I think anyone who works for a big company, or at least most who do, will have experienced going to meetings that should’ve been e-mails?
Some of those probably shouldn’t have even been that. Like, for instance, yesterday’s all-departments show-and-tell meeting, where literally no departments had anything new to show.
I really appreciate it when colleagues check in right before a meeting via chat just to make sure at least one person has something they actually need to talk about. If not, we skip it and go back to our work. Some teams do this as a habit, others meet anyway just to shoot the shit if there’s nothing work-related to discuss. My team is the former, thankfully.
We have some recurring meetings where team members are expected to add discussion topics to a doc beforehand. If nobody does the meeting gets cancelled, it’s great.
Damn, where do you hire your middle management? My company’s management needs those meetings to feel like they have a job.
At least since I work remotely, I can mostly keep working while listening in.
Yep, this is one of those meetings, except the “doc” is an admin’s e-mail address, and we don’t find out what’s on the agenda until we turn up.
I suspect it’s job security for the admin, and it’s half an hour a week I don’t have to break down pallets, so I’m ok with it.
Hey now. Shooting the shit is how we test our mics before the meeting. If you can’t make the pre-meeting, then suffer and never know whether your mic is shit.