My worst work meeting:
One night, several years ago, the White Stripes played in Memphis. I really wanted to go, because I liked the White Stripes and because it was a $5 show at a small club, but I didn’t go because the next morning at 9:00 am I had a performance evaluation meeting with my boss (whom I hated and who I believed hated me back). So I didn’t go to the show, and I never got to see the White Stripes.
It just so happens that the next day was September 11, 2001. I get to work, boot up my computer to Yahoo! and exclaim “holy shit!!!” Then my boss calls me. “Ready for your meeting?”
“Um, have you looked at the news? Could we possibly postpone the meeting?”
“No. Come to my office immediately.”
So we have the performance evaluation meeting. It goes on for two hours. Meanwhile, we occasionally hear yells of horror coming from outside the door. At one point, I distinctly heard “The Pentagon’s been hit!” I asked if maybe we could check out what was going on. “No.”
Three months later, I was laid off, along with half of the company. Six months after that, the company went out of business, and those that remained on the payroll until the end weren’t paid for their last month of work and had their 401K money stolen. Three of the company officers are now in jail as a result of the breakup of the company. The performance evaluation, probably the most stressful meeting I’ve ever had in my life, didn’t mean a goddamned thing.
Kudoi to the chairwoman of the NDP meeting I was at yesterday (actually a general council). For the first time in history, we got through every single resolution (there were a good 16 - 20 of them) we had to deal with, plus planning for convention, despite the presence of 80 or so delegates many of whom enjoy talking a great deal.
Although this may have something to do with the resolution my riding association got passed two councils ago: any resolutions not dealt with at one council have to go to the next one, in order, and be dealt with first.
Worry not, gigi: I figure Omegaman was referring to people who invent questions just to hear themselves speak, usually because they have had nothing valid to contribute to the meeting and fret that no one will notice them if they don’t throw something in before it ends.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m just rationalizing my own “stupid questions” – heh. (Actually, though, when I question something that didn’t make sense, it’s usually discovered that either it truly was illogical, or that several others in the meeting didn’t “get it” either, but they were too insecure to ask, figuring they were the only ones who didn’t understand. Me, I’m smart enough to not mind occasionally looking stupid…)
Are you sure you want to just jump into the pre-meeting like that? I think that we should have a meeting before that to discuss what we’re going to go over in the pre-meeting.
I hate all meetings. Period. Paragraph. All the meetings I’ve ever been to have fallen in the same general catagories:[ul]
[li]An excuse for people to get out of doing their jobs.[/li][li]A chance for management to berate the employees for something that ultimately isn’t their fault.[/li][li]Management unveils it’s latest Big Idea[sup]TM[/sup], which will either surely fail or be abandoned before the end of the week.[/li][li]A torture test wherein any good that might have come from the meeting is lost because everyone is too busy trying to stay awake as whomever running the meeting is a total idiot and has to keep hashing over the same points (assuming they can manage to stay on topic) over and over again.[/li][li]A check-in to see if everybody is doing what they’re supposed to be doing (which, of course, they’re not because they’re stuck in a meeting).[/li]An excuse for everyone to whine and complain about something that if they were doing their jobs the way they were supposed to be, wouldn’t be happening. (Example: People on the Safety Committee complaining about people doing unsafe acts, but not bothering to tell the person that what they’re doing is unsafe.)[/ul]One meeting I just snapped. It was when I was working at the car restoration place. The boss was talking about how we had to be more professional because he was having a “major” TV production company come in and shoot a pilot for a TV series. He kept saying we had to work faster and get more things done than we presently were. Then he dragged us all to the computer and kept showing us video clips of work the production company had done. I had a huge list of things that I needed to get done that day, and I couldn’t get started on any of it until the meeting was over (the meeting was being held at my computer, BTW). One of the things that I had to check on was if a buddy of mine had prepped some video of the Tucker that he’d shot a few weeks before and had it on the net. The boss looks at me and says, “You’re buddy’s going to have that video for us today, right?” I’d had enough at this point of being told that we had to work faster and said, “I can’t tell because you’re blocking the computer so I can’t see if he’s got it up or not.” That was a mistake. The boss went off about how I was “being negative” and how that wasn’t acceptable, and if I wanted to be a part of the company I was going to have to have a positive attitude all the time! If he hadn’t been restoring a Tucker, I would have walked out at that moment. (Dude, it’s not “being negative” when you’re pointing out that something is physically impossible.)
Here’s what you do: Plan somehow to be away (“I gotta get my prostate massaged, but I’ll call in from Dr. Schtinkfinger’s office, don’t worry”), and have this issue needing your attention be a weekly event scheduled at the same time as your least-preferred periodic meeting or meetings. So, you call in on your cell phone, right? Great. Well before springing your plan, you gotta download sound effects. Some sci-fi bleeps and bloops, maybe some Theramin warbles, white noise, things that bring to mind odd electromagnetic interference and crosstalk with other networks or devices. You’ll also need some really filthy, nasty talk from a porno flick, or maybe a skit about a phone-sex conversation. Use some sound editing software to overlay these clips so that the listener will think they can hear another coversation over your cell connection, with lots of static and odd radio noise to get them to strain to hear.
OK. While playing your recording in the background, keep saying things like “What?? Hello?? Whoever’s near the mic, could you stop rustling papers…I…I didn’t catch what you just said…” Pretty soon, the “other conversation” turns really blue. Someone says something like “Oh, fuck baby, yeah, suck those balls, yeeeaaah, suck 'em you sweet little bitch…OWWWWW YEEEEEEAH! FUCK! HOLY FUCK!” You now sound alarmed. “WHAT?? HELLO?? I…I’m not sure if I got that…could you, uhh…I’m having trouble…”
Every time you have to call in, make sure you play a different variant of he above. Pretty soon they’ll just dive on the little tele-mothership thing on the table and disconnect you at the first sign of trouble. Swear you have no idea why it’s happening. Claim you’ve changed providers and still you get this horrible interference. Apologize profusely, and promise on your most beloved relative’s most prominant body part that the next time you call in it will be different. They’ll beg you not to.