Corporate culture is the bee’s knees, except the bee is eighty million years old and also extinct. Corporate culture is a fossilized insect’s knees: brittle, outdated, and inefficient.
There’s a perfect balance between looking busy and actually being busy that some people have mastered and it comes in the form of useless meetings. Now, because mastering the art of useless meetings also goes hand-in-hand with mastering the art of office speak (a topic I will definitely be covering in a future post), the people who master both typically end up in some sort of leadership position.
Here’s a list of four meetings that could have been emails.
Manager Flowdown
I detest myself for using the word “flowdown” unironically, but this is the world we live in. Flowdown is where your boss, or project leader, tells you what their boss told them. A good 70% doesn’t relate to you or anyone you work with, but they tag it with a cute little “FYI” at the beginning of the speech to make it seem useful. Drop me an email with FYI in it, and it’s already in the trash. You think I care that your someone is coming from Phoenix to check out our ducts?
Kickoff Meetings
New projects are interesting, but not interesting enough to sit through a colourful slideshow. Just tell me what you need from me and when you need it. I’ll hit that deadline earlier than you need because I didn’t spend all afternoon listening to you foam at the mouth over these new PowerPoint animations, Bob.
Anything described as a “Standup Meeting”
Fuck you.
Meetings that I have to call because I can’t get information out of you after numerous attempts
What am I, a goddamn toy? Quit playing with me and get me the thing I asked you for so we can both be on our way. This is why I added the subtitle to this article. I had to call three other people in here to force the information out of you. An FBI investigation was almost called for the amount of torture I went through for this.
Don’t get me wrong, I like my job. However, office culture is becoming a giant joke and I love being able to step back and analyze it.