Shut up with the meetings

[draftermatt]

I am working on a project with a contractor that is "special"

They are a huge company, with more hoops to jump through than you'd see at the circus.

When we were bidding this project we could see how bad it was, and I even asked "are we sure we want to do this?" and I was told that of course we do.

One thing about this contractor is their love for meetings. Every Thursday at 8 AM they have a "coordination" meeting. I've seen the minutes, and most of the time they don't talk about anything, or they rehash the same things they've done for weeks.

Since June we have been asking for information regarding a certain area of the job. They finally sent it on Tuesday (yesterday).

And it's obvious that no one coordinated (there's that word again) anything! So we write a letter stating all the problems with this.

Their response?

Thank you for your concerns and issues. But you need to realise that the most effective way to have any coordination, is a one to one meeting. I haunderstand that you are in MD and cannot be here, but then your representative should be able to discuss this tomorrow at the job meeting. M should be here, but I believe he is out of town. I am not sure that L can discuss this coordination.
We will try to get the steel guys here, but your rep should also be around tomorrow. The A/E will also be here tomorrow.

Yup, they want to coordinate all of this, that should have been done months ago, at a meeting that I can't even attend.

I think I'm going to start drinking.

[sprocket79]

Oh I hate that. I am currently in one of those meetings as I type this. Since you can't be there in person, they should offer MeetingPlace, WebEx, or Adobe Connect so that you can telecommute into the meeting. While you don't want to be in meetings, it might be more helpful to you to try and push your agenda and cut through the BS that is going on.

[DevilBoy]

To: draftermatt
From: "Special" Contractor
Date: Wed Nov 5 11:47:42 2008
Subject: Coordination Meeting

We absolutely have to further develop the feature-rich project. Allowing widely-distributed ownership of vertical markets. Having first verified that the customers take the initiative, a careful examination of the tools reveals that an open architecture blows them away.

A year two thousand compliance takes the initiative, thus I think of two words, namely the customer partnerships and the user-friendly project design. Having the marketing methods of empowerment that are world-class, it follows that the innovative gating factors work effectively. Our company must balance the enterprise functionality freeze in a number of areas in a way that maximizes economically sound the compliant project.

The win-win coordination skills engender focus, however the service providers blow them away with infrastructure. We're going forward on asset management. It's so clear that the interactive leading edge has possibilities for future technical advances; we are convinced deliverables align executives.

This has possibilities for future technical advances, however the next generation systems provide an indication of the architects. In order to assure that the revolutionary plans work effectively, we must be certain that the corporate executive interactively gets up to speed on the team-building sources, hence we request another coordination meeting with you. The empowerment from these meetings achieves a new paradigm shift and this leaves a price-performance open architecture uniquely poised to provide effective 90% solutions.

[draftermatt]

I've even begged to be conference called in so that I can talk with these people if need be. They won't do it.

But I know what you mean

[crazylegs]

To: draftermatt
From: "Special" Contractor
Date: Wed Nov 5 11:47:42 2008
Subject: Coordination Meeting
<snippage monster>.

I double donkey dare you with a cherry on top to send that email to anyone you work with and see what response you get!

[Bramblerose]

Yup, they want to coordinate all of this, that should have been done months ago, at a meeting that I can't even attend.

I think I'm going to start drinking.

DOn't drink. Get a repeating rifle. I know we're not to advocate violence, but I suspect the poor inmates of these USELESS weekly meetings would love you forever if you kill at least the idiot in charge, and maybe even them- anything to get out of the MEETING

[draftermatt]

Apparently not only are the meetings useless, so are the schedules.

They sent out over a dozen job progress schedules, with projected dates and all that jazz, all showing approx 3 weeks between our trips.

We did our first trip on Halloween, and today they informed us that we won't be back until late December.

[Racket_Man]

To: draftermatt
From: "Special" Contractor
Date: Wed Nov 5 11:47:42 2008
Subject: Coordination Meeting
<snip>
.

I am not going to quote the whole thing because that would mean I would have to kill myself. back in my cube-farm days ..................



AAHIADFJASKHKKLDSJHFLKJHSDLKJSHDLK

<brain reboot attempted>

<POST test Failed........>

<brain reboot attempted>

<POST test passed.....>

sorry I got too many memos, sat in too many meetings and had too many conversations with my bosses that used the corp double speak Dilbert speak, useless word, next big fad word, etc. the bad part is that I ACTUALLY UNDERSTOOD most of what that said as useless as it was. sounds like something Lenin would have sent to the rest of the Party leadership during the October takeover if it were being done today

I sometimes wonder how everyone understands each other even IF they are speaking the same "language"???????

also if that took you less than 1 minute to write I seriously suggest heavy drinking to purge the fad from your brain. or are you writing from experience???? :LOL

[IT Grunt]

One of the guys here used to have a comic clipped from the paper hanging next to his office door, and it fits with this perfectly. It went pretty much like this:

<Two typical office workers standing at the water cooler>
First guy: Hey, John, are you available at 10 AM for a meeting?
Second guy: No can't do it then, I'll be in the 9 AM meeting.
1G: How about 1 PM?
2G: Sorry, I'll still be in the lunch meeting.
1G: 3 PM?
2G: Busy with the 2 PM meeting.
1G: Rats.
2G: What's this meeting for anyway?
1G: We're having a meeting to find out why nothing's getting done around here.

[Calud]

...however the service providers blow them away with infrastructure. We're going forward on asset management. It's so clear that the interactive leading edge has possibilities for...

*HEAD ASPLODE*

[tamezin]

<Two typical office workers standing at the water cooler>
First guy: Hey, John, are you available at 10 AM for a meeting?
Second guy: No can't do it then, I'll be in the 9 AM meeting.
1G: How about 1 PM?
2G: Sorry, I'll still be in the lunch meeting.
1G: 3 PM?
2G: Busy with the 2 PM meeting.
1G: Rats.
2G: What's this meeting for anyway?
1G: We're having a meeting to find out why nothing's getting done around here.

You just defined my life.

[friendofjimmyk]

Devil boy - wow! How accurately corporate that letter was!

[scruff]

We've got clients like that.
Most of them are dealt with by when costing the project, specifically stating the cost involves X number of meetings (the number we know are actually needed to get the project done).
Any further meetings are charged at £XXX per half day.
They want to waste our time, they pay for the priviledge
One client, we charge 100% by time, and keep accurate timesheets, billing him every month.

[wolfie]

One definition I've seen for meetings (may have been The Devil's Dictionary, but not sure):

Where minutes are kept, but hours are lost

[draftermatt]

Ironically I had an alternate situation today.

A company mad because they never had a meeting with me and the engineer so that I could yell at the engineer for doing something wrong.