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Comments
Comments
Don’t watch the clock when you’re with clients
Pondered by Nat
over two years ago
I went to a meeting today with a branding company and a customer. The branding company didn’t look at their clock once. I’m not sure if they are charging by the hour, but the lack of watching the clock really stood out.
In amongst checking cellphones and running late, I notice that generally people blatantly watch their clocks when you have a one hour meeting, the not-so-subtle ‘well that’s done’ at often entirely inappropriate times REALLY gets on my nerves.
So what if you run 10 minutes late. Seriously, your not that important that ten minutes will kill you. And I understand all those ten minutes add up, but they reward you over and over again with happy, satisfied customers… And anyway meetings finish early sometimes too.
Hello, my name is Natalie, I have a business called 
December 17th, 2007 at 3:48 am
true, 10 minutes won’t kill you.
However, 10 minutes is all you need to be over to get yourself a parking ticket and that’s on top of the $4 per hour.
December 17th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
The challenge is that you’re either padding out your appointments by n minutes, or you’re running into the next clients slot. Disappointing one client by leaving early is the lesser of the two evils when the other is not being on time for the next one. The former is understandable, the latter unforgivable.
Having said that I’m not sure I’d book only one hour for a creative meeting; it just isn’t enough time if you get on a roll.
December 17th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
True, but I think most people aren’t in endless meetings (understandable if you are that you need to stick to time limits) – I just find it politer to say at the beginning ‘hey I have another meeting at 2 so we are going to have to cut off right on time’ so everyone is aware. Otherwise, you do tend to feel like they are such scrooges they wouldn’t go a minute over without charging you for it.
And anonymous… Just one more reason not to take the car huh? ;)
December 17th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Oo, another excellent example of a car frustration. Bicycles are very forgiving of those extra 10 minutes – infact, you would have been early to the meeting as you wouldn’t have needed to find a park!
December 18th, 2007 at 8:22 am
Great observation. I agree that watching the clock in a meeting is a bad habit. In order to guard against talky clients and meetings that just need to die, I look for other cues—cues in the conversation rather than the clock. Sometimes you’ve got to cut off the meeting but if you do it without anxiously glancing at the clock, you’ll be able to slip away without offending.