Early meetings

[Sysman]

Ah, the dear dead days beyond recall of early morning conferences with Hong Kong & Taiwan, & late evening conferences with California.

Fortunately I never had to do them.

FTFY.

I once had to go back into work at 8 or 9 to call someone on the West Coast of the USA.

[CheeseSlice]

I think the real question is what would make you inflict so much pain on yourself as to want to travel 3 hours each way? Currently doing 70 mins each way and happy it is finishing after 6 months, Next role will be 40 mins each way and I still feel that's a big long.

Nah wasn't every day. My normal commute was 2 hours. That particular meeting was a one off, tw*t decided it had to be in an office the wrong side of london to me. I had to take an intercity train into London, tube right across town, and another mainline train out again to get to it. I'd have driven but needed to be in zone1 again afterwards.

Current and last commutes are 1:40 and 1:50 respectively. Harsh but beats staying in hotels.

[speling bee]

FTFY.

I once had to go back into work at 8 or 9 to call someone on the West Coast of the USA.

Fat **** with a penchant for champagne?

[CheeseSlice]

What noddy company can't setup dial in meetings? Do you need to actually be there? I work from home almost every day expect for bit all day meetings once or twice a month.

Places like where I am. They don't do that sort of thing. Meetings are slow drawn out affairs. Coffee is served. Very old skool.

[TheFaQQer]

To me that's lunchtime

Yes, we know that agents can't tell the time - I'll give you a call this afternoon when I have some news

[Sysman]

Fat **** with a penchant for champagne?

Never met them so dunno.

[Sysman]

I had to do that once coz some stuff we'd bought from ARS microsystems had the wrong software with it.

The bastards wouldn't talk to me.

I had a problem with someone who wanted us to pay up front without seeing their software/hardware in action because they were paranoid about piracy.

We'd already been bitten by a different bunch of sleazes so we wanted a demo first.

Stalemate, so we went elsewhere.

The worst bit about it was the interminable voice menus. This was back when some combination of BT and the US telcos meant that US switchboards didn't understand UK phone tones.

We eventually got a gizmo you could hold to the mouthpiece and tap in US style tones, but it was a faff.

I only phoned the feckers up because ARS microsystems had their heads up their arses.

In the end I had Siliconix Inc buy the stuff & send it over to us.

We also had the "US credit cards only" run around. A former colleague who had moved to the US helped us out there.