Thursday Thirteen: 13 meetings this week
August 30th, 2007
Sometimes I feel like all my time is taken up with meetings and I never have a chance to get any work done. So, without further ado, here are 13 meetings I’ve had to attend this week. I am going to use military time, because… well, because I can?
- Monday, 0800-0830: “Stand up” brief in the director’s office. It’s literally stand up—lots of people, very few chairs. And it went over about 10 minutes, which made us late for…
- Monday, 0830-0930: Operations center update. Reiterated most of what was briefed in #1. Loads of fun. (Not.)
- Monday 1030-1115: meeting to prep for briefing the boss, who is being prepped prior to meeting with the General who is being prepped for Big Video Teleconference later this week. (I even had to miss another meeting I have scheduled for the same time.)
- Monday 1130-1335: meeting with boss to prep him for meeting with General who is being prepped for Big Video Teleconference. Cafeteria closed at 1330, so had to grab junk food from snack stand prior to attending…
- Monday 1330-1415: weekly “synch” meeting, which is a fancy name for staff meeting. Fortunately, this meeting was chaired by someone who actually makes sense, hence, getting out in only 45 minutes.
- Tuesday 0800-0900: stand-up in director’s office. This one lasts for about an hour because we don’t have to be elsewhere at 0830.
- Tuesday 1030-1100: meeting to review slides prior to meeting with General to prep him for Big Video Teleconference this week.
- Tuesday 1300-1500: meeting with General to prep him for Big Video Teleconference this week.
- Wednesday 0830-0845: stand up in director’s office. Received demoralizing “pep talk.”
- Wednesday 0845-0945: operations brief, which began late because of “pep talk”
- Wednesday 1100-1200: collaboration session that reiterated some of the things presented at 0800 and 0830 meetings along with review of latest slides for Big Video Teleconference later this week.
- Wednesday 1130-1315: “Operations & Intelligence” conference with General. This is a regularly scheduled meeting and had nothing to do with prep for Big Video Teleconference this week.
- 0800-0900: stand up meeting boss’s office. Didn’t even get through the entire brief due to another “pep talk.” Gah.
- 1300-1415: Big Video Teleconference. Had been in the works for approximately 2 months. Went pretty well, but still cause for banging of head. (More about that some other time.)
Shit! I couldn’t even cut it down to only 13! And this was a short week! (Military has Friday off, so things slow down… a lot.) Oh, and there meetings that I actually missed.
(By the way, the “pep talks” happen when something ticks off the boss, and he lectures us on everything we’re not doing. He’s got a lot of great ideas, and he’s very good about not yelling. But telling people who work 12-16-18 hours a day that they need to do more & be more attentive to his direction is pretty demoralizing.)
Posted in Thursday 13, Work | Comments (5)
August 30th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
Wow, I thought I was in a lot of meetings. Your days sound a lot like mine.
September 4th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
You make me so glad I don’t have a day job anymore. Gah! What a week!
October 9th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
[...] first day back to work. I had only about 1/2 hour to myself this morning to actually do any work. Meetings. Then, this afternoon, it was so effing noisy, I couldn’t concentrate, thus was getting [...]
March 15th, 2008 at 10:49 am
[...] high-stress week, with VIP visitors and super-VIP briefings, very similar to the week I noted here, only worse. And while times like this are stressful, I can usually [...]
June 30th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
[...] way back when I wrote about 13 meetings in one week? Since then, we’ve had a few of those high-level video teleconferences (VTCs). We had one [...]