So I had a weird incident at work.  Luckily, I had a witness to the oddness.  We were on a conference call with another company, in the middle of answering a question that they had asked, and we were hung up on.  By both other people, located in completely different offices.  It was baffling.  Neither one of us on our side had any idea what happened.  It wasn’t heated, no one said anything rude or profane, we were just answering a mundane question about how our technology could be used.   They just blurted out ‘bye’ and hung up.  My colleague asked me, “Do you understand what just happened?”

I’ve had calls wrap up quickly before as the meeting approached the end time.  I’ve had calls end early because there was no mutual interest, but usually at that point there are excessive pleasantries to end a call scheduled for an hour seven minutes in.  This was neither of those cases.  It was just weird.

I guess I am grateful that it was so bizarre that even my colleague noticed.  If it had been a more polished exit, I might be spending the evening wondering what I did wrong, or how to hone my pitch to close the next call.  If the call had gone pseudo-normally, I’d be worried about how to persuade them to partner with us.  I’d be turning over the conversation for clues and planning our next move.  Instead, I can completely let it go.

I don’t know if there is a lesson here.    Should I strive to treat all calls in a more detached way?  Should I leave work at work?  Should I randomly hang up during boring conference calls?