Reply to post: "Do you know who I am?"

"Do you know who I am?"

Amongst my various personality defects (I collect them) is a strong intolerance for entitled tw*ts publicly mistreating staff for stuff they have zero control over, so when that phrase comes up I usually butt in with "Oh my God, are you OK?" and then shout out to nearby people "This person has lost their memory, does anyone know who he/she* is?".

I have found that separating staff and what they have to do works great in (a) keeping some control over variables in play (pissing off your only path to a solution tends to be less than helpful) and (b) even improve how much effort staff will put in to help. That said, amongst the aforementioned collection of defects is also an abject intolerance for staff who is just filling time until it's time to go home.

I have worked for telcos and mobile phone companies and have an engineering background, so when I call those I can be fairly specific and it sometimes takes a moment to get that through to someone-who-only-joined-last-week (read: they often have as yet zip idea about the company they work for and barely know how to use their systems), typically passing me on to second level.

As for video meetings, we use a system that sets up 50 minute conferences (default so it gives some in and out coffee/toilet break time for joined up meetings) and frames them with facilities for agendas and the usual sharing of documents, whiteboard and group chat. Coupled with a booking system this format encourages structure and efficiency and best of all, we run it ourselves so we're sure a meeting only has visible members and not an extra backdoor to Langley of Fort Meade..

* _{I'm an equal opportunities insulter}