There I was, attending my usual brief, to-the-point morning meeting of nonexcessive onerousness, when suddenly it became a Dire Presentation. It took me some time to recognize this beast, for I had read descriptions of them but never encountered one in its natural habitat before. Of course, by the time I recognized the Narcoleptic Drone it was far too late. (My state of undercaffeinated sleep deprivation didn’t help matters.) Yeah, OK, so processes and metrics are important and all, can I just read about it later? Still, I think this was a smaller and less menacing species of the genus Tyrannoccursus, for which I am grateful.
Did the presenter recite every.fickin’.word on each slide? 'Cause that’s my favoritist thing ever.
My favorite was one back in around 1994 when I was working for Musicland. One of my bosses was obsessed with working as many hours as he could and making Director before he turned 30. (He didn’t make it).
We were having an IT department on-site meal thingy. An hour before hand, he pulls our entire unit into the conference room, hands out a thick booklet he’d put together and proceeds in excruciatingly painful and slow detail to walk through it.
The meal deal starts and it becomes obvious that he’s intending to keep us in the room for another couple of hours, completely ignoring the department wide meal. Excuse me, but I came hungry, and you’re denying us our lunch hour and a free meal in order to torture us? You asshole!
So I excused myself to go to the restroom. And then went to go eat.
Later, he tried to yell at me for not returning to the meeting. Of course, I’d already shown the guy that I wasn’t one to put up with his bullshit, so I told him that I had to go to the restroom, and that I was also very HUNGRY, so I went to the meal afterwards. Yeah, he was pissed, but so was I, and so was the rest of the unit, who all got screwed out of their lunch hours and a free meal.
I never got the idea of why this jerkbag screwed his unit over like that.
Wow. The only place I worked where I could get ambushed by dreadful meetings was one where the meetings weren’t an ambush at all; au contraire,* in order to entice attendance, they would provide ample delicious free food. Worked like a charm. It’s amazing how much less annoying a meeting is when good food is provided.
I can top that. I used to have to go to training sessions where not only did the presenter read every.fickin’.word, but at the beginning of the session passed out a copy of the presentation. Every.fickin’.slide. :rolleyes:
That’s so you can take notes on the exact copy of what’s being displayed on the screen while the presenter recites it word for word.
Just in case you miss anything.
For you, maybe.
For me, it’s doodlin’ paper.
You call *that * ambused at the meeting? Hell no. Ambushed is when you are slowly aroused from your metrics-induced daze by the realization that *now * he’s explaining to everyone how it’s all your fault.
Actually, I used to try to get a seat in the back in the room so I could do my crossword puzzles in peace.