Pushing the envelope*

I had a meeting this morning. I have this meeting every week. It goes on for three hours, and achieves precisely nothing. The same people attend every week and mouth the same platitudes. The marketing department say of course, they'll get right on it. The field team say yup, scheduled that in for next week. The sales team (office based) suggest some figures. Everyone agrees, yet nothing ever actually happens. I say nothing, as has become my method of choice over the last two years. That way, I end up with a maximum of two action points to hedge about and pretend to have followed up the following week.

The sheer futility of it all has sent me scurrying for the calculator (it's that sort of a day). With annual leave and bank holidays, plus the odd sick day I reckon I work an average of forty-seven weeks a year. With the meeting lasting three hours a week, and 34.8 years left until I retire (assuming the pension age is raised to sixty-seven, as has been mooted this week), and factoring in the 423 hours I've already wasted over the last two years, I estimate that I've got another seven and a half months to get through in the boardroom; pushing my agenda around, chewing my nails and thinking about shoes, before I retire.

Frankly I'd rather do it all at once. We wouldn't achieve any more, but at least we could all cross it off our task lists and do something constructive.

Carry on.


* I detest this phrase. Along with "thinking outside the box", "singing from the same hymn sheet" and "touching base". Fucking management speak.