We are here in this meeting to discuss the meeting about meetings.
Okay everyone, meeting in the conference room, 5 minutes. Alright is everyone here? Fantastic. Today’s meeting is to discuss further the meaning of a meeting. You know that expression “Unnecessary is the mother of all meetings?” No? Well, it’s new. I just made it up. It’s also true and it is the bitter topic of the day, so it was necessary to invent it. So deal with it. If you ever have to use that quote, just remember I trademarked it. If you ever use it, please send payment to me, C/O Ben’s Bitter Blog, and remember I was the one that made it up. Also, make sure to use this quote right after you say it. “Here is all my money, Bitter Ben”. Address the envelope, then send it through the mail or Western Union. See how I am rambling and getting off track here? That is a meeting. And now it is dismissed. Well, right after you read all these things that make meetings bitter.
1. Meetings are a black hole of information. If you came with information, it will be gone before you leave. If you leave with any, it doesn’t make sense or words are missing.
2. Meeting are a great way to talk about things that relate to me not at all.
3. Meetings are like that prison that in the original Superman with the rotating rings around the SuperVillan prisoners. Even Superman couldn’t escape meetings.
4. Meetings are like the hospice of good ideas, creativity and enthusiasm. Except hospices at least give your ideas dignity before they die a slow, painful death.
5. Meetings are a place where heavy sleep and nightmares get interupted by a more terrifying thing called work and reality.
Even Canaries can’t deny the allure of an interesting meeting.
6. Meetings are a magical way to take a discussion that would take 5 minutes between two people and cause it to be a 2 hour discussion between 10 people.
7. Meetings are a way to discuss things like productivity, efficiency and teamwork, and condensing it into a two hour fight club.
8. Meetings are a way to forget things by discussing them over and over again. So you can..uh what were we talking about?
9. Meetings are the one thing that is more boring than work. Talking about work.
10. Meetings are a good way to learn skills like work avoidance, eye rolling, muttering things under your breath, glossed over eye look, heavy sigh and loud snoring.
11. Meetings are a way for the group know-it-all to display their skills of talking endlessly about nothing.
12. Meetings are a way to learn technical knowledge that you can easily forget before you even learn it.
13. Meetings are a way that you can bring a smartphone or laptop to a meeting and get caught surfing the web in a whole new way.
A way to make meetings more interesting.
14. Meetings are a way for the least funny person in the room to practice how their stand up will be in real life. Also to a silent room.
The ironic thing is that I came up with all this in a boring meeting. Meeting dismissed. Get back to doing your bitter jobs.
Arrgghhhh
Bitter “Dying slowly in a meeting” Ben
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Brilliant! The title led me astray which I thoroughly enjoyed!
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My titles generally lead people astray. It’s what I am good at. That and being bitter.
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#8. Yes. and Yes.
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I kind of think yes and yes on all of them. But you are entitled to your bitter opinion being wrong.
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Wow. You are in full bitter mode. I like it.
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You have no idea. My list of bitterness is growing by the bitter minute.
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My favorite of your bitter comments: “Meetings are like the hospice of good ideas, creativity and enthusiasm.” I almost spit my yogurt out all over my laptop. That certainly would have been a bitter experience.
My very un-favorite meetings are the higher-up’s version of CYA. Often called “training,” an activity where you languish for 2 hours before receiving a certificate showing you were there, you sit in a room and watch someone on TV read word-for-word from a notebook exactly like the one in front of you. That way, when you screw up and forget some jackass rule that no one with 3 brain cells would inflict on another person, the higher-up’s don’t have to take the blame.
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I have been sent off sight to a meeting where you get certificate’s that are as useful as the “Leibster award”. They send to you so expensive one day training where you forget the stuff you learned before the training even starts.
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Brilliant! And so, so true! I’ll bitterly be back for more.
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Just beware that there will be nothing but bitterness here.
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I can take it!
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That is what they all say, until they get the bitter virus that almost kills them.
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What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.
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I think the Joker said what doesn’t kill you, makes you stranger. I think what doesn’t kill you, makes you more bitter.
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Where does sarcasm come into play? My second language is sarcasm. I even offer it freely. Basically I make other people bitter. The people at my office will tell you that.
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Sarcasm and bitterness work hand. I welcome sarcasm here as well.
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i can identify with all of this. in my world we currently have a committee that meets to discuss the protocol and bylaws of said committee so no real committee work gets done.
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The world would be a better place without meetings. Let’s get together to discuss.
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yes, let’s meet to discuss when we can set up a meeting.
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Someone needs to brings donuts though.
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perhaps we can form a committee to decide who will bring the donuts
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Dilbert would be so proud, but I am bitter.
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Omg I just started at a new position and we have meetings CONSTANTLY- and we always use terms like “action item” and “synergy” and “circle-up” and “run that issue up the flagpole” i want to lampoon myself over the flagpole
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OMG that sounds crazy. I am so tired of meeting that I set a world wide ban on them today and for the rest of my life which should be the rest of yours.
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Eff meetings darn it! :p hey Ben… I nominated you for what is probably just a HUGE chain letter but you got the nom anyway man! (And you are totally number one on the list for a reason), keep up the good work my friend. 🙂
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Thanks for the nomination! The awards themselves are lame, but getting mentions from bloggers you respect is not lame. Thanks for thinking of me first on the list. That gives me a big head. And big heads make me bitter!
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AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH bitter again!!!!!!!!!!!
I totally agree!
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Bitter head right here!
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Over 22 years in a bitter bureaucracy (and those folks *were* bitter, bitter bitter), it was great fun reading this entry. Brilliant bitterness! Not to mention accurate.
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The accuracy comes from years of bitter meeting experience. Should that be something I list on my resume?
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Of course! What better way to be bitter?
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It’s not like I have anything else to put on my resume.
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I dread to hear the words “let’s have a meeting” from my manager’s mouth. What follows in an hour and a half long meeting of repeating each other, talking about nothing of consequence and sometimes working through lunch, because my manager apparently has no concept of the fact that we eat lunch at 12:30…everyday.
I think this description of meetings is bitterly brilliant: “Meetings are like that prison that in the original Superman with the rotating rings around the SuperVillan prisoners. Even Superman couldn’t escape meetings.”
And that you came up with this during a meeting…even more bitterly brilliant.
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If they want more efficiency they will get more efficiency. I will do more posts during boring meeting. Perhaps even upload them on my phone.
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If that isn’t efficiency I don’t know what is.
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I like #’s 6 and 11 🙂
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You’re right. The rest were pretty terrible.
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We have a 10 minute check out meeting everyday that ends up taking 45…. Bet you can guess how I feel about meetings.
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The answer is either Bitter or Really Bitter.
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Exactly
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cheer up hoss, be glad that they invited you to the meeting. I mean, is that not a form of workplace friendship that they invite you. Unless it is a mandatory meeting, then they should feed you. If they do not feed you, I think that you should not be required to attend. If you are so required to attend, there is no food, you should then fart in the meeting.
Live to be referred to as, that’s what I say
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I’m just so bitter that I don’t get donuts.
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Haha, awesome! So, what if your boss said, “So what’s your opinion of so and so’s last remark BEN?” 😛 Great post as always!!!
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I would usually crack a joke about not listening to the meeting. Then use some vague terms I learn from Dilbert.
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Well played my friend, well played. 😀
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Like a bitter fiddle. Are you feeling better these days or still a little sick?
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Well enough to give you a tongue twister I’ve been saying many, many years before I met you on WP. Funny, it even has the words bitter now and then. Have you heard of it? Betty Butler bought some bitter butter, so she got some better butter to make the bitter butter better. It’s very easy for me to say. Yes, I feel a lot better. Not completely well, but the fevers are gone. Just a cough now and then. 😦 Thanks for asking!
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I had never heard it until I started this blog. Since then I have heard it two other times before you. Who knew that you would need this saying two years later to quote to a bitter guy later. You never know when something like that would come in handy. I hear bitter buttered popcorn and a movie is good for getting better. It’s bitter being sick this time of year when the weather is so nice. Glad you are feeling mostly better!
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Why I retired from teaching – staff meetings run by elders who read off a power point….
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It seems like everyone does meetings but no one likes them. I’m wondering who in the world calls them if no one likes them?
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Although I don’t work outside the home anymore, I loved this. Partially because I am a mormon and we can have an INSANE amount of meetings about what we are going to do at our next meeting. IN fact, I think they just suggested that we have less meetings, but I’m sure there was a meeting to decide that too. Ugh.
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Little secret. I am Mormon too. I often have to stay after church that ends at 4:30 pm for Elder’s Quorum. Even church meetings make me sleepy.
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Ok. So you get it. My husband is the EQ president and I’m in the RS presidency. Enough said.
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How does that even work? Don’t you have conflicting meeting times? They should give one of the two a break. I’m in the EQ presidency and my wife is in the young women’s as a teacher. One of the two is almost always teaching on Sunday’s and at meeting most days of the week.
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Yeah, it’s lame. Especially since our youngest won’t be nursery age for a month. We finally just put him in for the 3rd hour last week because what else were we supposed to do? It probably won’t last long because I don’t have the patience, or maybe we will move just to rebel. 🙂
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We are trying to move to Utah because we are a little fed up with our ward too. Maybe we shouldn’t move to yours though because you might be having some vacancies in the EQ and RS presidencies. Aggghhh.
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haha! Where do you live now?
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We are in Renton (burb of Seattle). I have brother and sis that live in Orem/PG and my wife has a sister there. We would love to have free babysitting but it is hard to find a job there. I was there a week in April and nothing…
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Ugh. That sucks. What kind of work are you looking for? In case I hear about anything…
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Right now I work in customer service and admin, so I want to try admin assistant. I got a degree in Marketing too though and want to see if there is any type of Marketing Assistant jobs that would take someone new. So Admin to get there, but Marketing Assistant if I could snag that.
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Are you looking on KSL.com? I’m sure you are…but just making sure.
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I did look there a little. I’ll keep looking there. So are you in Salt Lake area or down in Utah county?
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Salt lake
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nice.
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I hate meetings, They suck all the life out of me. If ever I am asked to go on a committee I always say “no thanks I only do dictatorships”,
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I would say, “No thanks I only do bitterships.”
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Meetings about meetings was a fan favorite at a previous employer.
The plus-side to meetings? Everyone has a forum to show off all that never-annoying biz jargon like “touch base,” “circle back” and “ideate.”
Barf.
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If I make up words I want them to be for my imaginary blog as opposed to real world made up words like productivity, efficiency and work.
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Hahaha, a perfect bitter response.
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Bitter response for a bitter world.
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UGH, that # 6…it’s so true. SO TRUE. I used to work somewhere that elevated that skill to an art form.
Great post Ben.I hate to tell you, but this actually was an uplifting one for me, for I no longer work at the place that had meetings every other day. SO THANKS FOR THE GOOD FEELING!
Burn. Suck on that, evil twin.
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If you are going to burn me, then freeze on you, good twin. Are you telling me that you work at home? That would be the only place I know that you wouldn’t have meetings all the time. Unless you are meeting with your cat or dog later. I’m bitter that you had a good feeling from this post. That just means I need to work harder next time.
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Skills learned during a meeting can actually be used in a hostage situation. Technically they are the same thing. being held against your will, with a deadline, with an exchange of money in the background that in no way ever profits you. Stay bitter my friend
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Always bitter. I wish to be the one that causes pain to others not the other way around. How am I supposed to do that when I’m being held hostage in the conference room?
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PS: Did I already mention that we have holiday here today – looong weekend 🙂
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That makes me bitter that you are on holiday and I am on work right now.
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YOU MAKES ME BITTER! Would also like to have so awesome meetings
Could prepare posts, do some drawing, getting donuts is also welcome…..
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I make everyone bitter Tutti. I was lucky this time that no one was paying attention to me. Most time I have to pretend to look up while in meetings. No donuts for me.
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My favorite is number 9! Meetings are the one thing that’s more boring than work! LOL Thanks for the bitter morning laugh!!
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Too bad there isn’t more horsing around in meetings. That would make your horse more comfortable.
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10 and 11 are my favourites on your list 😆
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I am just starting to perfect my craft of sighing but still working on 11. And by working on 11 I mean trying to hit that person with a blowdart filled with sleeping poison without getting noticed. I just missed them yesterday.
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My favourite part of meetings is the part where you only have to attend on your day off at five in the morning and then when you get there you find out it was cancelled. 🙂
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That is my bitterest part of the meeting. Please tell me that really happened to you. You would have a bitter post to do for sure!
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It did, but it was a few years ago. I smile now that the company had gone under lol
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Hopefully under the ocean along with bitter hacker crew.
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It’s amazing how many really important and amazing things can be accomplished during a meeting. For instance, this blog post. What a great accomplishment Ben! I wonder if War and Peace was written during a meeting. (By the way, your boss told me that you were responsible for keeping the minutes during the meeting, so your boss is expecting a full accounting of every topic discussed within the hour) Meeting adjourned!
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Here are the minutes for the meeting that I will turn into the boss later.
Blah blah blah blah
Bitter post idea!
Blah blah blah blah
Another bitter post idea!
Blah blah blah whine nag
Think of donuts.
Blah blah blah
what should I eat for dinner?
Blah blah blah
If I won a billion dollars I would walk out of this meeting right now and throw up some ones and yell, “Suckers!”
Meeting adjourned.
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So true!!! The only time I welcome a meeting is when I am hungry for a donut AND am avoiding doing the work I have to do! 🙂
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As long as there are chocolate creme filled. And the work is worth procrastinating. Unfortunately for me, we don’t get donuts in our meetings. I am now bitter that you do get them.
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Every meeting I’ve ever endured in my entire life has been captured here. GET OUT OF MY BRAIN I say, because this is so terrifyingly close to my life that I feel as though Bitter Ben here is lurking somewhere in my subconscious.
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Bitter Ben is more of a ghost that haunts people’s nightmares and steals their thoughts at night and brings them to me to write blog posts. It just so happens it was your turn last night, (or whenever you thought about these things.)
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when I worked for a large insurance company shaped like a rock we held a meeting to discuss how long meetings should be and how to cut back on meetings. the meeting ran a long time and nothing changed.
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That is why meetings are so effective. When the get too much I imagine myself as Dilbert with the pointy headed boss and since I am a cartoon, I won’t get in trouble for ripping the boss a new one or driving him off a cliff, because you know, it’s a cartoon.
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I think I was in that meeting! Didn’t see you.
(I just reposted this. Thanks for saving me the trouble of writing something today.)
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Writing things is really hard. So bitterly hard. I always have such a hard time thinking of things that make me bitter…a really hard time…not at all.
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Painfully accurate. You nailed it, sir.
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Most of my writing is painful. I subject all my readers to as much pain as everything causes me. Bitter pain!
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Ben, I have a post about the characters you find in meetings sitting in my iPad waiting to be posted. But you’ve covered a lot of it here–especially 11.
I hate meetings.
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Sorry. I guess you must be very bitter right now that I stole your thunder. Hopefully it is completely different or I will claim copywrite laws or trademark or something and collect the $.20 you owe me. Only $.90 more and I can get some Cheetos!
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I’ll show how I wrote it several weeks ago and soon I’ll be the wealthy benefactor of the $.20 cents. Since I’m a woman, I might be able to get the judge up to $.25 to get the full quarter. I’m a hustler.
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Oh shoot. I only have $.15. Can you owe you in a few weeks when I get paid my shilling every two weeks? Maybe 4 weeks?
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Reblogged this on I Work for a Jerk and commented:
Notes from another worker bee…
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I’m an introvert and have always thought of meetings as forums for folks to share facts and get down to brass tacks. In my (oh-so-bitter) experience, extroverts LOVE meetings and see them as venues to articulate every thought that crosses their minds. So-very thankful for the evolution of the virtual meeting, and email. 😉 Do I dislike people/extroverts? To paraphrase Mickey Rourke in 1987’s Barfly: “No, but I seem to feel better when they’re not around.” xD
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I am also not a fan of extroverts. Or introverts for that matter. In fact people in general. For me, meetings are for sleep and coming up with blog posts. Like this one.
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Pingback: Death by a Thousand Meetings | createdbyrcw
Bravo, I told my teacher and he laughed too
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Your teacher reads my blog? I will have to do a bitter post about teachers in order to make him feel welcome to the realm of bitterness.
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Haha yes, he could not resist asking the lone girl laughing at her phone at 8am in the morning. Oh he feels welcomed – “wouldn’t that be a nice partner [during a meeting]”
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I wouldn’t be a great person to be in any meeting. I would just annoy anyone that tried to speak.
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No sir, you’d be amazing. Film it, and I’ll put it on replay – nothing better than channeling bitterness from the source.
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I am a pretty bad actor. Some day I plan on doing Youtube videos, so I can get internet famous.
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Terrible actors and gaping actresses is what this society runs on.
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Then my bitterness would and bad acting would fit right in!
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I totally agree with all your points, except that in this very week, I have been to two (2) meetings that were, somehow, actually AWESOME.
Still bitterly trying to regather the pieces of my exploded brain . . .
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They must have involved money. I find that even with the bonus meetings it isn’t near enough. Usually I expect a bonus of a billion dollars and they always seem to fall short of my expectations. Bitter….
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Actually they involved lack of money. Which made the whole thing even more bizarre.
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This was a positive meeting and it wasn’t about money? Was it about getting a good severence package? Or a trip to Hawaii to have a meeting about meetings?
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Keep trying…
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Was it about the new donut distribution policy? Getting a promotion to head of WordPress? Blog administrator? Wizard of Wittiness?
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🙂
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Okay you’re not giving me much help here. What is it? I have to know now!
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1) I got a new committee of people who are actually into what the committee’s about.
2) I went to a meeting about this camp I run where everybody realised that the camp shouldn’t be part of my responsibility and that maybe they should hire a part-time person to do that part of my job.
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1) Good job, you got skillz.
2) Better job, that you got someone to do a little part of your job. The only thing I get is more more not less. Can I go to your meetings?
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You can, but I can’t guarantee that they will go this way ever again. It was pretty much a first for me, and I’ve been going to meetings for a LONG TIME.
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I don’t ever want to go to meeting so never mind. Just give me money in an email.
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Haha. Yeah, okay.
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Don’t worry, I’m not asking you for money. Just your boss.
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Oh, okay. I’ll let him know. 🙂
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This miserable meeting you’re trapped in is bitter repayment for not making me the winner of your contest. I hope it’s long and never ending!!!! 😉 PS- Good morning.
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You know, you didn’t even want to win my contest. But if you want to win so bad, I will send you a penny a week for like 10 years. If you invest them, with inflation you might be able to get $5 out of the whole thing. I hope you have a bitter meeting later. PS – Bitter morning to you too.
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I did want to win your contest!! No bitter meetings for me, just sittin around staring at the walls 🙂
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I’m pretty sure you said that wanted to be ineligible because you wanted to help me with that video. I think the only reason you wanted to win is so that I would have to scrounge up $20 in pennies. I could offer you up a Ben’s Bitter Blog T-shirt, but I couldn’t find any kid’s small T-shirts to make them with.
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