Meetings and why they’re dumb

December 9th, 2003 - 8:42pm

The number of bloody meetings I’ve been to in my short career (that, by the way, is going nowhere, as a good career shouldn’t) isn’t that high. The sort of work I do doesn’t really entail many meetings.

However, at my current workplace, there seems to be an overabundance of meetings. Meetings to select committees; committees to setup committees; committees to setup meetings and so on (note may not be an accurate description of the real state of things).

Right, so I’m at a meeting today with representatives from each of my department’s business areas (because, you know, breaking down things as much as possible is always fun), myself and my boss (he the IT manager and I the IT… errr… guy) are present as well as the “web leader”.

The aim of this meeting (the fourth or so in this exciting series) is to… well, I’m not sure — there was no agenda, not that I enjoy such things (they still have something to do with meetings, afterall) and we were late. Anyway, the entire two-hour meeting was taken up with deciding — get this — what should and shouldn’t be on our “A-Z List of Services” on our web page. Oh yes, enthralling stuff. Not only did we argue (sorry, discuss) about what should and shouldn’t be on said list but we went round in circles, as is the norm for this particular… group.

The point of this particular committee (or team, group, whatever the hell it is) is to redesign my department’s web site (or presence depending on how far up the management tree they are) so an external department can redo the website.

Umm, excuse me? So, what is the point of the IT Manager and IT… Guy in this particular committee? There’s no reason for us to be in this team as the development has been plucked from our more-than-qualified hands.

But hey, the best part is that I have a “Get Out of Jail Free” card. Another department’s developing the site, which means whenever anyone wants an update, I’ll just tell them to call someone who cares (i.e. the other department), or tell them to do it themselves for once.

Oh yes, no jail for me!<

Tags: annoyance, stupid, tired, work