Dr.Dudd's Guide to dealing with  "Meeting Vermin"

There is a new breed of office irritant that insist on continuing their work uninterrupted in your meeting, or arrive late or leave early to do work for someone else, collectively these are known as "Meeting Vermin". There are rare occasions in the office when a meeting has a useful purpose, and participants are usually quite willing to attend. More often than not these meetings are destroyed by Meeting Vermin, so KNOW YOUR ENEMY, and SORT THEM OUT. The most common forms are shown below, with details of how to combat these vermin. But, be aware that the cure becomes less effective in all cases relative to the seniority of the perpetrator. MD's, CEO's and Chairman are immuned to all cures, so you just have to sit back and accept them.

Phone whisperer - who crouches down and whispers into their phone every time it rings, usually at 30 second intervals. The whisper is designed to give the impression that they do not want to disturb the meeting, but somehow their voice level is always the highest in the room. The most obvious cure is to ask people to switch off their phones on entry, but this will not deter the majority of phone whisperers. An opening comment to the meeting recounting a time when someone wasted a whole meeting because of being on the phone often works because it makes the person feel that they are not only being scruitinised by the meeting chairman, but everyone else will blame them for wasting their time. An often deployed cure is to say that you have a pacemaker and that any interference from mobile phones could cause it to malfunction.

PDA Tapper - who sits tapping at the screen of their new toy.  It is amazing how those little tap noises can echo through a meeting. A good cure for this is to tell everyone at the beginning of the meeting not to play solitaire on their PDA. This puts the psychological pressure on those who were going to do real work that everyone will think they are playing, and of course it might even discourage those that are playing.

Laptop Lunatic - sets up their machine and just carries on working blatantly in the meeting. Sometimes this breed have been known to bring files of work and rustle them during the presentations. The about cures for Phone Whisperer and PDA Tapper can be deployed on the Laptop Lunatic, but it is also wise to take the precaution of ensuring that all power sockets in the room are either in use or out of use (like moving a heavy table onto the cover of an under floor socket), this ensures that if all else fails they will run out of battery at some time. If you know that a difficult Laptop Lunatic will attend your meeting you can start by asking them to take notes of the meeting as they have the laptop at hand - they are not likely to bring the laptop to the next meeting.

Pager Punk - usually younger people, they delight in running from the meeting as their pager shrieks at the most inappropriate moments. You suspect that the page has been set up by a friend, but it is difficult to prove. Cures are difficult as the person usually uses the excuse that they are on call and must respond as soon as the pager goes off. One deterrent (not a cure) is to ask the person to explain what emergency they have attended (out of interest of course), either when they return to the meeting, or in the likely event that they never come back, in the next meeting. This puts them under the spotlight and in some cases may deter pages in future meetings. The only true cure is to admire the persons pager and ask to have a look, saying that you are thinking of getting one. Whilst the device is in your possession simply remove the battery (so that they don't notice) and return it to the owner. As you hand the pager back shout "RIGHT CAN WE GET STARTED NOW", this will make the Pager Punk want to return to their seat quickly and hopefully not notice that the the screen is blank. It is worth checking out pager models before the meeting as some battery covers are difficult to find. I recommend "The Big Book of Pager Battery Enclosures" by Watt and Wattage - which contains diagrams and photographs as well as handy hints and a free 'opening' tool.

Forget-me-not - disorganised people suffer from forgetting important things, right in the middle of your meeting. Sometimes they relate to the meeting, but these are easily cured by making sure you take sufficient copies of all of the relevant paperwork to the meeting. By the Forget-me-not is most likely to remember that they should have done something, or been somewhere, just as the meeting gets into full swing. The annual variety tend to leave the meeting never to return, but perennials come and go several times during the meeting. When the meeting is due to start, announce to everyone that the meeting will start in five minutes, so if you have anything you have to do then please do it now. This is often a sufficient reminder, but has the danger that you may lose annual Forget-me-nots right at the start.

Sorry I'm Late - never arrive on time. Usually burst into the door panting, and weighed down by a laptop and large briefcase. A normal excuse is that the previous meeting overran, or that they had to come from another site, and there was a slow moving car on the motorway holding everyone up at 90 mph. It is extremely difficult to break people of this habit (99% of the time it is bad organization and a belief that the company will crumble if they do not utilise every working second to its full capacity, thus often leaving to go to a meeting five minutes after it has started). Try putting a notice on the meeting room door saying "QUIET PLEASE, IMPORTANT MEETING IN PROGRESS", this might reduce the disruption and make the person feel bad about being late. Snide comments like "good afternoon" at 9am, "we though you had got lost in the car park again", or "that's £1500 that the company has lost in waiting for you to arrive" help to add to the humiliation - but beware they can provoke a full account of the persons highly stressed life that lead them to be late.

Conference Confusion - will only ever attend meetings by telephone conference. This allows the person to carry on with whatever they want whilst pretending to be on the conference call. When someone is not in the same building as the meeting, then this is understandable, but often they are only a few desks away from the meeting room. A deterrent is to ask the person where they are, and if they admit to being close, then ask if they would come into the meeting as there are visual aids that they should see. If the person is a long way away, then there is nothing you can, or should, do as they are not really Meeting Vermin.

Combo - The person that exhibits more than one of the above traits. A MOST undesirable character to have in meetings, they turn up late, their phone keeps ringing whilst they tap away on their laptop, during the times that they are actually in the room! There is only one certain cure for this person, simply invite them to the meeting in the wrong room. Make sure that the invite is not too long before the actual meeting to avoid the person colluding with other meeting attendees to discover the truth.

Your company needs YOU! Please print off copies of the MEETING VERMIN badge at the top of this page and take a few to your next gathering, then you can hand them out to those who insist on disrupting your precious meeting. You can even colour them bronze, silver and gold, and hand them out depending on how many violations the person has made!