Useless work meetings

[RoJoHen]

We have a whole new management staff at my restaurant, so they decided to have a big store meeting this morning because "there was so much to go over."

It lasted about an 1.5 hours, and I really only learned 2 things:

1) Customer service is important in the Customer Service Industry

and

2) Mark needs to order more brooms


I don't know about you, but I get tired of full-blown meetings that don't actually accomplish anything. These new managers have actually been spending a lot of money and making really good changes to the restaurant; I figured they'd talk about that kind of stuff this morning. Lame.

 

[john titor]

haha, yeah I went to one once, it was hilarious. I contributed nothing other than an irrelevant point about the possibility of computer viruses being transmitted through peripherals.

 

[Vulcan Princess]

I had a boss once who had the best philosophy on meetings ever. I've taken it as my own and will implement it whenever I'm in a position to do so. "It takes a really good meeting to be better than no meeting at all."

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

I hated those kinds of meetings. One time we all had to go to this training session for new working leads at Disney. Around 90% of the session was about cashiering and money and all that shit. I didn't deal with that; i was a stock lead. It was a total waste of 4 hours.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

It was an attempt to make Mark look bad for not ordering enough brooms. This was a maneuvering under the guise of a work meeting.

 

[SeerSGB]

haha, yeah I went to one once, it was hilarious. I contributed nothing other than an irrelevant point about the possibility of computer viruses being transmitted through peripherals.

Last big meeting I had to attend, about 6 years ago when I was working at the theater) 99% of us spent the time making dirty jokes about the movies and generally being assholes, till a very LARGE Marine came over and reminded us that they had rented the theater for Toys 4 Tots and if we wanted to trash talk while it was just "the guys" there, fine, but if we wouldn't mind knock off the bullshit and clean up our mouths before the kids get there).

Or course he then added that he thought the Orpheus was more of a bottom bitch than Neo was, and if they want to find Nemo look on the Long John's value menu.

 

[Holdfast]

I don't know about you, but I get tired of full-blown meetings that don't actually accomplish anything. These new managers have actually been spending a lot of money and making really good changes to the restaurant; I figured they'd talk about that kind of stuff this morning. Lame.

All organisations are like this.

There are two Golden Rules:

1) The larger the organisation, the more useless meetings there will be.
2) The higher up in the organisation you move, the more of these useless meetings you will be asked to attend.

Holdfast's 10 Handy Hints to understand how these meetings work, especially when you deal with middle management:

1) Introductions (the noobs say hello: "Hi, I'm Bob, and I'm a mindless drone who doesn't know what he's doing here")
2) Apologies (including suppressed envy at those who avoided the meeting)
3) Agenda review. There are 9 points. (oh shit)
4) Let's spend 80% of the time discussing point 1 (chairman will inevitably be hopeless at guillotining discussion)
5) We can't decide what to do about point 1 - form a subcommittee to report in 3 months time. (eyes down so as not to be chosen for subcommittee)
6) Move onto point 2, including hearing report from the subcommittee we set up 3 months ago to review it. (the subcommittee will have forgotten to meet until yesterday)
7) The subcommittee couldn't decide what to do about it so referred it back to the full committee. (surprise, surprise)
8) Full committee ponders for 15% of the total time of the meeting on what to do, can't decide, so refers it upwards to the full board of directors (who won't understand it).
9) Committee realises there's less than 5% of the time to discuss the remaining 7 points, so rushes through them, making half-assed decisions on 4 of them, and postponing discussion on the remaining 3 until the next meeting (when exactly the same will happen).
10) Let's convene again in 3 months time (the fun part, where everybody gets their Crackberrys out to compare diaries and argue over how important their schedules are and why everybody else needs to make allowances for them).

Ah, the joy of working in the NHS....

 

[tharpdevenport]

I've always hated useless meetings.

I remember one useless meeting when I was working in a grocery store, where they brought anybody who worked in the check out area, to learn fro ma guy who travels teaching how to bag items.

I forget how much he said, but he said each plastic bag costs something like $0.02 each. During his demo he put four bottles of cola in one bag, poked holes i nthe bottom and showed us it can hold the wait. Of course, being me, I had to say something when nobody else did; you see, his whole shtick was about not wasting bags because it costs the store money. I proceeded to say, after he broke a few bags, "Didn't you just cost us 0.15 cents?". Needless to say I got a laugh from everybody in there.

THAT'S what we were called in there for? To see a guy break bags, costing the coporation, and on top of that paying him a salary and likely travel expenses? That one fucking guy probably cost us more money that any yearly bag lose. And to top that off, it made little difference since he only came once and we changed employees at a ragular rate, and we still still had to bag things to a costumer's preference, and from our experience on how cheap-ass bags really work. What a useless meeting. In hindsight I should have said I needed to take a shit, and just hide in the bathroom for 15/20 minutes.

 

[Lookingglassman]

I know what you mean. I work for the Army and the last commander we had was a West Pointer who only cared about kissing butt. We would have 3 hour training meetings on a Friday just so this moron can hear himself talk. He would never shut up. I became an expert at daydreaming, but being able to recognize something when it pertained to me.

Luckily, that idiot is gone now to torture Soldiers down in Ft Hood. The guy we got now has common sense and his meetings are short and to the point. They last 45min to an hour.

 

[Gaseous Anomaly]

I find that management has meetings to justify their existence. Without the meetings they could be done away with most of the time.

 

[SeerSGB]

I've always hated useless meetings.

I remember one useless meeting when I was working in a grocery store, where they brought anybody who worked in the check out area, to learn fro ma guy who travels teaching how to bag items.

I forget how much he said, but he said each plastic bag costs something like $0.02 each. During his demo he put four bottles of cola in one bag, poked holes i nthe bottom and showed us it can hold the wait. Of course, being me, I had to say something when nobody else did; you see, his whole shtick was about not wasting bags because it costs the store money. I proceeded to say, after he broke a few bags, "Didn't you just cost us 0.15 cents?". Needless to say I got a laugh from everybody in there.

THAT'S what we were called in there for? To see a guy break bags, costing the coporation, and on top of that paying him a salary and likely travel expenses? That one fucking guy probably cost us more money that any yearly bag lose. And to top that off, it made little difference since he only came once and we changed employees at a ragular rate, and we still still had to bag things to a costumer's preference, and from our experience on how cheap-ass bags really work. What a useless meeting. In hindsight I should have said I needed to take a shit, and just hide in the bathroom for 15/20 minutes.

We had something similar at the Grocery store I worked at in highschool-- in that case it was "Do you realize how much money we make on recycling carboard boxes? Stop giving them away!".

Then at the theater it was a "Emergency District Meeting", which meant slogging my ass back to the theater (a hour each way, literally my cellphone going off as I'm pulling into the driveway at some ungodly early hour of the AM) after a 14 hour shift (in the middle of what would become 3 weeks of 14 hour shifts), no sleep, no meals, dog tired, and no shower to drop into the front row of Theater 3 to listen to the secretary to the District Manager bitch for 20 minutes over the fact that some customer spilled popcorn on her shirt (note: She spilled it on herself while watching the movie) and wanted the theater to pay to replace it cause of butter stains. Such a common complaint and demand (that we never paid off on unless one of us spilled it on the customer), that we had business cards for a local dry cleaner we handed out. Cue all of the shifts looking at each other, then to the AMs and GMs who just shrug with a WTF?! look. The response is a collective mumbled "Okay, whatever." She threatens to fire the "offender" next time and make them pay for the shirt. Then as I'm going out the door she bitches me for being out of uniform (Uniform shirt unwashed, filthy, and untucked, and generally looking like hell and one of the walking dead) but she'd let it slide "this time". Get home, cellphone goes off, I let it go to voice mail and turn the damn thing off, check that afternoon (ton of messages): I missed the meeting over Uniform policy and coming to job functions in appropriate attire.

 

[Holdfast]

I find that management has meetings to justify their existence. Without the meetings they could be done away with most of the time.

This is what people commonly think, but it's far more insiduous than that.

Meetings don't justify management's existence. There's a very good case for a core amount of good management. No, meetings are the fertile breeding ground for large amounts of incompetent quasi-management - they give birth to layers of unnecessary middle-management. And of course the middle-management has their own meetings, which generates further layers.

Meetings are the cream between the layers of management mille-feuille, allowing each layer to maintain itself in splendid inefficient isolation from each other, while also being the glue that prevents any one layer eliminating the other.

Kafka was right.

 

[trekkiedane]

I worked for the town for two years -some time ago- I know what you guys are talking about. I don't have any funny stories though, just this:

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Our meetings are mostly crap as well (reminding us what we already knew from day one), but one meeting did have value for me, it clued me in on what the Employee Free Choice Act was. I am grateful for that.

 

[SmoothieX]

I love the general meetings where everyone in the office discusses what they are working on, review deadlines, if they need direction from management, if they need some help from a tech, etc.

You tell me my 100% plans and specs are due on Friday, so let me go actually work on them so I can get it done!

 

[farmkid]

 

[tharpdevenport]

(super long, angering post I won't quote all of to not stretch the page down).

That was beyond ridiculous -- that was angering. I'd have been sorely tempted to clock her one. The jail time and police record would be worth it.

To quote a line from one of my absolute favorite comedy films:

"No. Hell no. I believe you get your ass kicked for saying stuff like that."

 

[the 4th hanson bro]

I once had a boss who had a regularly scheduled team meeting at 3:30pm on Friday afternoon.

The only purpose of that was to make sure that nobody was, god forbid, leaving early on a Friday afternoon when all the work was done.

She lived and breathed her work so I guess assumed everybody else should. First thing I did when I replaced her was axe the Friday afternoon meeting.

 

[sidious618]

There was a study done that showed American companies would get a lot more done if they had a third as many meetings as they do.

 

[Holdfast]

I once had a boss who had a regularly scheduled team meeting at 3:30pm on Friday afternoon.

The only purpose of that was to make sure that nobody was, god forbid, leaving early on a Friday afternoon when all the work was done.

She lived and breathed her work so I guess assumed everybody else should. First thing I did when I replaced her was axe the Friday afternoon meeting.

Nasty woman. And well done to you.

There's little more annoying than work on a Friday afternoon.