Look, it's 2023. If you do not know how to keep your calendar up-to-date, check emails, use the company chat, and prepare for and conduct yourself in a Teams meeting, then you need to bow out and retire and go away. Stop thinking that you are so much better and more important than everyone else, and start leading from the front. Rant over, back to work.
And stop complaining about millennials/Gen Z not knowing stuff if you can't mark up a PDF.
I don't know how to run Teams, but I sure as **** know how to run a company and treat people. Just saying....
My secretary still hasn't brought me the faxes that came in over the weekend!
What's a "Teams meeting?"
Computers have been a common part of business for a minimum of 30 years at this point.
In an office environment there really isn't much excuse for not being able to use these management tools.
[edit] For the record, I'm 58.
ugh.. you just described my lead. Our Director uses teams, our managers use teams, the other three leads use teams, and even us supervisors use it. My lead refuses. He wants old fashioned emails. This means we do not always get the information we need or things get done wrong because he could not input the correction because he refuses to use it.
5 more years till he retires at 70
For the record, I am 100% fine if you have no clue how to use a computer, as long as you have some system to work with the rest of the world. Have an assistant manage your schedule so that you are informed, prepared, and respectful of others' time.
I think this is going to be a fun thread.......
1988RedT2 said:My secretary still hasn't brought me the faxes that came in over the weekend!
maybe she's by the Xerox copying the thermal fax pages?
I have been using AI features on my databases for a few years now. I'm drafting documents with ChatGPT, but still editing them carefully.
We use Teams for meetings but still use Zoom for hearings. I have Photoshop and Adobe Premiere for Trial Presentations.
I'm 64.
I was using my Apple II with a dot matrix printer when everyone else had a secretary with an IBM Selectric.
Contrarian view: I abhor Slack, text, and any sort of instant messaging. There SHOULD be some effort required to communicate with peers, team members, and management. Those communications are too easy and too interruptive.
Emails ought to cost the sender 50 cents per word! Slack ought to have a three-hour delay.
If people took the time to think through the problem instead of punting it since it's easy to chat someone, they'd solve 2/3 of the problems and get educated for next time. Don't send me an email with a problem without proposing at least one good solution and highlighting the pros and cons, or I'll wonder what value you add.
Video meetings are a necessary evil, but I'll cut some slack since none of the various options work smoothly or seamlessly. There should be a meter on the screen reminding everyone of the total hourly costs of every employee involved (not pay, sadly, but employee cost, which is 2-3x).
I checked in to a very established facility in a medium sized city recently and noticed they had NO computer at all behind the desk. None.
They managed over 300 reservations at a time using nothing but hand written small scraps of paper and a slot and cubbyhole system on the wall. The financial notes were made directly into an old school accounting ledger with pencils. They've been doing it that way for over 50 years.
I was shocked. I didn't realize you could still run a business that way.
I can't tell you how refreshing and totally pleasant it was. People were skilled at their jobs and friendly. They seemed to appreciate their coworkers and respect them, and they were fantastic at customer service.
Computers are great, but we really can be seriously over dependent on them.
BoulderG said:Contrarian view: I abhor Slack,
Nothing wrong with a little slack from time to time...
If we're talking about having a meeting, I much prefer WebEx to anything. If we're talking about instant messaging, I guess that's okay, but it's going to depend on the expectation. I can't tell you how many times I'll be in a meeting and my Teams notifications are going off like the world's ending just from people asking questions*. But if we're talking about group chats in Teams, in 9 out of 10 use cases: die in a fire. If we're talking about trying to pass documents back and forth in Teams, that's clunky as all get out. And if we're talking about creating a "Team" in teams to have files and group chats going back and forth, no one can explain to me why that's supposed to be better than just putting it all on sharepoint. Or onedrive, since those seem to be the same damn thing with slightly different entry points.
Well, I guess, slight correction to that last point - using Teams for that might be fine if that's what everyone is using. Most people use ShareDrive/OnePoint for that sort of thing where I work, but there are a handful that insist on putting it in Teams for... reasons.
* I say asking questions, but mostly they're just messages saying "Hi Bill" which I patently refuse to reply to. You can start out with pleasantries, of course, but just get to the berkeleying point right out of the gate. If you want to know what the current cost per GiB of flash is on our contract, that's a great use of Teams but you need to put it all together like this: "Good morning, Bill! Quick question: what's our current rate for flash?" You even won't offend me if you skip the fluff entirely and jump right in to "what's flash cost us?" But this back-and-forth of "Hey Bill"........."Hey Bob, what's up?"........."What's the current rate for flash?"..... pretty much defeats the purpose. But that's a different spoon for me to bang on my highchair.
Business chat, even if it's low effort an distracting at times, is significantly less distracting than have people wanting to talk in person every 15 minutes.
It can also allow you to actually read a response in detail, instead of mishearing something.
Datsun310Guy said:1988RedT2 said:My secretary still hasn't brought me the faxes that came in over the weekend!
maybe she's by the Xerox copying the thermal fax pages?
Naw, we upgraded our thermal fax machine to a state-of-the-art plain paper model years ago. 
Everyone uses Teams because Microsoft.
One area I still suck at is using the calender.
I mean, I can make meetings and appointments and notify people when I'm out of the office, but I'm terrible at planning or tracking my time with my calender.
My boss (and my wife) are calender masters. Every day is filled with tasks and appts and reminders.
In reply to SV reX :
I love that.
I also built a career with my CAD capabilities as a substantial part of it.
It's all just tools. Some use them better than others.
I got tired of constant computer based communications instead of face-to-face talking, so I retired. Just like on here.....you're all fine folks, but I'd sooner sit down to a beer and wings with you.
Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:Everyone uses Teams because Microsoft.
That's the reasoning here at our company. i don't "hate" teams but being in sales I need to communicate the way the customer wants which means phone / text / email for the customers plus teams for the office. It can get to be a lot some days.
I use chat and texts with my kids and friends. If you want to do business with me, do not use those platforms. It is unprofessional and disorganized. Wandering back through a group text or chat to find information is a waste of my time. If a business sends me a text or a chat request, I usually ignore it.
If you want to contact me directly, use email, I check it every hour or so during business hours. It is a searchable platform and easily organized. If you need instant information, use the phone. If I'm not already busy, I'll answer it. If I'm busy I'll return your call as soon as I have time. If I'm too busy to talk, I'm certainly too busy to text or chat.
In the real world, I probably don't need to talk to you and you don't need to talk to me. I am probably in the middle of something that needs my undivided attention so a better bet is to send my admin an email or call her on the office line. I hired her and pay her a good salary to take care of the everyday tasks like scheduling service, invoicing, answering questions about deliveries, and weeding out the time wasters so I can spend my time on the tasks she can't do. She will get you taken care of faster than I will and won't lose the scribbled Post-it note on her desk and forget about you. There is a good chance I'm going to have to ask her to answer your questions anyway because I probably don't know. She is also smart enough to know if I need to be interrupted to handle something immediately and will do so when required.
Teams meeting have become the bane of professionals. Doubly true when dealing with government employees. How many times have you thought to yourself that this meeting should have been an email? Just about every Teams meeting I attend could have been an email. Unfortunately, it's so easy to send out the invites that's what people do. They get to feel important for 30 seconds because they called a meeting. They get to tell people they are busy in a meeting. Everyone knows that important people have meetings. I have gone from 1-2 reasonably important in-person meetings a month and 100s of emails, to 1-2 Teams meeting a week and even more emails to recap the stupid meetings. It's a waste of time. Just send me the email. I don't want to listen to you spout off all the synergistic words you learned at college about being a team player and being there for the good of the group. Think of me as Jo Friday. "Just the facts, Mam." Preferably in a set of specs, plans, or an email.
My calendar is my company's calendar. It is usually on display on a 40" TV to the right of my desk. It is also available by phone app to everyone who works for me. As is the list of every job, service call, or anything the company does. My people seldom call me wondering what to do. They have the list. They have the calendar. They call me to tell me what they are planning and ask if there is anything that needs to happen first.
As an add, our business hours are 8 am to 4 pm Monday through Friday. I work during those hours. Not before. Not after. I do not live to work. If you email me at 4:30, don't expect an answer before 8:30 am. If you call me after hours, don't expect me to answer. I pay someone to answer the office phones for after-hours emergency calls. They are who you need to talk to. Call them. If you call my cell phone thinking you will get faster service from the owner, the odds are high that you are wrong. I don't check my phone often on the weekends because I pay someone else to do that. So when you leave a message I probably won't see it for an hour or two and then I'm going to forward it to the guy you should have called in the first place.
I guess my point is, if you don't like a boss that doesn't communicate the way you do, you may have contacted the wrong person. Many bosses are purposely difficult to get in touch with or schedule with because they have someone else you should have contacted. Someone who was hired to manage and handle your problem so the boss can do other things. Don't take it personally. The boss has a limited amount of time in a day and frequently a large number of tasks to get done. I don't know about the rest of them, but I don't like working late either.
wae said:I can't tell you how many times I'll be in a meeting and my Teams notifications are going off like the world's ending just from people asking questions*.
You can easily mute those.
We moved to teams at the corp. level like 2 years ago. Its helpful in an environment where your coworkers are thousands of miles away. There are a few holdouts who don't use it, but most are up to speed.
What blows me away is the people who will message "do you have time to chat?". Umm, you are a chatting when you message me. If I respond, that means I've got time. If I don't respond, then I don't have time. Same with calling, you don't have to say "can I call you?". Call. If I don't answer its because I'm busy.
ProDarwin said:Its helpful in an environment where your coworkers are thousands of miles away.
What blows me away is the people who will message "do you have time to chat?". Umm, you are a chatting when you message me. If I respond, that means I've got time. If I don't respond, then I don't have time. Same with calling, you don't have to say "can I call you?". Call. If I don't answer its because I'm busy.
This. To both statements.
Teams is super useful for people that can't get together. My family uses it every month or so just to shoot the breeze because we are 1000s of miles apart.
It was also super useful during Covid when you really couldn't get together for a meeting. Now it's jumped the shark. Unfortunately, it will never get stuffed back in the box it came in.
I've had to intentionally scale back use on a lot of the things you mentioned to set boundaries for my own sanity. At my last gig, I had email, desk phone (which forwarded to my cell), cell phone, and Teams that was installed on my cell. When someone couldn't get ahold of me on one, they just went down the line until they got ahold of me. My phone never stopped. Nights (sometimes weekends) and PTO meant I was always on the phone.
New gig I have cell and email. I do have Teams but only for specific uses, not to track someone down for the never ending emergencies. This year for vacation, I'm uninstalling the email app from my phone so I don't check it and also leaving my cell at the beach house. Every year prior was many phone calls and messages starting with "I know you're on vacation but I need this now and you have to do it right now." Never again will I allow myselft to be in that type of setting.
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