This afternoon, I was scheduled to be on a conference call. The fellow who set it up called me hours before it was set to begin and said, “The guy who always has your back on conference calls and I aren’t gonna make it; could you run that call?” This was no surprise after being stood up earlier, so I said, “Yeah, sure.”

Since he’d run the last call, the fellow sent over his notes from that call to help me out.

The notes were six lines long, and the fourth line was:

a lot of discussion occurred that I missed.

I opened this lifeline to professionalism after the call had already started and it became clear that none of us were entirely sure what the call was about. After ten minutes of waiting, I called the site’s designer and reminded him we had a call, which took him by surprise. When he got on the call, it was quickly determined that the conference call which the other guy had set up, ditched on, and put me in charge of was for a site that had completely launched and was totally finished two weeks ago. None of us had any reason to be there.

I can’t decide whether this makes me an idiot, makes them idiots, or proves beyond a doubt that this new role they’re moving me into is absolutely necessary.