Staff Meetings and their inhabitants.

A quick word about staff meetings. In my unofficial estimation, about 99% of them are completely unnecessary. They are simply an exercise whereabouts you go around the room and tell the people you work with, who already know what you do, what you do or are planning to do. Here's a breakdown of some of the people you'll find, and the average time they waste (based on a 1 hr meeting):

Leader: usually an ineffective administrator who feels that these meetings are their only way of finding out what the staff is doing, so that when something really big gets screwed up, they'll know who to fire. Avg. time wasted: 30 min (you could argue the whole hour since the meetings are usually their idea.)

Life Updater: person who feels the need to not only update their job but also their personal life (i.e. what allergies they have for the day). This person tends to be over-dramatic and over-descriptive. They may own 30 or more cats and have no other social contacts outside of the office. Avg. time wasted: 5 min (may speak for 8 min with only 3 of them being pertinent)

Pen Clicker: a description isn't really needed except to say this person is so neurotic that they don't even notice that they are clicking their pen in the range of 3,000 RPM. They are either oblivious or deaf, otherwise they would beat the living snot out of themselves for doing that damn clicking. Avg time wasted: 10 min (the amount of time I'm distracted thinking of throwing them and the life updated off the top of a tall building)

Note Taker: either this person is practicing for their Advanced Stenography exam or has the memory retention of a concrete step but either way they feel the need to write down every word that is uttered in the meeting. I still haven't figured what they do with those notes as many of these meetings don't keep minutes. NEVER sit this person next to the pen clicker as they won't be able to hear all the speakers. Avg. time wasted: 1 hr (that doesn't include the time they have to read back through those notes nor does it take into account for the trees that gave their life senselessly to be included in this persons note pad)

Daily To-Do-Lister: you will have at least one of these people in every meeting who feels it's their duty not to just list the top things they're working on or just finished but to give you a rundown of their day from the time they walked into the door to the time they leave. This is usually complete with calls made on their lunch hour and coffee breaks. Because they say so much you usually loose the highlights in their everyday minutia. Avg. time wasted: 10 minutes.

OK I'm done now. Oh by the way Avg time you've wasted reading this blog entry: 5 min!