Meetings about Meetings

Earlier this week I was at a meeting about meetings (MAM) at work in which people discuss which meeting they had or will be attended since the last MAM , and remembered a piece I wrote about meetings last year for My Wife Hates Me. Here is an edited version, all still 100% unbelievable yet true.

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They really love to have meetings where I work. I work for a fairly large foreign company with offices all over the world, and don’t know 100% if it’s particular to them, same in Corporate USA, or it’s just company culture but they really, really, like to have meetings. Budget meetings, product meetings, inventory meetings, HR meetings, formal meetings, informal meetings, video conference meetings, security meetings, staff meetings, birthday cake meetings, the list is just really endless. There are hundreds of different types of meetings. There are smaller meetings to plan for the bigger meetings. It’s truly a miracle any work even gets done with all these meetings. This doesn’t even include major company events, which requires multiple meetings that are held about the upcoming event.

There are also these really weird meetings called "brainstorming meetings”, if you have never been to one, I hope you never do, and if you have, I’m so very sorry. Usually the guys that need a punch in the face and says "synergy" alot talk the most at these, and annoying chicks that talk fast also like these meetings very much. (My company USA HQ in NJ, so there is no shortage of the latter). At the HQ in Jersey all they do is have meetings. The whole fucking place, like 800 people including top brass can be eliminated and substituted by a weekly e-mail from Tokyo. The company would save millions. I have yet to openly suggest this at a meeting. I’m biding my time on that one.

I was at my most recent meeting, wintergreen Tic Tacs in hand (between the light shaking sounds of the container and a refreshing Tic Tac in your mouth at all times, it’s much harder to fall asleep). It was a four hour Building and Cubicle Security and Safety meeting with a guest speaker old lady reading a power point presentation out loud word for word, like I can’t read. Fucking Romper Room. If I didn’t know personally, I would think this was a fictional event. We had a pre-meeting for this with the whole office like 2 days before and had a team of 4 people, which thankfully I was not part of, have of a bunch of prep meetings for this fucking thing. Seems having a case of bottled water, doughnuts, and a projector is fucking mission impossible.

After it was over, still dizzy from the incessant cackle of this old hag, I am reminded by some nitwit about the product meeting in five minutes, so we can discuss some new product that does the same shit as the last one. Gotta pay that mortgage somehow. I am the Robotman.