At my company we are obsessed about meetings. Some start in the morning others extend well into the evening. Some last so long they cater lunch. Those are the worst. I sit in the same chair for 2 hours and then choke down a stale sandwich. Trust me, don't touch their potato salad, it's been sitting in the lobby for 2 hours. There are no free lunches let me assure you.
We have so many meetings that nothing gets done.
Management sits for hours talking to themselves. When that gets old they call in the people that actually do the work. The conference rooms soon become like a bad horror movie. You know the ones. People keep walking into that scary house and never leave? A dozen employees held up in a conference room for 2+ hours and productivity for that group comes to a screeching halt.
The grand pinnacle for these meetings is something held near and dear to top brass - Annual Management Meetings. These are torture. They are horrible simply because they have to pretend they are more important than the last 100 meetings you have had with the same people. This is a special meeting. It's special so you really have to suffer, or so goes the thinking.
This brings me to yesterday's surreal experience. I attended a meeting to prepare for our Quarterly Management Meeting. I sat through a 40 page Power Point presentation that taught me how to prepare my Power Point presentation. I wish I was making this up. It taught me how to indicate positive trends (up arrow) and negative trends (down arrow). With every new slide I could feel the pressure on my chest increasing. When they asked for questions halfway through, a couple of idiots actually had questions. I couldn't take it. I was drowning in the corporate weight of meeting mania and I was the only one that seemed to see how these clowns were behaving. Then they called me out and asked for my direct input. I asked about the up arrows.
Tell me if you've had the same pleasure of a Meeting about a Meeting. sommbeer@gmail.com
Throw me a note when you get a chance. My job gives me plenty of material for "The Corporate Clown". I bet yours does too. sommbeer@gmail.com
If you need some liquid therapy from Corporate Clowns try some beer! I'm a Beer Sommelier.
http://sommbeer.com/
