Meetings take Minutes and Waste Hours

Great tag line to describe this morning's fiasco with my favourite group of consultants.

Shocking me to the core was the fact that we actually received an agenda for today's meeting. I didn't have a large role in it, but because some of the work I'm currently doing touches on a number of other project deliverables, I figured I shouldn't miss it.

Sparking my ire first was a note from last week's meeting (which I didn't attend because I didn't think I was needed) that stated that one of the deliverables I needed put on hold was put back on the "live" list. Of course, nobody bothered to let me know this had transpired. Nice...

Then, partway into the meeting, the agenda goes to shit. I mean, really to shit.

So as I'm sitting there madly making notes about this new deliverable I've been saddled with (to say nothing of fuming over the issue) the remaining participants go off on a wild tangent about some miniscule aspect of a new deliverable. Um, hello? Don't we have other stuff to talk about?

The project manager, who called the meeting did nothing to either steer us back on track, or to halt the discussion and 'parking lot' the issue or set it up for another meeting. Nope...he sat there like a fucken bump. Please...turn me up from simmer, to med-high.

And what about the other stuff, I hear you ask?

Out the window. "Oh, I guess we're out of time. I'll have to set up another meeting."

After I left and came back to my desk, my boss asks me, "Are you upset about something?"

I wonder what gave him that idea...