a quick poll
How many meetings would you say you average at work? And how useful are they?
I ask because I'm currently working on a contract basis for one of my company's repeat customers, and these guys have a LOT of meetings. This didn't bother me so much the last time I was here. From 10:30 to 1 every day the IT department pretty much clears out, leaving me free to goof off. Unfortunately, since my last visit they've installed a security card reader on the bathroom door, and I don't have a card -- I have to find someone and borrow one. I do, however, have unfettered access to the coffee in the break room.
So it's kind of like that post-apocalyptic episode of the Twilight Zone featuring the bookworm with the broken glasses. Except, you know, with peeing.
Comments
There's a sink in the breakroom, right?
Having meetings is a way to show that you're doing work, but not actually doing it. Add to that that larger meetings == longer meetings, and you've just found a way to occupy a bunch of people that probably don't really need to be on the project.
Where I work, we have a regular monthly meeting, and it often turns out to be the only time various participants actually talk to each other face-to-face, and so the meeting time is largely wasted by different combinations of people discussing things not relevant to the whole group. So very painful and wasteful....
I think you're right about the desire to avoid real work, but I've got another pet theory. I think that so many office tasks have been grouped together on the computer that people crave the simple sensory stimulation of moving around and being in slightly different shaped white rooms with drop ceilings. Oh, and getting a contact high off of whiteboard marker solvents.
Basically what I'm saying is that we need corporate recess.
What we need is a way to combine those smelly markers with whiteboard markers so I can sniff the grape and sour apple (purple and green) while VP Johnny McBlueshirt writes away with his Black Licorice.
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