Meetings are exhausting and soul-crushing

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maxcriden

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Those sad oatmeal cookies being passed around. The dim blur of fluorescent lighting. I stared at the dry skin on my hands willing time to pass more quickly. Their seemingly infinite crevices seemed to pull me in deeper and deeper to a workplace melancholia. I looked up at my superiors and peers engaged in minutiae-oriented conversations about policies and practices. I barely made it through the two-ish hours of this. Luckily we only have office-wide meetings like this monthly.

Please, regale me with your tales of great and terrible meetings.
 
At least you don't have to take a shit.

I had a lunch meeting once. No big deal except my body clock was set to take a shit at 1PM on the dot. Meeting ran long. Never moved so fast in my life.
 
I have a weekly meeting with my team. They always go like this:

Sit around for 30 minutes waiting for everyone to come into the conference room.
Start going over what we discussed last week.
Realize nobody has done any of the things discussed in that meeting.
Discuss new things for next week with no intention of doing them.
Waste everyone's lunch hour.
The end.
 
I fucking hate meetings.

The worst people are those assholes who insist on dragging out the meeting with inane questions even when it's clear everyone just wants to get up and leave.
 
DeaconKnowledge said:
At least you don't have to take a shit.

I had a lunch meeting once. No big deal except my body clock was set to take a shit at 1PM on the dot. Meeting ran long. Never moved so fast in my life.
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Should have just done it on the table.
Probably would have cancelled the meeting for that.
 
Aesius said:
The worst people are those assholes who insist on dragging out the meeting with inane questions even when it's clear everyone just wants to get up and leave.
Click to expand...

My first ever move if I had super powers would be to make those people explode.

Brave Frontier & Puzzles + Dragons help me get through meetings HBU bros?
 
I've been playing phone tag with someone for the past 3 days regarding a matter that if left unresolved will have a major impact on my finances. And it's time sensitive of course meaning that my anxiety is through the roof and I've barely gotten any sleep. grumble grumble grumble
 
Some time ago i took a decision about our work meetings (based on Scrum)

- NO Chairs
- NO Coffee or anything edible
- Focus on what really matters

So our meetings went from 1hr+ to 15 minutes tops, 10 min in average i'd say

Best decision ever
 
Oh man, I totally agree. The worst part is you can tell nobody wants to be there and everyone is suffering. Even when people are talking and making it sound like they care about the minutia that's escaping their mouth, it's obvious they think it's as trivial as everyone else.

Thankfully they're not very intensive and can usually be a break from things that require more thought or concentration.
 
Meetings with no deadlines are fine, I'll do nothing and get paid.

Meetings with deadlines are a stupid waste of time. I'd rather get done now rather so you don't call another meeting to whine at me later.
 
I've been working in a professional capacity for most of the last thirteen years. Despite that, meetings always make me drowsy to the point of passing out. Nothing else in my life has the same effect. It doesn't matter how much sleep I got the night before, how much coffee I've had, how many notes I (attempt to) take... the meeting begins and my eyelids droop. I end up barely taking anything away from most meetings because my mind is just racing in an attempt to keep myself awake.

Pretty sure the reason is because about 90% of meetings I have to attend have almost nothing to do with me, but the management wants to make sure that everyone attends every meeting. There's always people who don't need to be there.
 
I'm fortunate, most meetings I attend are ones I set up myself which I make brief and to the point and only when it's necessary to discuss new results and plan action items. Customer meetings are a drag and I avoid most of that.
 
Most are a waste of time and are too long. Especially with technology like email and IM used in many companies. It's really about power dynamics anyway.
 
Usually our meetings are centered around something that is going wrong, how we can fix it and then we bring in the scapegoat to abuse. Also, there are no cookies and we're huddled in the back room.
 
You know what I love?

Profitability meetings with powerpoint slides with someone in home office calling in and not actually there.

30 minutes of non-stop action looking at those exciting bar graphs trying to pretend I care and would rather be doing any number of other things. Also no cookies and water so nothing to keep me somewhat interested.
 
I think too many companies presume meetings are of use because it is the way things typically are done rather than the best and most efficient use of time.

That said, emails are not an adequate replacement. Emails are terrible. Conference calls are also bad. I think the no chairs or food/coffee suggestion earlier in the thread is good because it creates a time pressure.
 
I work in a pretty small company (~20 employees) and meetings are with like 6 or 7 people maximum. I have 1-2 meetings every week, either one or two hours long. They don't generally run long, everyone is generally on time (or arrives within 2-3 minutes) and each meeting has a specific purpose. I haven't had a meeting yet where I felt like I really didn't belong there.
 
Mine aren't bad actually. I basically get a day off and I just go over the numbers with my colleagues and talk about any upcoming things. Once every 3 months or so too, so yeah, not too bad. Our company is in good shape at the moment so there's not too much to worry about for the next few years.
 
OP, I'd offer tales of great meetings, but there aren't any. The worst meetings here are when it's really just a one-way lecture by the organizer, in which case, why not just send the contents in a fucking email and let us have the other 59 minutes back?

Where I'm at, they're primarily scheduled by people trying to obscure the fact that they contribute jack and shit ('look how full my calendar is!'), except instead of just fucking off alone and making up shit they've supposedly done, they have to make everyone else accomplices in their deceit.

At least with conference calls, I can just mute my line and keep working.
 
The forced fake laughter makes me cringe. This thread reinforces my identity of Holden Caulfield in every mind numbing meeting I sit through.
 
FuuRe said:
Some time ago i took a decision about our work meetings (based on Scrum)

- NO Chairs
- NO Coffee or anything edible
- Focus on what really matters

So our meetings went from 1hr+ to 15 minutes tops, 10 min in average i'd say

Best decision ever
Click to expand...

These type meetings are the best.
 
We typically just round robin on weekly updates and shoot the shit for an hour. Lot of fun actually.

EDIT: for team meetings. Normal meetings with others are usually typical corporate schlock.
 
Town Halls are the absolute fucking worst. Most of the meetings I have are conference calls in which case I mute and continue to work.
 
I like meetings at my company. Usually they're to discuss new things or air grievances. I'm usually the one who ends up doing all the talking too, so I sort of am able to control the conversation. It's nice.
 
I have a meeting later today to learn about a new product that I will never use. Good use of my time, i'd say.
 
Sometimes my company will have an hour long company meeting.
Then the next day we have an hour long department meeting to go over the company meeting.
Then the next day we have an hour long group meeting to go over the department meeting that went over the company meeting.
Then sometimes on my monthly one on one meeting we will talk about all that again.

Meetings are such a waste of time.
 
Technical team, with a non-tech team lead + manager.
Boring ass meetings about new paperwork they've developed, reviews, targets, self-development (strengths, weaknesses ugh) , and moaning about how we do things when they don't have a clue. Great moral booster!
 
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