This makes me glad I own my own business. We have one maybe two meetings a year, they last 90 mins tops and then we have pie Next year I am thinking of having our meeting at a winery down the road. Then we can have a “no-chair” meeting. We will be at bar stools!

If the meeting is so pointless that people actually feel the need to do other things while in attendance, perhaps a meeting isn’t the best medium. Do you really need to meet in person or could a couple e-mails take care of it? I know that meetings where I work are often nothing but a waste of time for everyone involved. A couple people talk about things that the majority of attendees have little to no interest in, and everyone’s time is simply wasted while they zone out, wishing they were back at their desk. I’m the only one who brings a computer to most meetings to take notes on my tablet, but it usually goes to sleep because there’s nothing worth writing. Looking around the room, you can tell most people aren’t actually “there” and only showed up because the boss scheduled a weekly meeting. I don’t believe regularly scheduled meetings make sense; you should call a meeting if you have something to discuss. Simply having a meeting every week for the sake of getting people together in a room is a pointless waste of time. At least the way our meetings are run.

What a sad place to work that meeting are that boring and/or pointless that they would need to instigate such a rule.

Maybe there needs to be list posted of the companies with this rule so smart people know where NOT to apply.

Just a thought

I was told to chair a meeting a few weeks ago. I told them no PCs. Nobody came … sigh. I waited for over three hours … twiddling my thumbs … looking out the window … checking out my pockets for pieces of lint.

I really missed not having my computer to pass away the time.

I’m all for the no laptop rule. And the stealth blogging post demonstrates tablets are no better. Having a dozen people sitting in a room with latops running is insane. One person tapping out the minutes is fine, everyone clicking away reading emails, bidding on ebay crap and screwing off is why they should be removed.

People in my company have “no chair” meetings all the time in the hallway outside my office… I wonder if they realize I can usually hear what they’re talking about?