In a modern business environment, your employer may be the voice on the other end of a phone, your co-workers may be a series of emails and your customer may be an online order form. Many people can literally go through their entire workday without a single real life interaction with another human being. The idea of actually having a live conversation with another person in the same space is often called face time.
Spending quality face time with an elusive employer or telecommuting co-worker can be very difficult to schedule, but also has some benefits over more impersonal communications. One benefit is the ability to read each person's body language and facial expressions to gauge interest in the proposal or topic being discussed. An email or phone conversation may be more convenient than face time, but participants may not be able to tell if the others are truly engaged or simply being polite.
Some people refer to face time as meatspace, a play on both personal meetings and the presence of real humans. An engineer who primarily works out of his home may have to plan some "meatspace" with his boss in order to discuss an upcoming project, for example.
Quality face time can also be described as face-to-face time, as in the case of a company executive deciding to visit a factory floor. Instead of remain relatively secluded in an office, he or she may want to actually meet face-to-face with the employees who actually manufacture the products. By spending some time with actual machinists or assembly workers, an employer might get a better idea of company morale or working conditions.
Face time can also apply to family dynamics and personal relationships. Parents who plan quality time with their children can help deepen their emotional bonds. Online chat rooms and instant messages may offer participants the illusion of real world interaction, but real life friendships benefit significantly from personal interactions.
