Tuesday, February 14, 2006

What time is the meeting?

These....not for meetings!
1.
Last week, a colleague sent an e-mail to everybody in the office about setting an appointment/ meeting/ discussion with him after the end of official office hours. The e-mail was not that lengthy but done quite elaborately. Any person with a correct mind would concluded that this friend is telling everybody to manage their time better. If there is a need to have any sort of meeting after the official office hours, it must be an important one that it cannot be post-phoned and it must be short & precise, focused, not long winded and inconclusive in the end. To cut short - do not waste other people’s time. We have our priorities and as far as work is concerned, we must treat it seriously and prioritize it accordingly. The colleague was like suggesting if the meeting needs to be held after office hours, he’d be glad to participate, if and only if its done after 10pm! Reason being, he has allocated the time after the official office hours to other stuffs & people that deserved very much to be prioritized after the official office hours, including working out office matters for about one our at home. That’s how he put it, though I am not too sure how committed he is. So, for somebody to say he’s not committed for not wanting to attend a meeting after 5pm, that somebody is not making a good judgement. 10pm, and we have a deal!


I actually replied the e-mail, only to the sender....I am not the kind of person who’d love to reply to all (depending on the context & situation) and let the world know what a great thinker (read: what an idiot!) I am. I agree with his views & requests.

2.

There was one company I worked in, couple of years back, where meetings were held in short notices, scheduled long after official hours ended and at times may continue to almost the time for the tv to sing the national anthem. The company must be full of excellent staff....DUH! “If you cannot give your commitment, you should not be here..”

Like...well Mr & Mrs/ Ms arroganto bastardo, if you cannot manage your time & priority, you should have monkeys & piglets reporting to you, not human beings with family and respectable lifestyle.

3.
We have people who luuuurrrrvee to make others stay back....that’s one extreme.
The other extreme - people who luuuuuurrrrrve to make others do work early.....because they think they are the early burds, and early burds will get the bigger fatter worms. Well too bad, BigBurd...the bigger fatter worms are deep in slumber and only skinny sissy worms are awake....apa aku mengarut ni aaaa....?
You arrive in the office couple of minutes after some people. The next thing you know, before you even had the chance to plug that bloody unreliable machine into the network, heck, even before you had the chance to sit on that ugly looking overpriced ergonomic chair, some people has started to make things crushing down on you!
These people, most of the time would be your superiors but on certain occasion it may be other people than them. Regardless whoever they are, you should have the guts to tell them this....
“Do me a favor, help me to try to learn something useful today!”

4.
How?
Suggestion: Just ask for 30 minutes to 1 hour allocation to do your stuff before running the rat race in the office, everyday.(....been doing this for almost 10 years, maybe that’s why I am still not a CEO!)
So, you come into the office, grab a cuppa, sit down, clear your minds, read your e-mails and plan your day/ check your schedule. Any meeting before 9am, is a waste of time - go back to the 70's and join the gomen lah, meeting awal pagi konon. Chances are people would be more interested to know what are being served on the table instead of concentrating on the real intent of the meeting.
Its better to spend the time from 9am to 10am to read books or articles, to enrich yourself with some other stuff then what you are already built with. If an hour is too long for you to concentrate, then just do 30 minutes. If 30 minutes is too long, then you should have not learned to read at all. Waste of your time!

First meeting of the day should only start at 9:30am. And if you have any other meetings throughout the day, at least you have learnt something for that 30 minutes in the office....cuz chances are, in those meeting you are in, you will only learn that some people will go all out trying to impress some bosses with smart sounding phrases (with pathetic slang sometimes!), re-stating the obvious, rephrasing what others have said, or conclude what others have been yakking about, with the outcome of delegating whatever have been discussed to some other poor souls get to do the donkey job......cuz the “meeters” in the meeting have no time to do real job! The “meeters” will instruct the “doers” to do the real job.....and get rewarded? (itu....sendiri fikir lah!)

5.
So, “meeters” or “doers” if you come to office early, please help the human race - use the suggestion mentioned, and you may end up not wasting other people’s time! They have family & life to live.....do you not have one too?

6.
Oh ya...the human race would also be grateful if some people who are not invited to a meeting but decided to invite himself/ herself into the meeting can get the habit out of their system permanently, PRONTO! Obviously, either the person has nothing better to do or trying to look important/ resourceful or appear important/ resourceful so that he will be noticed as.....erk....important and resourceful(?!)
Somebody give that monkey a banana please!

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