A journalist friend of mine recently finished his awards meetings and was finally able to pop by Captain’s Bar for a catch-up. When I prodded him about the most interesting or boring encounters, boy did he have a story to tell.
At one DCM pitch in Hong Kong, the bank’s team head was away on a business trip, so he was dialling in on speaker phone. The meeting started as normal, with the team lead explaining how well the bank had done this year and how amazing their deals were. But much to my friend’s surprise, one of the bankers sitting in the Hong Kong conference room started to get rather impatient with his boss’s incessant prattling on the phone.
The younger banker tried several times to interject, to add his own two cents to the pitch. But his boss just kept talking, barely pausing for a breath.
So, with a roll of his eyes, the banker took matters into his own hands. When he wanted to speak, he simply put the speaker phone on mute, turned down the volume and made his own commentary, before turning his boss’s call back on. Meanwhile, his superior continued talking, none the wiser to the fact that no one could hear him.
The journalist laughed as he told me the story, but I couldn’t help but worry — how often do people mute me?