Meetings about Meetings

They really love to have meetings where I work. I work for a fairly large foreign company with offices all over the world, and don’t know 100% if it’s particular to them, same in Corporate USA, or it’s just company culture but they really, really, like to have meetings. Budget meetings, product meetings, inventory meetings, HR meetings, formal meetings, informal meetings, video conference meetings, security meetings, staff meetings, birthday cake meetings, the list is just really endless. There are hundreds of different types of meetings. There are smaller meetings to plan for the bigger meetings. It’s truly a miracle any work even gets done with all these meetings. This doesn’t even include major company events, which requires multiple meetings that are held about the upcoming event. Basically it all boils down to….we manufacture products and want to sell them…. not treading any new ground by any stretch of the imagination.

There are also these really weird meetings called "brainstorming meetings”, if you have never been to one, I hope you never do, and if you have, I’m so very sorry. Usually the guys that need a punch in the face talk the most at these, and annoying chicks that talk fast also like these meetings very much. (My company USA HQ in NJ, so there is no shortage of the latter). At the HQ in Jersey all they do is have meetings. The whole fucking place, like 800 people including top brass can be eliminated and substituted by a weekly e-mail from Tokyo. The company would save millions. I have yet to openly suggest this at a meeting. I’m biding my time on that one.

As I mentioned, I’m not sure if this is all companies and industries, as the only other job I ever had was in the Air Force and things were very, very different, I might as well have worked on fucking Deep Space Nine it was so different. Meetings were at the beginning of shift and fairly quick and to the point. Unless of course you where in some kind of trouble and some goofball First Sergeant had to pick you up stone drunk at a Korean whorehouse at 3am…but I digress…

Sometimes, when you are not a main participant of the meeting it can be difficult to stay awake, the droning, multiple languages, repeated bullshit, video conference technical hassles, etc. Everyone in that super annoying “official meeting voice”, fucking sickening. Tic Tacs are essential in this situation, between the light shaking sounds of the container and a refreshing Tic Tac in your mouth at all times, it’s much harder to fall asleep, especially at the meetings where you shouldn’t be plugging away at the laptop or fagberry and at least feign interest and attention. Some people just bring a gallon of coffee, but caffeine is really not my thing. I’m more of a THC man myself, and that certainly is not permitted at the meetings. So it’s Tic Tacs and cold water for me while praying that the next motherfucker that says “synergy” gets hit by a bolt of lightning and slapped by Odin himself. Any and every grown man sounds gay when he says that word, ”synergy”. Try it. If I was a gay pop star I would change my name to Synergy.

I was at my most recent meeting, wintergreen Tic Tacs and fagberry in hand (personally, I have an iphone, which I love and will write about how much I love it sometime, but also have a work issued Blackberry, which unlike everyone else on earth, I hate and will also write about how much I hate it sometime). It was a Building and Cubicle Security and Safety meeting with a guest speaker old lady reading a power point presentation out loud word for word, like I can’t read. Fucking Romper Room. If I didn’t know personally, I would think this was a fictional event. We had a pre-meeting for this with the whole office like 2 days before and had a team of 4 people, which thankfully I was not on, have of a bunch of prep meetings for this fucking thing. Seems having a case of bottled water, doughnuts and a projector is fucking mission impossible. As I was looking around the room, dizzy from the incessant cackle of this old hag, I noticed the HR girl and the finance guy who are banging each other on the DL (everyone knows they are, and they know that everyone knows, and everyone knows they know that everyone knows but everyone still acts like they don’t know) seem to be giving each other some cold shoulder high school nonsense, hehe, could there be trouble in corporate paradise? I was sure the big-mouth receptionist would fill me in and later I found out finance boy was tapping some finance girl up at the Atlanta office on his trip last week. I’m surprised the blabbermouth network took that long to get the message here. People don’t learn, you can’t tell anyone any personal shit in this pussified, no sense of honor, kiss-ass, henpecked corporate world. That was one thing about the military, men were men, a guy could cheat on his wife or girlfriend or whatever and know their buddies had their back. You could ... gasp … shudder … trust someone.

Sometimes we have in-office catered lunches at the all day meetings, and believe it or not, guess what some people want to talk about during lunchtime? The damned freaking meeting! I kid you not. I know it sounds preposterous and incredible to regular people, but may George Carlin come back from the dead and stick a red hot poker up my ass if I am lying. I don’t even have a name for freaks like this. It’s just very odd and bizarre behavior, fucking cult-like. Me and another guy or two, try to stray away to talk about sports, movies, tits, you know regular stuff, but mostly resistance is futile and we get sucked in. A lot of times I skip the catered lunch and just say I have an errand to run and just eat fastfood crap while thinking that I really should have learned to play guitar or something.

Well, guess what? I have to go to a product meeting in five minutes, some new product that does the same shit as the last one. Gotta pay that mortgage somehow. I am the Robotman.