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    iNvDrZiMHamilton Nolan
    11/21/14 10:48am

    Even more maddening than our regular "meetings" are the meetings scheduled a day later to discuss said meeting. I'm being serious.

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      김치전!iNvDrZiM
      11/21/14 10:50am

      Is your boss the doctor from Human Centipede?

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      stacyinbeaniNvDrZiM
      11/21/14 10:54am

      Even worse is when they are called "yesterday's meeting title + download". Sometimes I want to burn my eyeballs out.

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    Anti-LacrossHamilton Nolan
    11/21/14 10:49am

    Among my clients, there is status in hosting a meeting. People call meetings just to look like they're busy. There's no real agenda, no plan to develop actionable decisions. They just want to fill up their calendar with meetings for the sake of meetings.

    What's worse is that everyone knows the whole thing is a sham. We have phone meetings where half the "attendees" are calling in to a conference line. They call in, get credit for attending, and then promptly mute their phone line and start looking at Internet porn. Very frequently a question will be directed at these attendees. And a long pause will ensue before that person realizes he or she is being addressed and needs to take his phone off mute.

    But everyone goes along with it.

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      UncleCCClaudiusAnti-Lacross
      11/21/14 11:07am

      I have a 7:00 AM conference call that is a requirement. It is the same speech from a dullard who is quoting an email I read at 4:00 AM. I'm usually barreling down some god-forsaken country road with a 20" trailer when the call is happening.

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      Anti-LacrossUncleCCClaudius
      11/21/14 12:17pm

      I gotta ask, what's in the trailer?

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    EatTheCheeseNicholsonHamilton Nolan
    11/21/14 10:54am

    In my shady consulting days, I'd always be asked to send out a memo summarizing the meeting afterwards. Just take your own fucking notes, guys.

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      김치전!EatTheCheeseNicholson
      11/21/14 11:07am

      Never! I'd have to pay attention to take notes, and that is not fucking happening.

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      EatTheCheeseNicholson김치전!
      11/21/14 11:09am

      I understand completely because I wasn't paying any attention either! Now I have to bullshit my way through some memo from scratch...

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    김치전!Hamilton Nolan
    11/21/14 10:48am

    Hamilton Nolan is trying to destroy America's shitty-bagel-and-overpriced-bulk-coffee industry.

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      Quint the Greyer김치전!
      11/21/14 11:53am

      you forgot the reverse. Having a meeting to prep for the next meeting...

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      sortafly김치전!
      11/21/14 12:15pm

      Not to mention the cantaloupe growers of America...

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    RegretsalotHamilton Nolan
    11/21/14 10:53am

    I am a corporate America middle-manager, and it's not our fucking fault. Senior management is at least 93% to blame.

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      Philip DamraRegretsalot
      11/21/14 11:18am

      I think we need to get some of the accounting guys to figure out the exact blame percentage and then pencil in something next week to go over the figures.

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    Rom RombertsHamilton Nolan
    11/21/14 11:04am

    I think the primary reason for the high volume of meetings in offices across America is that we are lazy and all of this is a sham and we're mostly just pushing numbers and words around inside offices. Meetings are not hard. Nothing really gets done. You don't have to do work in meetings. It's like an extra lunch break. You could give a completely worthless presentation at a meeting, but if you design a good slideshow and speak like you don't have head trauma or are currently drunk, you will be praised simply because you stood there and let words spill out of your mouth for 30 minutes. Meetings project an impression of 'moving the ball forward'...of getting things done. When really, you could throw bananas at a wall for 45 minutes and get just about as much 'business' done as you can in the average meeting.

    America is all about projecting the impression that things are getting done. That problems are being solved. Issues are being tackled. But we're not getting very much done at all.

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      thwarted666Hamilton Nolan
      11/21/14 11:12am

      I worked for a large financial company. When I got hired, my boss said, "You'll probably spend 40% of your day in meetings." Over the year and a half that I worked there, that time increased to 50%, then 60%. At one point, someone tried to start a "meeting-free zone" once a week for three hours over lunch. It didn't last long, because someone would make an exception, and someone else would insist that HIS meeting was really important, etc.

      By the time I left, I had coworkers who spent literally all day, 8 to 5, on the phone in meetings. They'd do their actual work after work, at home, into the wee hours. (Which is what most companies really want, I'm guessing. You will Never Stop Working. Ever.)

      My point is: We're all going to hell. (Where there will be meetings.)

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        emfish55thwarted666
        11/21/14 11:33am

        At my last employer, they tried to institute "Meeting-free Fridays" to combat the often 24-7 onslaught of meetings. Friday quickly became the first day anyone would suggest for a proposed meeting, because theoretically no one should already be scheduled for a meeting on that day, right? I'm not sure I ever actually had a meeting-free Friday at that job. In fact, I only had one meeting-free vacation while at that job, because we were encouraged to "dial in" even if we weren't in the office. I spent one blissful week in Mexico during which I escaped meetings because cost-cutting measures gave me a good excuse to not use my work phone outside the US.

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        Anti-Lacrossthwarted666
        11/21/14 12:32pm

        Yes! The meeting free zone! We have that on Tuesdays. Except someone always schedules a meeting.

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      Bull MooseHamilton Nolan
      11/21/14 11:01am

      Meetings only exist to justify the existence of a "boss".

      I can't speak for everyone, but in my line of work, if my supervisor simply disappeared and was never replaced, nothing would change except for a dramatic decrease in the number of meetings we have.

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        no1onthecornerBull Moose
        11/21/14 1:06pm

        IA with this so hard. I work at a non-profit and most of our meetings give our boss something to do. Which is not listen to everyone because they're talking the whole time.

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        Bull Mooseno1onthecorner
        11/21/14 1:15pm

        No doubt. If anything, bosses serve only to increase inefficiency and decrease morale.

        This post should have been titled "Down With Bosses".

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      MouthyFishwifeHamilton Nolan
      11/21/14 10:51am

      Two days into the semester we had a meeting about having effective meetings that took TWO HOURS. Down with this bullshit.

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        NewYorkCynicMouthyFishwife
        11/21/14 11:05am

        I once had to attend an hour long meeting where the only topic discussed was when the next meeting would be.

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      Ryan CHamilton Nolan
      11/21/14 10:51am

      While for the most part meetings can be a giant waste of time I've found that a lot of decisions are made that affect multiple departments and that's often not accounted for by the person making said decision. Getting a few of the key people involved to hash out scenarios is a lot more effective than an email with 8 people CC'd that nobody really takes the time to read assuming somebody else will take care of it.

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        a3313Ryan C
        11/21/14 11:02am

        That's only a problem when people want to hash out EVERY POSSIBLE scenario beforehand — which tends to happen quite frequently.

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        Ryan Ca3313
        11/21/14 11:39am

        My company had an ongoing manager's meeting at 10 am every Friday with no agenda. Nobody wanted to be there and we got down to business quick. Usually were out by 10:20 and that was it basically for the week. Now that we got bought by a corporate behemoth everything moves at glacial pace. Just brutal. Meetings up the ass.

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