have hard cut off times and expect people to be punctual.

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.

Starting to wrap up the meeting only after 4pm, when you know someone else has the room booked is really bad form

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.

 

[Scam]

It'll go round in circles until you get validation for thinking someone reacted unreasonably to your poor time management, yes.

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.

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.

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.

That's something you should report to your employer as it sounds like you don't have adequate resource to operate effectively.

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.

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.

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.