I had a two hour presentation/discussion with over a dozen attendees. I get there early, start setting up, people arrive, there’s a mad scramble for seats, and I begin.
Several minutes into my meeting, a project manager taps gently at the conference room door. “Can I speak with you a moment,” she asks me. As I’m clearly in the middle of presenting, I go outside with a raised eyebrow.
“I’m booked for that meeting room for 17 people,” she says. Uh-oh. We work out that she did indeed book five hours before me, according to Microsoft Exchange. With a room full of people idly waiting for me, I ask the project manager to find me an alternate, as her meeting doesn’t start until a little later. Reluctantly, she agrees.
Several slides later, the project manager returns with the name of a room for me. It’s in the next door building, but I take what I can get. Really, I’m too nice; perhaps I should’ve made a bigger fuss and convinced the project manager to take the new room… but she *did* book first.
The silliness of it all striking me, we got everyone packed up, down the elevator and across the courtyard to the next building. Up the elevator to the new floor and we discover… that’s right, the room’s full. I talk to the admin for the floor, she tells me that it’s clearly booked on the Exchange calendar.
<sigh>. At that point, I simply call off the meeting. Later, I found the project manager did not actually check herself, but had asked our local admin to look into it. Who knows what was actually communicated there?
I booked a replacement meeting for tomorrow; hopefully it goes better. Having double-checked all the evidence, I booked the meeting correctly… so thank you Microsoft Exchange (or whomever administers it!), for yet another ridiculous corporate career story.
