Pointless Work Meetings

lovemesomemonster

Does anyone else have this problem? Every meeting seems to be a colossal waste of time!? Yes, some are good and you need to collaborate, but I am pretty sure that 75% of the meetings I sit through are everyone trying to say something intelligent just for the sake of "participating" and I leave most of them going "yep, could have summed that up in a 4 line email". 

I just got a DAILY meeting invite where we will go over:

What we did yesterday

What we are doing today

What roadblocks need to be moved

WHAT!? Can we say micromanage much!? I am going to be SO excited to get on this call at 7am every morning (I'm in a different time zone), pre coffee, and and I'm totally tempted to say something along the lines of "well, yesterday I defeated level 93 on angry birds, today I'm working on 94 and I would appreciate if you could help remove the wall, it's a roadblock".

[Deleted User]

Yep.  A small group of us here at work were thinking about buying these for the other members of our group.  https://buyolympia.com/q/Item=will-bryant-i-survived-another-meeting-ribbon  I hate those meetings.

lyndausvi

DH use to have those types of meetings all the time when he worked for corporate hotels and/or resorts.   He was in meetings more than in the kitchen.

The club just has a weekly meeting and them some random ones to go over banquets and stuff.   He is so much happier now.

TNDancer

Ugh, yes I hate it. We have a morning huddle everyday, and they just blab about nothing.

AddieCake

adk19 said:

Yep.  A small group of us here at work were thinking about buying these for the other members of our group.  https://buyolympia.com/q/Item=will-bryant-i-survived-another-meeting-ribbon  I hate those meetings.

I was just about to post a pic of these!

beachyone15

I have to attend LONG meetings. Like, 2 hours+. And it's only because the people in those meetings are not prepared beforehand and want to change/edit things IN the meetings instead of sending it to the reviewing committee BEFORE the meeting like they are supposed to.

WinstonsGirl

All the time.  But it's also cos no one reads anything in e-mail, where the information was originally sent out, so we need to go over it 38 times in pointless meetings.  

OliveOilsMom

Got called into a meeting at 3:30 PM once.  I'm the only paralegal in a group of 8 attorneys.  The guy in charge of that case is usually direct and to the point.  We get into the meeting and he starts talking about how he needs to start focusing on a different matter that will be going to trial and he's handing this case over to other partner.  Other partner takes over the meeting.  He says that we need to research a & b pretty quickly.  Just when I think other partner has just given us our assignment and we are on our way he proceeds to start telling his "war" stories of being an attorney for this client for 30 years.  I just had to sit there.

After a while I see cars leaving the parking lot out of the window, so I know its now past 5.  I still can't leave, just sitting there listening to the stories.  Then a one point, the other main attorney interrupts and says he and young associate need to leave because they have a bar association function to go to.  Does this break up the whole meeting?  Nope!  Another 15 minutes past and another attorney says he has to leave because of babysitting issues.  This still doesn't break up our meeting.  I didn't leave the office till close to 6 that night, if I'm doing work, I don't care how late I need to stay.  But sitting there listening to stories when I could have been home having dinner with H?  Yeah, pretty pissed!

lovemesomemonster

Glad to know it's not just me! @OliveOilsMom that sounds PAINFUL! @beachyone15, that irritates me to no end.. when you all sit in a room watching someone editing a power point, or when that power point has every word they are saying on it! You could have just emailed me buddy. 

madamerwin

Yeah, after half of the meetings I attend, I walk out thinking, "Wait, what did we decide to do? Do we have next steps?"

It doesn't help that one of the directors I work with has a habit of talking just to talk... She thinks she is making good points, but everything that comes out of her mouth is either her opinion stated as fact, or just a jumble of buzzwords. And if you challenge her/ask a question, she will talk around the issue for DAYS. We call it filibustering. 

lovemesomemonster

tfmrserwin said:

Yeah, after half of the meetings I attend, I walk out thinking, "Wait, what did we decide to do? Do we have next steps?"

It doesn't help that one of the directors I work with has a habit of talking just to talk... She thinks she is making good points, but everything that comes out of her mouth is either her opinion stated as fact, or just a jumble of buzzwords. And if you challenge her/ask a question, she will talk around the issue for DAYS. We call it filibustering. 

OMG! This is my new boss to a T! I flat out called and said "I'm stuck here, this is what I have so far, what is my next step" and he just kept getting all fancy with buzzwords and telling me about abstract concepts. Nope, not what I asked, just give it to me straight, I am here, next I go.... WHERE!?

thisismynickname2

My pet peeve is when people go waaaaay off topic in meetings. Then of course, I tune out (and start Knotting) and I hear, "Isn't that right, Nickname?" Then I respond "Yep" without any idea of what they've blathered on about. 

TNDancer

lovemesomemonster said:

tfmrserwin said:

Yeah, after half of the meetings I attend, I walk out thinking, "Wait, what did we decide to do? Do we have next steps?"

It doesn't help that one of the directors I work with has a habit of talking just to talk... She thinks she is making good points, but everything that comes out of her mouth is either her opinion stated as fact, or just a jumble of buzzwords. And if you challenge her/ask a question, she will talk around the issue for DAYS. We call it filibustering. 

OMG! This is my new boss to a T! I flat out called and said "I'm stuck here, this is what I have so far, what is my next step" and he just kept getting all fancy with buzzwords and telling me about abstract concepts. Nope, not what I asked, just give it to me straight, I am here, next I go.... WHERE!?

OMG! This is exactly what happens to us. I am so glad I now have a word for it.

kvruns

I hate the people who have to talk in every. Single. Meeting. Just to hear themselves talk and try to seem important even if it is a meaningless anecdote we could all do without

justsie

When I used to work in Student Affairs at a University we had multiple meetings every week. Sometimes they were productive, often times they were not. As was lower on the totem poll so I didn't have many additional meetings but the higher you got the more meetings you seemed to have (meetings with org officers, meeting with superiors and meetings with the people you supervised.) When I went to counseling we had 2 meetings a week where we were for about 60% of the time very productive, sometimes the whole meeting, but it was nice to see the fellow counselors and get out of the office for a change. Now that I work in a psych hospital we have absolutly zero meetings and I miss them. I wish my training had at least involved a few. 

luckya23

I had a job a couple of years ago where, even though I work from home, I had to go into this office twice a week, and hour and 15 min away, to update trackers.  I would spend most of my time at home updating this tracker in excel, and then on Wednesday I had a meeting with one group of people to READ THEM THE EXCEL FILE so they could plug the numbers into their own excel files. 

On Friday I had a meeting with the construction managers to bring my tracker to the meeting and read it aloud to the group as each project came up... So mostly just sitting there, and then once every 10 min or so, throw out a vague estimate when construction might begin.