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Don’t know if this happens to you but it happens to me often, say, once a week. While on a Zoom call at work with a group of people, something compels me to say something not because I’m trying to impress but because I want to know something. I say what I say, usually a pointed and bottom-line-type question or observation, and the person running the call invariably halts everything: “Let’s take that offline.”
I’ve noticed a pattern when this happens. We don’t ever have the conversation offline. It vanishes as if what I said never happened which leads me to believe whatever I said either:
- a) was inappropriate or
- b) was off-topic or
- c) had already been discussed but I hadn’t been listening or
- d) no one was interested in the subject I wanted to talk about and that was obvious to everyone but me.
Probably a combination of all of these.
Feeling skittish and sheepish, I never follow up with anyone on the call to talk offline because I sense they don’t want to talk about that topic.
It’s not like I do this to get attention or stir peoples’ emotions and want to find out how they react. If whatever I said was truly something I thought shouldn’t have been raised during the call, I wouldn’t have raised it. This is where judgment filters come into play. I’m starting to come to terms with the reality that I don’t have the judgment to understand what to say and not say during a call and everybody else does. In today’s parlance, I don’t know how to “read the room.”
These awkward and unproductive work situations also have come up in other work conference calls. One time I said something and the boss interrupted: “Let’s not boil the ocean.”
I never said anything about boiling the ocean but he said let’s not boil it. Boiling the ocean would be a big undertaking, especially the big ones. So I guess he was saying we don’t need to tackle too big of a task. I wonder what I said that prompted him to say “Let’s not boil the ocean?”
Maybe something like “Hey, how about we gather the names, phone numbers, and email addresses of every current and potential customer and research each one of them at the Library of Congress and put all that information in a spreadsheet then have a 12-week brainstorming session on how to target our customers more effectively with more personalized services powered by artificial intelligence and quantum computing.”
Let’s not boil the ocean, the boss man said. He needs to take that boiling-the-ocean language offline.
Speaking of offline, on the day the memo went out saying nobody should raise any issues during calls and we weren’t allowed to boil the ocean I must have been offline or not listening or both.
Here’s what’s even more disconcerting. People emotionally jarred by those online calls have separate online and offline calls without me gossiping about all the topics I bring up on calls that need to be taken offline. This is called paranoia.
Picture them — I know you can — sharing a screen of a spreadsheet where someone is in charge of typing in all the topics I’ve raised that I’ve been told should be taken offline that went into the City of Nowhere.
“What about the time that guy said something about increasing profits being more important than increasing market share and nobody knew what he was talking about and, more to the point, wasn’t interested,” you can hear one of the sayings. “Remember how Joe who was leading the call had extra disgust and venom in his voice when he said ‘We’ll take that offline.’ Man, Joe really wanted to take that topic offline more than any topic on any call I’ve ever been on.”
Another person chimes in: “Remember that time his boss told him we don’t need to boil the ocean? Man, the tension on the call that day felt like the entire Atlantic Ocean was boiling.”
The irony of this, of course, is that the group goes online without me to talk about taking my topics offline and meanwhile, I’m offline waiting to talk to them offline, hoping maybe they’re up for boiling the ocean with me.
But I’ve reached serenity that I at least know what’s going to happen when I say something during a Zoom call and someone abruptly says we need to take the topic offline. No one will ever talk with me about that topic again. So if there are topics I don’t want to ever talk about again with someone at work, I will continue to bring them up on group Zoom calls.
Life is all about constantly learning. Even about what we can’t learn more about.
Any questions?
Let’s take them offline. No need to boil the ocean.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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