Meetings

What are they good for? Absolutely nothing!

The world is wall-to-wall meetings. But what is the point of them? Does anyone take any notice of what anyone else says, or change their mind about what they thought in the first place because of someone else's persuasive argument at a meeting? Hardly ever.

Michelle Hanson shares her sense of exasperation with the proliferation of grim and pointless meetings and offers the sane a few examples of useful techniques to get through them.

Rosemary has suffered at higher-education meetings, but at least she had a way of coping. As the meetings dragged on, she would imagine the most annoying persons in their coffins ready for burial, then plan their funerals: the dreary hymns, dull texts, secret mistresses lurking behind trees at cemeteries, wives and children weeping at gravesides. Another pointless argument, more self-congratulatory claptrap, another burial.

I like that. It is an extension of my usual fantasy, which isn't about the funerals of the people who are doing my head in, but of the methods used to get them there - think AK47s, blunt instruments and the like.

Then there is this one,

Rosemary told a few people her meeting survival method and found that it was already quite popular among academics, except that most of them plan orgies instead of burials. Olivia likes to pair up two colleagues, place them in bed, then imagine the proceedings. Meetings just fly by. While she's imagining all this, she nods now and again and says, "Yes", as if she's following the debate.

Hmm ... This has possibilities, except ... sometimes the thought could be a bit grim; you wouldn't want to have had a big breakfast.

She hit the nail on the head though about the way to cover up survival daydreaming. Learn a few stock phrases and throw them in occasionally and, who knows, you might even impress someone.