Pointless meetings
So, what pointless meetings have you been involved in? Do you have any good stories about what's happened in pointless meetings? Or, have you worked out cunning plans to get out of them?
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The most pointless meeting I ever attended was in Carlisle, I drove up from Dartford was I asked I question and said no, after two minutes left the meeting and drove home. I did ask why we didn’t do the question over the phone, a very very good customer of mine said he won a bet that I would drive 800 miles for a stupid question. Wasn’t happy added another £20k onto his next job which he unwittingly paid.25
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Not one member of the fans forum has responded ,which is surprising.Chizz said:They cost $541bn a year, according to research (https://buyingbusinesstravel.com/news/1129766-pointless-meetings-cost-541bn-2019). Yet we've all suffered them and the appetite in some organisations for them appears undiminished.
So, what pointless meetings have you been involved in? Do you have any good stories about what's happened in pointless meetings? Or, have you worked out cunning plans to get out of them?10 -
Used to work in Singapore on a regular basis and received a call one day that I was needed over there. I explained that the date required was only a couple of days before I was going on holiday.
Apparently no problem as I would arrive in morning and leave again the following evening.
Arrived in Singapore about 7.30 in the morning, in office by 8.30. Informed that meetings cancelled due to illness and no point in me staying. Back to airport and managed to get on a lunchtime flight back home, landing about 19.00 UK time.
Out of the UK for just over 30 hours and didn’t even attend the bloody meeting!21 -
Ironically only just seen this as the club just rang me to clarify some points from the last fans forum meeting.carly burn said:
Not one member of the fans forum has responded ,which is surprising.Chizz said:They cost $541bn a year, according to research (https://buyingbusinesstravel.com/news/1129766-pointless-meetings-cost-541bn-2019). Yet we've all suffered them and the appetite in some organisations for them appears undiminished.
So, what pointless meetings have you been involved in? Do you have any good stories about what's happened in pointless meetings? Or, have you worked out cunning plans to get out of them?
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Not as good as Stonemuse, but my boss and i flew to Zurich to attend what we thought would be an all day meeting to extract some data from one of our branches only for the branch to say after 5 mins, here you are, and handed us a diskette (remember those) of the exact data we needed, only for us to fuck off to the airport and get totally smashed whilst waiting for our plane back 6 hours later.5
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Sitting in one right now. Almost lunchtime here thank god.4
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I used to fly across China once a month for managers meetings, the company would fly us all from various cities around China to Chengdu.
The meetings themselves were often useful but why not just have a conference call, it must have cost them a fortune in flights and hotels.2 -
I've got this one in the bag.
Many years ago my company was asked to install a system in a computer room in Kazakhstan. It was in such a remote part of the country there was only one flight in and out each week.
I flew in, got my head down for the night in what could loosely be described as a hotel, attended a 30 minute meeting the next day and then had to wait 5 days to fly home.
If was to happen today and done via Skype I would do in my PJ's
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I mean...that's pretty fucking brilliant on both sides if you ask me. It's basically as close to this as you'll get:CharltonKerry said:The most pointless meeting I ever attended was in Carlisle, I drove up from Dartford was I asked I question and said no, after two minutes left the meeting and drove home. I did ask why we didn’t do the question over the phone, a very very good customer of mine said he won a bet that I would drive 800 miles for a stupid question. Wasn’t happy added another £20k onto his next job which he unwittingly paid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGaHqk2NJPI 1 -
@stonemuse At least you got plenty of airmiles 😉stonemuse said:Used to work in Singapore on a regular basis and received a call one day that I was needed over there. I explained that the date required was only a couple of days before I was going on holiday.
Apparently no problem as I would arrive in morning and leave again the following evening.
Arrived in Singapore about 7.30 in the morning, in office by 8.30. Informed that meetings cancelled due to illness and no point in me staying. Back to airport and managed to get on a lunchtime flight back home, landing about 19.00 UK time.
Out of the UK for just over 30 hours and didn’t even attend the bloody meeting!1 -
Saw this in Frankfurt a few years back. I bet their meetings were exciting.5
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When I worked at ING I was in a meeting with a bloke who had (at the time) just bought a new palm pilot thingy.
He was leading the meeting and from time to time took time out to tap away on his new gadget.
We thought he was being a bit of a twat but thought he was taking notes etc.....after the third or fourth time out for him to take notes, he looked up and said - “These things are amazing, I’ve just done all of my banking on this”
Wanker.2 -
Had a meeting once where the meeting was to discuss who should go to the meetings.0
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To be fair, if you come to a conclusion in that meeting it reduces the wasted time of other individuals and is thus a useful meeting.Chippycafc said:Had a meeting once where the meeting was to discuss who should go to the meetings.
If you don't it's a load of shit.0 -
What come out of it was that most people thought that they were so important that they had to be there. In my view 50% didn't need to be.Dazzler21 said:
To be fair, if you come to a conclusion in that meeting it reduces the wasted time of other individuals and is thus a useful meeting.Chippycafc said:Had a meeting once where the meeting was to discuss who should go to the meetings.
If you don't it's a load of shit.1 -
Pointless meetings. One of the reasons I got out of The City! (Miss it though!)0
https://youtu.be/LIOoVO3aCFE
