{"id":4915,"date":"2020-02-24T19:26:16","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T18:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4915"},"modified":"2020-03-09T07:23:44","modified_gmt":"2020-03-09T06:23:44","slug":"so-youve-been-called-to-a-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4915","title":{"rendered":"So You’ve been Called to a Meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It happens to all of us. Your day is going swimmingly, you don\u2019t loathe your job, things are humming along, and then you make the mistake of opening an email. And there it is, right there in an email: meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No other word in the white-ish collar-ish world induces such\ndread as the word meeting. At the very very least, you now have to meet another\nperson in person. And we all know that\u2019s not where it ends. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, the horror.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what now? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

OK, first of all, come to terms with the fact that you need\nto go to the meeting. Calling out only means conspicuously drawing attention to\nyourself and probably being forced to a one on one recap, which is the\nequivalent of fibbing to stay home from school and getting stuck going to the\ndoctor\u2019s office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More Meetings <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes a meeting gives birth to a bunch of other meetings. There\u2019s the meeting to prepare for the original meeting, an informal meeting to go over the talking points of the primary meeting as well as the minutes of the first prep meeting. Meetings are like murders in the bible \u2013 they beget another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meetings: An Overview <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every meeting in the history of workers aggregated near a water cooler has been negative. Every. Single. One. No meeting has ever been held to distribute cupcakes and spontaneously tell employees how great and appreciated they are. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, meetings are notorious for the off the cuff doling\nout of pain in the ass tasks, the willy nilly blaming of things, and the asking\nof questions that virtually nobody wants to answer. For these reasons, I\nsuggest sitting as far from the head of the meeting as possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Refreshments<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot can be deduced from the refreshments at a meeting. First,\nare there perishables on the table like donuts, cookies, and cakes? If so, then\nthis meeting either features a heavy hitter who the administration wants to\nimpress or someone is getting fired (you never want bad rumors about your\ncompany\u2019s meeting refreshments traveling to another company). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the refreshments are packaged cookies and wafers then you\nare at a run of the mill meeting and none of you are cared about in any way,\nbut none of you are getting fired either. Take a cookie and make it last. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, you might notice that the refreshments at the meeting\nhave declined in quality. Say in June and July you had perishables and then in\nAugust and September there perishables, but they were stale and there were fewer\nthan usual. In October six coffee pots became four and then in November two. And\nin the autumn months the perishables are routinely switched out for packaged goods.\nWell, then you are the victim of a gaslighting campaign. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good luck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Red Flags<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charts, visual aids, or projector use is trouble. It\u2019s all\npictorial evidence to support just how fucked you are. The words\n\u201cdemographics,\u201d \u201caccreditation,\u201d \u201cenrollment,\u201d or the phrases \u201cMake some\nchanges\u201d and \u201cnext year\u201d should be heeded with terrible caution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most administrators have been well schooled in how not to\nanswer direct questions in a meeting, so if you are in a meeting where an\nadministrator is about to answer a direct question. Plunge a hazelnut wafer\ninto your eye and run screaming from the meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As long as a meeting is vaguely discussing how bad you and\nyour department is at doing the work you do at your company, then you are free\nto sit back and relax and think about being a welder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Passing the Time <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re lucky and there\u2019s a lot of time to hear about how\nbad you are at your job, then you have to come up with ways to pass the time or\nyou might end up fired or in jail. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suggest games. How many times can you hold your breath for\none minute? I play this one until I get dizzy and almost pass out. Still, if I\nhad fallen to the floor with a blue face it probably would have at least halted\nthe meeting for a few minutes. Maybe. A similar game can be done with the\nnumber of erections one is able to gain and lose, one part of which gets easier\nand one part of which gets harder as you age. I hear.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might also develop your creative skills. Draw houses,\nbirds, and piles of pancakes. It\u2019s more fun if these things are somehow\ninjuring the meeting head. You can also write out recipes and short fiction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Composing limericks about the people in the meeting are a\ngreat way to pass the time. If you can work an anapestic meter with a strict\nrhyme scheme of AABBA and some asshole in the room getting gutted by a honey badger,\nthen was the meeting a total waste?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If someone asks a question they should be cheered inwardly\nfor having the guts to ask a tough question at a meeting. If that question is a\nwaste of time and somehow extended the meeting\u2019s length, then that colleague\nshould be glared at so hard that they die. If you are the colleague who has\nasked the question and if it becomes clear to you that the question was a time\nwaster and a meeting extender, then as soon as the boss\u2019 eyes are off of you,\nyou should start writing a list of justifications for your question. And they\nhad better be good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Immediate Aftereffects <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before you have left the meeting, reconfigure your face back\ninto one that belongs to a human capable of human emotion. This will be more\ndifficult than you know, what after 60-90 (let\u2019s be honest) minutes of frowning,\nfeigning interest, practicing a poker face, and inner-eye rolling (like frogs\nwho have three sets of eye-lids, those trapped in white-ish collar-ish jobs\nhave inner eyes which aren\u2019t directly visible, but are rather a mood that eyes\ntake on when they can\u2019t actually be rolled themselves for fear of being fired by\nthe person they are rolling at). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep your poker face at close hand in preparation for the\ninevitable post-meeting approach from a higher up who will ask you to do more\nwork or the announcement of another meeting to discuss the issues that will\narise in your department in the wake of this meeting\u2019s repercussions.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you get out of the room unscathed, run, run, you lucky\nson of a bitch, just run and don\u2019t look back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Post Meeting Coping Mechanism <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drink. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It happens to all of us. Your day is going swimmingly, you don\u2019t loathe your job, things are humming along, and then you make the mistake of opening an email. And there it is, right there in an email: meeting. No other word in the white-ish collar-ish world induces such dread as the word meeting. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4916,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/meeting.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1hh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4915"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4919,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915\/revisions\/4919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}