I have to hop

Conference Call Anatomy™ →Go uptown Index: Click ᐅ to expand: Conference call Office life Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

Also known as: I need to drop.
The line one rolls out when one can no longer bear an all-hands conference call, but there is no less brazen way of engineering an exit.

It implies you have something better to do — let’s face it; if what one is currently doing is attending a conference call, it's a matter of irrefutable mathematical logic that one has something better to do; even head-butting a filing cabinet would count — but doesn’t commit you to articulating anything upon which an unemancipated fellow participant could pass judgment.

There are more or less snarky variations of this expression, the best of which is “I have to hop: I have an industry call” — the office worker’s equivalent of, “Look, I’d love to stop and chat but I have to go and wait in the lobby.”