Nice one
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I'm aligned with your perspective, and I appreciate the clarity you've brought to this facet of the conversation. From a tactical standpoint, I want to loop in the stakeholders to ensure they are also in sync with the continued usage of buzzwords.
If you run into any blockers, please circle back.
Cheers!
Uh... Circle back dontt have the implied threat of -please escalate- that is regularly used in my
I think there's a manager war going on. -
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Corpospeak. Never a clearer way to be sure that someone or something doesn’t give a fuck about you as a human being.
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#Corpo-Pro-Tips
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What do I need prepare for my contribution in this meeting? Nothing. Ok I'll watch the recoding.
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Eh, useless meetings are great for timesheet filler while playing Pokemon Go.
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Eh, useless meetings are great for timesheet filler while playing Pokemon Go.
Sometimes my wife says she doesn't like so much downtime at work. I understand her frustration, but I don't empathize.
Pay me to slack off, that's the life.
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You'd be promoted to 'hated manager' soon
No way! Manglement isn't part of the union
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Meeting host here too
Agenda : defective thingamajig from supplier- agenda
Hello everu one we suspect that some mcguffins have been shipped with defectives turbo-encubalators. We have 24h to decide if we need to informed government agency
Inventory people - please identify origine of the turbo-encubalators and deliveries
Engineers -please make risk assessment form, we strongly suspect defective product are in service.Providing agenda is only useful if people fucking read it and inform themselves on the subject before coming in. Hi everybody why am I here? - you were supposed to evaluate the safety risk for customer using this defective component we discovered. - oh
Why me? -you are the engineer that designed the part
Can't the supplier do the investigation, I have to make a report to my boss to identify where we can cut supportAgreed.
I didn't mention that I also spend time after every meeting I host putting together a summary of what was discussed along with a bullet point list of deliverables, who agreed to work on them, and due dates and then send it to all attendees, invitees, and stakeholders.
It deals with the Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man meme problem and "magnanimous work dodgers" - those who promise the world in meetings but then seemingly disappear off the planet.
It probably should be noted that many of the meetings I host are recurring, often weekly or fortnightly, so it's easy to find a rhythm (and identify the problem children).
- agenda
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Nah, fuck this lickspittle corpo speak!
"What is the purpose of this meeting and why do I need to be included?" is a perfectly polite sentence appropriate in any work environment consisting of mature and distinguished adults.
Do not enslave yourself to the machine, because the people running it will treat you like a slave.
That is absolutely not something to say if the meeting is pulled together by management on high. Peers? Sure you can say stuff like that, but to someone you may not know or have little interaction with that can be a death knell for your reputation.
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That is absolutely not something to say if the meeting is pulled together by management on high. Peers? Sure you can say stuff like that, but to someone you may not know or have little interaction with that can be a death knell for your reputation.
The trick is to be so reliable that no one would conceive of getting rid of you even if you come off a little assholish sometimes. I started on the help desk at my last job (fairly large company with around ~25k employees and within a year or two I was the go to for a few of the c-levels when they had issues. I pissed off middle management types occasionally when I couldn't do something they wanted right away because I needed more information or whatever and had to wait on something. Anytime they tried to start shit with me it never took long for a bigger fish to get involved and have my back because they were familiar with my work and knew I wasn't just fucking around.
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I had a situation like this where I'd like to be involved in the meeting that I was requested and they thought I was required to be in. I'm a just barely above entry level employee and was told by my supervisor that I should not be attending the meetings anyhow the request is coming from project managers.
Finally get pinged in a meeting chat asking where I was and told them I was informed I should not be attending these moving forward. The project manager asked if this input came from a director that is 5 levels above me. I told them no, it came from my supervisor, if you need me, I will attend the meeting however I'm not sure if my input would be the information you are looking for.
2 months later, still getting required meeting invites but told by my supervisor to not accept it.
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I think "What is the purpose of this meeting and why am I being included" is almost polite as-is, but "why am I being included" sounds a little rude. Maybe "what is the purpose of this meeting and is my presence needed?" Maybe "beneficial" instead of "needed" depending on who exactly you're emailing.
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Sometimes my wife says she doesn't like so much downtime at work. I understand her frustration, but I don't empathize.
Pay me to slack off, that's the life.
When I first started my job, I was really anxious about being seen as "slacking off" whenever there was downtime (which is pretty frequent and can range from 10 minutes to two hours). That made it pretty exhausting, which in turn fed the anxiety because "how can doing nothing wear you out?"
Luckily my colleagues and leads were great people and helped me get more comfortable with it, and I'm really grateful for that.
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I think "What is the purpose of this meeting and why am I being included" is almost polite as-is, but "why am I being included" sounds a little rude. Maybe "what is the purpose of this meeting and is my presence needed?" Maybe "beneficial" instead of "needed" depending on who exactly you're emailing.
If you ask the person who invited you to a meeting "is my presence beneficial" they're going to answer "yes". That's why they invited you.
The purpose is to figure out whether your presence is actually needed, not whether they think it is.
I do like a lot of your ideas though, I might suggest:
"What is this meeting about? I'm trying to figure out if my presence would be beneficial."
That way you are the determinant of whether your presence is necessary, and the other person has to articulate what the actual benefit would be as opposed to just saying "yes".
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If you ask the person who invited you to a meeting "is my presence beneficial" they're going to answer "yes". That's why they invited you.
The purpose is to figure out whether your presence is actually needed, not whether they think it is.
I do like a lot of your ideas though, I might suggest:
"What is this meeting about? I'm trying to figure out if my presence would be beneficial."
That way you are the determinant of whether your presence is necessary, and the other person has to articulate what the actual benefit would be as opposed to just saying "yes".
If someone sends me a one word reply of "yes" to "what is the purpose of this meeting and is my presence beneficial" then it wouldn't matter what I asked lol. They're clearly on auto pilot. I'd probably add my manager and see what they say
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If someone sends me a one word reply of "yes" to "what is the purpose of this meeting and is my presence beneficial" then it wouldn't matter what I asked lol. They're clearly on auto pilot. I'd probably add my manager and see what they say
If someone sends me a one word reply of "yes" to "what is the purpose of this meeting and is my presence beneficial" then it wouldn't matter what I asked lol.
lol
But just to reiterate the point I was making earlier, the idea is to avoid someone responding to "what is the purpose of this meeting and is my presence beneficial" with something along the lines of "the purpose is to discuss X, Y, and Z. Yes your input would be a big help thanks."
Curious on your thoughts on the suggestion I made and whether it improves communication or not?
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Tf am I doing here?
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If someone sends me a one word reply of "yes" to "what is the purpose of this meeting and is my presence beneficial" then it wouldn't matter what I asked lol.
lol
But just to reiterate the point I was making earlier, the idea is to avoid someone responding to "what is the purpose of this meeting and is my presence beneficial" with something along the lines of "the purpose is to discuss X, Y, and Z. Yes your input would be a big help thanks."
Curious on your thoughts on the suggestion I made and whether it improves communication or not?
Someone telling me my input would be a big help would be satisfactory to me though. Maybe I've just had a different meeting style since I've been working from home though. If a meeting is something I'm not needed in I just work on other stuff. And because nobody can see me it doesn't have the same vibe as doing it on the room. Plus my calendar isn't teeming with meetings today like it has been at other jobs in the past. Back in 2019 not only was I in the office but I had a ton of meetings. I would probably take a different approach then. Or ask my manager if I was unsure.
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I've tried deadlines. I've asked for things to be done before our next meeting with the vendor we're working with. Hell, almost everything I need done is clearly conveyed as "I cannot proceed to move your project forward until you perform X task that I don't have the rights to perform or make a decision regarding your department's policy on X." In fact, I've shown up at the meetings with them and the vendor and literally told them the situation - they do everything that's piled up in like 5-10 minutes and are apologetic. Then two days later I need another small thing and it begins again. So now I call for a meeting to "go over the project days the next vendor meeting." I really just have a list of shit I can't work on for the next vendor meeting because ya'll don't respond to all my requests otherwise.
Also remember, some of these are directed at my superiors - like the boss of the department I'm working with. It's their project so it's not like I'm getting in trouble or missing my deadlines. It just murders my flow state and frustrates me to no end when it can take days or weeks to get a response.
Ah, so you've been given responsibility without power (renumeration).
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When I first started my job, I was really anxious about being seen as "slacking off" whenever there was downtime (which is pretty frequent and can range from 10 minutes to two hours). That made it pretty exhausting, which in turn fed the anxiety because "how can doing nothing wear you out?"
Luckily my colleagues and leads were great people and helped me get more comfortable with it, and I'm really grateful for that.
Yeah, I have a lot of droughts of work. But also, my job is babysitting a little data center. If I don't have things to do, its technically a good thing because it means everything is working right.
I also get a lot of praise from management for how great I am at my job, ahich feela really weird sometimes because I have had weeks where I basically did nothing. Hell in December we have a lot work freezes so nothing breaks and all the routine work for the year is done so sometimes jts an entire month of basically nothing.
I often spend the time learning new stuff so thats kind of work related.
