Yah, the Repubs are a wreck and the Dems may not be a lot better. See below.
But here's my immediate problem.
I have to attend a seven-hour orientation meeting (mandatory) led by professional educationists (most of my lit classes fall under the purview of the school of education) who DO NOT EVEN HAVE AN AGENDA set yet. They asked everybody today what should be on the agenda. For tomorrow. They called the meeting, and they don't know what it's about.
All's I know is that there will be Power Point and lots of it!
I am not a well woman, and at my age, I do not suffer this kind of time-wasting gladly. Not even with their free lunch, which will probably be bagels and schmeer. And not enough coffee.
ISTM that the business of American business (and other organizations) is endless meetings. Anyone else feel that meetings are longer and more unproductive than ever before in our history?
Am I the only one whom sees the ironic insanity here?
Will this change when the Millennials and their short attention spans rule the world? Let's hope so.
Meantime, please put your meeting horror stories on here so I can pretend to take notes while reading them tomorrow! Maybe I will live blog the meeting in the comments section just to keep myself entertained.
Scott Adams was feeling your pain way back in 1989 when he created Dilbert -- whose presence on millions of refrigerators and filing cabinets has had serious negative income on psychiatrists' revenues.
ReplyDeleteYeah, bless him. He sure got it right.
DeleteI was part of an integrated product team that had members of academe, industry and government. We met once a month for a morning, on average. Everything was covered, problems identified, path forward defined.
ReplyDeleteThese meetings were good. Anything more often than that is a way of doing fake work to avoid real work
I never had the kind of job that included meetings, but my sister has constant and long meetings at her job. It's hard to see how they ever have time outside the meetings to do the actual work they met to talk about ;)
ReplyDeleteMost of these meetings are designed to pressure you into drinking their Kool-Aid.
ReplyDeleteYeah, there seem to be a lot of bonding activities involved. Seems manipulative.
DeleteIf I recall -- and Patrick will correct me, I hope, if I am not -- unagidon, when asked how he came upon The Art of Groveling by Gao Lee Ji, explained that he had come upon and written them down while attending corporate meetings. If that is so, something good came out of the meetings.
ReplyDeleteI found this at a meeting once. The "Satan for kids" entry under Popular Posts is not to be missed:
Deletehttp://awfullibrarybooks.net
OK, I have unagidon's article about groveling bookmarked for tomorrow.
DeleteAt the senior management level where I spent the last several decades of my work life, the best management teams had the fewest meetings. Largely because everyone respected one another, easily divided up the work, and didn't feel the need to supervise and second guess each other.
ReplyDeleteWhen management teams don't function well they can spend a lot of time trying to manage each other's responsibilities.
The biggest argument I have had with meetings, large and small is that people only think about them in terms of their own time, e.g. if I am being paid $20 a hour it is easily to justify the use of my time. However when I get ten people who are also being paid $20 an hour in a room it becomes hard to justify that $200 an hour, and when I get a hundred people in a room, I am spending $2000 an hour, almost $40 a minute. It becomes rather difficult to think would could be that important.
Jean, the answer is to only go to meetings that you are running. You can always jump in and declare, "Well, I think that wraps it up." Thanks, everyone!!
ReplyDeleteI am on the Board of a small neighborhood organization that meets once a month...does great work. Has an agenda. I tell the leader that I will have to leave after an hour (which is what the agenda says the meeting will be). If we're not finished I get up and excuse myself and leave.
Can you get a note from your doctor; you can only stay for an hour or you MAY collapse...???
One time we met in Ontario. After the meeting and plant tour, we went to a restaurant and wiped out their supply of Creemore Beer. Meetings can be totally alright.
ReplyDeleteFortunately my department doesn't have long drawn out meetings. But we are required to do annual training for RCRA (Resource Conservation and Recovery Act), and Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response" standard (HAZWOPER. After 20 years of sitting through these, my eyes are good and glazed over. Fortunately I am no longer required to do HAZWOPER. The short version is 3 days. The long version is 5. There isn't enough caffeine in the world to stay awake through that. Found out there is actually a silver lining to hot flashes, they wake you up better than caffeine.
ReplyDeleteThis whole meeting is a hazardous waste.
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