Scheduling
If there’s one thing that was made easier by the Covid-19 lockdowns, it was holding meetings online. Now that lockdowns are hopefully a thing of the past, are we once again condemned to the horrors of trying to arrange physical meetings?
This week, we discuss the problems with booking meetings. How do you schedule meetings with people coming from different places and is there a way to do it properly? We discuss the set cover problem, information theory and ask if organising meetings solidifies power structures in organisations and groups. We debate whether we should do away with meetings completely or find a way to universally enforce shareable calendars. Finally, Nick and Fraser illustrate a real-life example of scheduling madness.
A few things we mentioned in this podcast:
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Tom Spence and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights, and this week we're talking about the nightmare that is scheduling meetings. Nick, scheduling, Nick, Nick, meetings. So this brought into focus recently
Speaker B:for me because I am in a group of six regular online board gamers. Yes. And during lockdown, it was a dream because every Saturday night was Here I Stand night. Here I Stand? Here I Stand is the name of the game. Other board games are available. But it's one of the best. You've got precisely six players who are into... What's it about? I know this is not what we're
Speaker A:talking about, but I'm already into it. What's it about? It's about the wars of the Reformation.
Speaker B:Okay. And it's very sort of asymmetric. So each of the six players has very different powers and capabilities. But for example, one player is the Protestants. Yeah. And they start out with almost nothing and have to kind of grow a religious movement. Another player is the Pope who starts out very powerful and ends up gradually losing to them. You've got France who are kind of in a war with the Habsburgs, but the Habsburgs have got to worry about the Ottomans and the Ottomans can do piracy. And then you've got the British who really are mainly concerned with having... Henry just
Speaker A:needs an heir. Yeah. So it's very exciting. By the way, forget what we were going to talk about.
Speaker B:We're going to be talking about this instead. It's great stuff. And during lockdown, it was a same time next week, lads. And since lockdown ended, obviously, it's a lot harder now. We're normally playing about once every two or three months. And we had a date fixed up, provisional, at the end of the last session. And now, unfortunately, one of our crew can't make it that day. So nightmare, right? How on earth do we find a date? There's six of us, all on the ends of different emails, different times. And we're forced to be able to find a date. And of course, you just, what do you do? How do you do it? Like, it just seems like a hell of a lot of work. And in this case, you must have each. You propose some dates, and then somebody else says, no, I can't do that one. So you go, could you do this one? And then inevitably start going, what if we look a bit further out? And then this guy's on holiday that day. And, you know, just endless email trails to try and say, is there a way of doing it properly? Why is it such a nightmare? And is there too much? Is there too much in general? Do we have too many meetings? Yeah, how do we deal with the problem of meetings? I've got a solution for you. I'm going to save it. I'm going to say,
Speaker A:well, okay, well, okay, I think you guys, what you should do, first of all, I'm amazed that online gamers have got anything, any commitments on a Saturday night. But anyway. They're in person gamers now, that's the problem. Yeah. But you need to get a secretary, that's not the system. You need a diary assistant. That's what you should do. The six of you should pull your resources and get a diary assistant. That's what I need. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker C:It sounds to me as though your problem in this instance, Nick, isn't actually really, you know, finding a time. It's an information sharing problem. It seems like if everyone shared their diaries completely, you could just look for where they line up and where there's a free slot. But it seems like because you're doing it all over email, you only find out that something isn't working once you've committed resources to setting it up for that date. If all the information was available up front, then you could turn it into a fairly simple optimization problem of finding
Speaker B:the optimal gap. I'm picking up what you're putting down, but that relies on a whole bunch of things which aren't true. E.g. that everyone has a kind of easily shareable calendar and that there aren't people who basically use a filofax or whatever. I use a paper calendar, but I could take a photo of it. But then you're putting the work onto someone, aren't you? But it sounds like it's quite a lot of work already, Nick. Yeah, but what I'm saying is that you're more interested in
Speaker A:solutions than you are getting the joy out of moaning about something and you need to get
Speaker C:yourself into it. That's true. Get with the program. Maybe I'm the problem here. Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, you would definitely are if you've got a paper diary because my girlfriend's the same. She's basically the master version of her calendar is her filofax. Yeah, same with my wife. So you have to kind of then put in effort to coordinate, make sure you've got all of the same appointments in the same place. And of course, when I move one, if I move a work meeting, it moves for everyone. Whereas if I move a home commitment from one day to another, there's then a kind of I've got to send an email saying we're now doing this on this day. So I get it. Like what you're saying is if we could share all of the information about our commitments, it would be easy. Yeah, I agree. But that isn't true and it's not going to happen.
Speaker A:And it's still a lot of work. You know, it's still a pain. So I mean, is that a podcast finish? Meetings are difficult. Arranging stuff is difficult. I think it's worth talking about
Speaker C:different types of meetings as well, because I think what you're describing is a particularly difficult problem where you have six people. Yeah, precisely. You need six people to play the game and you have six players. So finding a day when all six of those people are free is always going to be slightly more constrained, whereas a lot of meetings have people who can attend. You know, there's a there's a number that's good. There might be a forum. Some can, some don't need to. Yeah, you need a subset of all the possible invitees. Yeah, that's much easier to find because at that point you can make a decision and as long as it meets a threshold, fine. And it gets to kind of combinatorics type problems. There's another type of a problem in this space where, for example, if I were a fire warden and I was trying to do fire training for everyone in an office, everyone needs to go to a meeting, but it can be multiple meetings. They don't all have to be there at the same time. And then you have a separate problem which is finding the most efficient way to get all of those people trained. So the fewest number of meetings you could for could organize to have everyone attend a meeting. And that's actually quite a well-studied problem because you can reduce it to a thing called the set cover problem, which basically when you have a set of objects, which is kind of your universe for the problem, and then you have subsets that contain any permutation of those or any subset permutation of those elements. And the question then trying to answer is what's the most efficient way of choosing subsets to get representation from all of those. This is so Fraser's bag. This is,
Speaker B:oh God, I don't want the bloody meeting anymore. How do we use this insight to get a meeting?
Speaker C:So this is particularly useful for the example I gave at the end there of, you know, you're trying to get everyone to a training session. You want to do it in as few meetings as possible.
Speaker B:And so what you do here. I see. Right. So it's about how splitting up, we're splitting up a group of the big set here being all the people who need to go on the training course. Yeah. And
Speaker C:you're trying to find out how. And the subsets are then dates or meeting times. Ah, and so each.
Speaker B:Each which contains a number of people. I see, a number of people who's available then. Exactly. Right. Well, I mean, I suppose you could say that actually all meetings are some version of that, but the extreme cases. With different constraints. So I have one where I need six people precisely. Yeah. And so I basically reduced it to the problem of finding the set,
Speaker A:which contains all of those. Yeah. This is starting to feel like some of the meetings I've
Speaker C:been in. Absolutely gripping stuff. Yeah. For those with eyes to see. Yeah. Well, just before Fraser puts the ban on any numbers. Puts the kibosh on any thinking. Any actual insightful analysis. The set cover problem formulated as what's the minimum number of sets that you can choose or subsets, which would be the minimum number of meetings in this case is NP hard, which is sad.
Speaker B:Right. But that also might illustrate why this is a hard problem. It is. But interestingly,
Speaker C:you can do quite a decent job of it just using a greedy algorithm that makes the best choice
Speaker B:at each. So you just go find the date with the most people start there. Exactly. Which date has the
Speaker C:most of the remaining people and so on. Not always the best. Sometimes the same person is going to
Speaker B:be. Yeah. Yeah. Surplus to requirements. Yeah. Well, look, Fraser, here's another number you might just I thought it'd be worth putting another just also illustrating why this is hard. So firstly, in its general form, trying to arrange a meeting is NP hard. If I reckon that for about two to three hours a day, I'm in meetings at any given time over the next couple of weeks, say, and I and probably I'm busy. Let's say that I'm also busy on one out of three Saturday nights. It's more than that. But let's just run with it with if I gave a date, if I put a date out there, so I'm available on the 7th of June, the probability that all five people, if they're the same as me, are going to be available is only 13 percent. Right. So so in order to just to put a list of dates up that will hit all six of them, I'm going to have to propose like eight separate dates just to have a kind of, you know, decent chance that all of them will be able to make one of those dates. If I was trying to arrange a meeting where 10 people need to be around under those same conditions, there's only a one point seven chance that any given time slot they'll be available. So that shows you why this is nightmarish. Right. Because if I if I've got to get a meeting together with 10 different people on average, I'd have to propose like 50, you know, 50 dates, 60 dates to find one or times to find one where everyone's available. That is assuming obviously that everyone's independently busy. Yes, that's true. But then you end up with what always ends up happening, which is you go, right, I'm not going to have meetings after three o'clock in the afternoon. And inevitably it's like someone is like, we've got to have this meeting this week. The only time we can do is half past four. And you know, and you're stuffed. You start ending up having meetings at stupid times. Guys, no, yeah, you're missing the point. Oh, it's just too many
Speaker A:meetings. So I have very few meetings in my life. I have very few work meetings, thank God. But even socially, I don't have that many. Maybe it's because I just don't have any friends. I don't know. I don't I don't know. I don't. You guys, your life sounds like they're crammed with meetings. Are they really? And I think you're making a big deal out of this. And if it's that hard to do, just don't bother with the meetings. That's my view. I think you're obsessed with
Speaker B:meetings. No, you're I think you're probably right. I think there's a lot of unnecessariness. A lot of meetings, maybe a lot of them could be handled just by with Slack messages or something. But there are times where you definitely need to have a meeting. Do you want some theory? No. Well, I'm going to give it to you. It's about common knowledge. OK. There's a lot of these common knowledge paradoxes in game theory. So here's an example. Right. And it's meeting sort of meeting related, really. But let's say that you and I have previously arranged to go to the
Speaker A:dock. I just want to cut into this for a minute. I just as I look at you talk to me, I just think the amount of meetings that you and I have scheduled. And ten minutes after the meeting was about to start, you call me out and say, Fraser, where the hell are you? And I go, oh,
Speaker B:Nick, I'm so sorry. And I've done it again. You're like one of these people who sort of says, oh, I don't know why everyone's so obsessed. People should be more laid back about it. And in fact, you're just pushing all the costs onto other people. We're doing all the work of
Speaker A:arranging them. And indeed, you don't even then turn up. So if nothing else, because of that, you've got some capital built up with me in this. So you go for it. Yeah. Just to give you some
Speaker C:capital back, Fraser, there have been quite a lot of lunchtime meetings that Nick has put in my calendar and then messaged me saying, oh, I'm actually having lunch now. During the time slot.
Speaker B:Yeah, why not, Nick? And there was me feeling all guilty all this time. Well, we'll get to how power imbalances affect your ability to turn up for meetings in due course. So this problem of common knowledge where we've arranged to meet at the Dog & Duck and you and Bart, you've now checked TripAdvisor and discovered that the, you know, the painted lady round the corner is a better pub. So you send me a text message saying let's meet there instead. But the key thing is we want to meet. Meeting is the overriding concern, us being in the same pub. So you don't get a text message back from me to acknowledge the change in venue. So what do we do? Well, the optimal thing for you to do is to think, well, Nick probably hasn't got the message. So you end up at the Dog & Duck. I know what I would do, actually. You'd go to the Dog & Duck, get me, and then we'd both go to the painted lady. I'd hang around in the street for a while. Yeah, you wouldn't turn up to either of them. That's true. I wouldn't. But the problem is, OK, but when I send you a text message to acknowledge that I got your message. Yeah. But I don't get a message back acknowledging the fact you've received it. I might think, well, he might not have received it and he might think that I've never got the bit. So you think, well, I'll send one back to Nick. And the point is that actually we can keep exchanging messages infinitely. But if there's some chance the other person won't read one, then it all collapses to us ending up in the first place. But if we can simultaneously be in the same place and both do it, you effectively shortcut all of that and you end up with common knowledge. So that's why arranging these things and sharing information face to face is so useful, doing things simultaneously compared to back and forth, which you kind of get with emails. And that's why people want meetings. But it's also inter alia, why trying to arrange them when you're not face to face is such a nightmare. Yeah, I think that's nicely made. Come back to
Speaker C:that point about sharing everyone's calendars. Ultimately, you need a meeting to share the calendars
Speaker B:to arrange the meeting. Yeah. But I agree. So why doesn't everyone just share
Speaker A:their calendar? Do you have a shareable calendar? I do. Yes, I do. And it works well for my work work. It works nicely for that. And I've tried to share it with my wife, but she refuses to sort of get involved, engage. Yeah. Yeah. She's devoted and married to her kitchen calendar on the wall, you know, so that's well, I guess. And then the rest of the family can see it, though. Yeah, exactly. And she's got a fair point. And and there is something that's, you know, nice about writing stuff down and, you know, like, you know, but we can put online polls,
Speaker B:right, I guess, which is the kind of closest equivalent. So you kind of doodle poll type things, which I occasionally have had to resort to. I find them a nightmare, because actually they make they make everyone have to do the same amount of work, which is a lot, because you have to check through your calendar, first of all, to decide which dates you're going to say are on the poll. And then everyone else has to check every single day and respond to all of them. And, you know, and then you you eventually get an answer. But it seems like an enormous amount of work. It feels like it'd be much quicker if you just everyone in the same room and have a chat. So that'd be good. Why don't we all just get together in the same room and have a chat? Well, when are we going to get together in the same room and have a chat? You have to already have arranged a meeting in order to get that out of the way. It's an infinite regress of nightmare.
Speaker A:Yeah. But I'm gonna I'm gonna delight you now, Nick, by saying this is all to do with aims, and what you want. Because your stand up game, whatever it's called. Here I stand. Here I stand. That sounds brilliant. And I would imagine that those six participants are willing to put in quite a lot of effort to ensure that that meeting goes ahead. So you go through all the trials and tribulations and the disappointments, etc. You manage to schedule, you've got a date. It's worth it. But imagine doing that same thing for a meeting with
Speaker B:your accountant. Okay. Well, I'd say our accountant is lovely. And I would relatively relish meeting.
Speaker A:I suspect you take my point, which is that sometimes you just couldn't be. No, this is too much hassle. Fuck that meeting. Okay, I'm not going. I don't meetings are stupid. Right? So shouldn't that be factored into the equation? Like, how much do we want to have this meeting? And maybe it forces us to go. Do you know what I'm going to cut down in meetings in my life? Is that of any interest at all?
Speaker B:Yeah. How do we do it? I feel like we've become trapped into a high meeting frequency equilibrium. What do we do, Tom?
Speaker C:Well, my main thought from your here I stand issue is that all your board game collaborators should simply move in with you. And then you'll always be in the same room, always be able to share your calendars. Problem solved.
Speaker B:That's true. And so this, you know, the solution is to it definitely in here is a recommendation is always arrange the date of the next meeting. During the previous game. I mean, you know, as I said, it's only that something went wrong.
Speaker A:Three solutions already. So mine get a diary scheduler to move in together. Three, hey, you manage to make that happen. That thing said to make a meeting, we all need to be together. Boom, we're all together. Let's make it. So three solutions straight away.
Speaker C:Nick's solution has the one fatal flaw of which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Yeah. How do you get that first meeting? Yeah, how do you get it in the calendar first?
Speaker B:I presume at some point you've had a meeting with these guys. Well, lockdown. So you can kick off in lockdown when no one's doing anything. And then you've got the ball rolling. But as soon as it goes wrong, as soon as one of the tyres goes flat.
Speaker C:If someone's ill and can't come, then they're not there for the second to decide when the next one is.
Speaker B:The whole thing breaks down.
Speaker A:Do we want to broaden this out? I mean, we're talking about the problems of scheduling. Is there anything we'd, I mean, and I recognise we can be in danger, especially, God forbid, someone like me getting a bit moany about meetings. Well, I haven't brought, I haven't talked about information theory yet. And I know you want me to. Yeah, no, I was waiting for that. But we're groping our way towards the end.
Speaker B:And this also points to some solutions as well, by the way. This information theory, a few observations, points to some solutions to this, right, which is, so there's a lot of information. Did you say information systems? Theory. Theory, sorry, yeah, go on. There's a lot of information contained in a calendar. Right? Like, if you think about, you could be doing lots of things during, let's say, 15 minute slots in your day. There's 32 slots. And each of those slots can be in a number of different states. You could be busy or free or whatever. Or you might want to think about, well, what are you doing? Because some of those slots, you're going to be doing something which is, you know, kind of optional and could be moved. And in others, you definitely can't move it. And when you're sharing that information, that's just a lot of information to share. Right? That's why this is hard, because there's so much to share. You know, the solution, like, we'll show that person your calendar, is making them do the work, really, of analysing. In fact, I had worked with this guy who, whenever I said, oh, are you going to be around? Can we set up a meeting next week? He just would take a screenshot of his calendar and send it to me. Absolutely infuriating. It's like, okay, well, now I have to do the work of finding a slot. Right? But if you propose the meeting, is that not fair? And now that brings us on to. You're about this power imbalance thing.
Speaker A:By the way, stop. Don't let Chris Lear do that to you anymore. Keep going. Keep going.
Speaker B:One thing that the implication is, right, that if you can somehow compress the information in a calendar, the easier it would be to share. So here's one of my proposals. That you have two meeting slots per day, and they're at nine o'clock and ten o'clock. And now you just have two pieces, two bits of information to share each day. So if I wanted to show you my week's calendar, I just send you a 10 digit binary number. And now you have all the information you need. In fact, we can just do a really simple binary multiplication to find out when we're both available. Yeah, but the point is, it's a lot simpler than having to go through a calendar where there's 50 different slots each day. What I'm saying is we all agree that nine o'clock and ten o'clock are the meeting times. And there's never a meeting outside that. And so all you have to do is say, you know, on this day, I'm a zero and a one. Yeah. Instead of having to communicate a load of tedious information. So that's my proposal. That sounds utterly impractical. And if something is, you know, if you need a meeting this week, you've got to cancel one of the ones that's already there.
Speaker C:Well, I look forward to hairdressers only ever cutting two people's hair per day. But it seems as though you haven't actually solved the problem of scheduling a meeting. You've just said there's too much time. It'll be easier if there's less time.
Speaker B:Yeah. Well, no, standardize the slots, because I think we've got too much freedom. There's too much of this all half nine here, bloody quarter to ten there. You know, what about meetings of different lengths? Illegal under my system.
Speaker C:Right. And what would the punishment be?
Speaker A:A meeting. You have to schedule a meeting in the old needling scheduling fashion.
Speaker C:Yeah, I like it.
Speaker A:I actually quite like your system as long as you don't start sending me binary stuff that I need. You said ten numbers that I need to calculate or something.
Speaker B:No, you just it's just a string of ten ones and zeros, which tell you everything about my calendar for the week. And then you can just put your ones and zeros over the top and look for where there's both zeros. It is simple.
Speaker A:It is simple. OK, well, we can let's do that. Yeah. For our next pre-podcast chat meeting, send me that.
Speaker B:Yeah, and I'm afraid it does mean that, you know, for example, hairdressers will have to drastically reduce their output. Like I care. There's no other way. Exactly.
Speaker A:OK, look, we need to stop. I don't know if we've reached any kind of conclusion. There's something I want to move on to.
Speaker B:I've got one more proposal. Yeah. Which is, you know, I was saying it's really easy to arrange meetings face to face. Are you going to say it's not? No, it's just what you do is Monday morning at half past nine, everyone in the whole world all goes on to Discord or something at the same time. And you find the people you need to arrange meetings with and you just talk it out and you work out a good slot. And that takes maybe two or three mins. And you just do that with everyone.
Speaker A:Let's make sure we do this at GMT or BST, but yeah, go on.
Speaker B:But you just go and find them while they're there. But everyone is in that room at the same time and you just don't have to do any more emails. But the point is that you don't have to arrange this meeting in advance. You don't have to arrange a meeting to arrange a meeting because it always happens at half past nine on a Monday. And I don't care if you're Australian at the same time. I've just got one issue here. Go on.
Speaker C:That's not at nine or ten. And those are the only acceptable meeting slots.
Speaker B:I resign. He's right.
Speaker A:He's got me. No, but this is a different model. Yeah, that's true actually. You're too hung up on the other model. You either go one or the other. You don't need both. Clearly the other model was ridiculous. So I don't know why you're still persisting with that. OK, as we chat, a couple of things have occurred to me is some of my bad meeting habits.
Speaker B:Go on.
Speaker A:Well, not actually in the meetings, but the amount of times you've scheduled a meeting with me and at the last minute I go, oh, I need to change it, Nick. OK. And that is usually because I'm terrible. I'm always double booking myself. And so someone sent me a calendar invite. I always go, yeah. And I just stick it in straight away. And then usually on the day itself or as the meeting's meant to be starting, that's when I realised I'm meant to be, you know. You've got four meetings. Yeah. And one of them I need to be in Edinburgh. And the other one I'm taking my kids to the doctor. And, you know, oh God, I've got to speak to Nick again.
Speaker C:Are you saying Nick doesn't take priority over those other two tasks?
Speaker A:No, unfortunately not. Yeah. Well, there we are. And in fact, that's what you say to me. You always say to me, I should be taking priority, Fraser. But the reality is that you're not. I'm actually your customer.
Speaker B:Yes. Believe it or not.
Speaker A:I know.
Speaker B:And isn't the customer always meant to be right?
Speaker A:Yes. Absolutely. But this is the part of the majesty and complexity that is me, you know. Yeah. Well, this is what we've alluded to. I'm nothing if not flawed.
Speaker B:I'm flawed. We haven't mentioned this yet. We just said we were going to mention it. But I think there is an element, as Tom was saying earlier, where if you're the one who wants the meeting to happen, you've got to do the running, I'm afraid. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker A:It's like how polite or not you are in email, right, to someone. Because, you know, if we email back and forth, you know, we're mates and that's fine. You know, I don't care about grammar errors, et cetera. But if you're writing, you know, to not even someone formal, but someone who you need something from them, well, you know, it's got to be a nice, polite email and, you know, well thought out and structured and so on. Yeah. As you say, it's a power imbalance.
Speaker B:But it's not quite, is it? Because what if I want to summon someone to a meeting because they've been naughty? If I said, right, 10 o'clock on Monday is your naughtiness dressing down session. Right. And they said, sorry, a bit busy then. Can you just check my calendar and put something in?
Speaker C:A bit busy doing mischief.
Speaker B:I'd be like, that's a bit rude, actually.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know what I mean?
Speaker A:Yeah. I've seen that in the workplace. I mean, not specifically with naughty stuff.
Speaker B:But people sort of putting it back and saying, no, I'm busy.
Speaker A:Sorry. Yeah. I've seen it in terms of, it got me thinking about when I was working in quite a large company about power structures within an organization and formal and informal power structures. And there was this quite new MD. The MD, quite important. And every week we were meant to have this meeting. And there was one guy who was pretty much never there, who in theory was inferior, but in practice had a lot of social capital. Yeah, Barry, in the company. And basically it became clear to everyone that he could do what he wanted. And actually he could. But did they deal with the Barry problem? No. Barry's still there to this day. Barry left and formed his own company from what I've seen. Looks to be doing very well. But Barry was able to do that because he made an awful lot of money for that company. And he wasn't even a sales guy, but he made a lot of money from it. He created products. He could do what he wanted.
Speaker C:And therefore his calendar time is viewed as more valuable. And so it takes priority, right?
Speaker A:I think it was analysed further because it was probably never... Yeah, I mean, you're right. But I don't think everyone even thought about it in that way. Because he was Barry. Yeah, it was Barry.
Speaker B:Well, because if you make Barry come to that meeting at 11 o'clock on a Friday, that's one fewer golf game he's having.
Speaker A:Yeah, this is what Tom's saying, isn't it? Barry's time is money. Yeah. By the way, this guy's name was so far removed from the name Barry, it's not true. But anyway, what is the opposite of Barry? That would make a good podcast.
Speaker B:We already did What's the Opposite of Celery. We should do What's the Opposite of Barry. Yeah, exactly. There's no point because it's actually a good question.
Speaker A:Listen, if Nick doesn't mind, Tom, before we finish off, have you got anything you would like to finish off on? Because I've got something.
Speaker C:I'm excited for the Fraser question for this podcast.
Speaker A:Well, it's actually not a question. But I just wanted to read something out because Nick, you were talking earlier on about you and me, we're going to meet at the Dog and Duck, right? And we're texting back and forth. Well, I have a real life example of this. What moron could get something like that wrong? Yeah, from today. What? Now, let's see if I can find it. Bear with me. This is thrilling podcast radio.
Speaker B:It is. Let's keep that paused.
Speaker C:For listeners who can't see, Fraser is currently scrolling on his phone looking for evidence.
Speaker B:Looking for the most recent text message that he sent, which was to me. Do you want me to? I tell you what, why don't I be me and you be you?
Speaker A:Yeah, OK, good idea. I can't find it at the moment.
Speaker C:Because the microphone's in the way. He's also holding the phone very far away. Like a granddad. As though he's really old. Right, I've got them here.
Speaker A:Was it on text rather than WhatsApp?
Speaker B:Text, yeah.
Speaker A:I can't fucking find it. Go to your text message app.
Speaker B: What time was it at?: Speaker A:Yeah. OK, so it starts off with me, I'm Nick, at 8.48 this morning. I'm confused already. And by the way, I had already warned Nick via email to not be late.
Speaker C:When you say you had warned Nick, do you mean Nick had warned Nick or Fraser had warned Nick?
Speaker A:So Fraser had warned Nick already by email two days before to not be late today. OK, I am Nick Hare. Yes, go. Which of the, I'm going to read this, which of the two conflicting, 8.48 this morning, which of the two conflicting addresses on the different appointments is correct?
Speaker B:I'll send you a clarifying email.
Speaker A:You need to get to the print room address. That's such bad acting. OK, no, we should read this neutrally. Otherwise, it's not fair. OK. All right. So which of the two, 8.48 this morning, which of the two conflicting addresses on the different appointments is correct? I sent you a clarifying email. You need to go to the print room address. Right. We're going to do this differently because I don't like your voice that you're doing in me. What? Yeah. So honestly, they won't be able to tell it's not you.
Speaker C:This is amazing content.
Speaker A:I'm going to do all this. OK. Oh, all of it. Yeah, all of it. OK. And I'm going to present a nice objective. Yeah. Just go for it. Nick, this morning, says to me by text, which of the two conflicting addresses on the different appointments is correct? It's quite aggressive, I felt. I sent you a clarifying email. This is what you're saying to me. Yes. So Fraser replies, I sent you a clarifying email. Send. Next bit. You need to, still me, you need to go to the print room address. He gets back to me, Nick. Why not just correct the wrong appointment? Question mark, exclamation. OK. I put, why not just read my email? Nick puts, why not just answer my question? I get back to him because the question is stupid. And then I put, I'm on 15% battery and cannot afford to be participating in this conversation. And then I put, and then I remember something, brackets. And in fact, the previous time I did cancel the placeholder invitation and you sent me an email saying, what? Exclamation marks. This is so confusing.
Speaker B:I was involved in these text messages and I've completely lost track of what's going on.
Speaker A:Exactly. Basically, what you had asked me to do, I did previously saying, why didn't cancel the other one? And I said, I did cancel it previously, by the way, last time. And you sent me an email saying, what the hell are you doing cancelling the meeting? Have you got, are you quite finished? And then I put, you, Mariah, are impossible.
Speaker C:Yeah. Mariah Carey diva. Tune in next week for the next instalment in our thrilling radio drama.
Speaker B:So brilliant. So what point are you trying to make? Other than you come over as a complete arse.
Speaker A:In theory, I'm trying to make two points. In theory, I mean, you're painting me as the bad guy who's like, who's no good with meetings and who's no good with meetings. But actually, it's you who's, who's really bad that the whole meeting thing and an information exchange. Okay. To put it in your language. One. But two, I think it's, I think it delightfully illustrates the precious relation, the unique relationship that we have. And I do sometimes feel when I'm texting and emailing you, I should be a bit more polite to Nick. He's my customer. But anyway, there we go. Wouldn't be the same. Wouldn't be the same.
Speaker B:Is our work here done?
Speaker C:I don't think there's any way we can continue from that.
Speaker B:No, no.
Speaker A:Let's draw a line under that. Let's wind up there. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Nick Hare and Tom Spence of Aleph Insights. Until next time. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.
