Annoyances du’jour
1) Meetings which are held for no reason other than, they were scheduled. In other words, if the meeting time was booked we should get together regardless of whether or nor we actually have anything to meet about. Had a day of those today.
2) People who, in meetings, hand out a deck, i.e. a printed powerpoint presentation. This is especially bad of the “deck” is written in 24 point font, making it an 18 page deck when a one page outline of notes would suffice.
3) People who, after passing out a deck, proceed to pick it up and start reading it to the folks in the meeting. Often, word for word. This is especially fun if you’ve sent me the deck a couple days ahead of time for me to review prior to the meeting.
4) Finally people who have skins to thin for the modern office and take offense when someone says, while they’re reading their deck, “OK I get the joke the proposal, what do you need from me?” or “lets cut to the chase” and finally “This is all very fascinating, but lets talk about what and why we’re here.”
5) Presenters without enough saavy to understand that when the big guy says “I get it” he does, and even on the outside chance he doesn’t, he won’t be putting any more attention to it to understand it, attention and big fat executive guys not really go together so well,so.. move on. Don’t go back to where you left off and start reading again. As Dad would say… when you’re in a hole, stop digging.
I feel a bit better already.
Sounds like a number of candidates for Dilbert cartoons.
One of the greatest joys of retirement is NO MEETINGS (unless the lady of the house schedules one).
Meetings? I had a moral theology professor in seminary who had translated an old Latin text into English, mimeographed it (remember mimeographs?), passed it out and every day read to us, word for word, allowing no time for questions. It was hard to tell which was more deadly — his recitation, the tedious and outdated text or the mimeograph ink fumes.
Fortunately, since it was a moral theology class, we knew that it would be wrong to murder him, no matter how tempting.