Meetings are meant to be a breeding ground for a mix for inspiration, collaboration, missed queues, and snap judgements. Employees with varying degrees of emotional intelligence (i.e. the ability to read body language and other social cues) navigate the sticky world of interoffice communication as well as they are emotionally able. Every social interaction triggers epiphanies about the world, the individuals in the meeting, and the company as a whole.
Disclaimer: The thoughts in this article are a reflection of my opinions. There is a 89.9% chance that not all of them reflect reality.
1. He just paused in the middle of speaking to take a puff of his e-cig… Did I somehow get sucked into Alice in Wonderland? He’s not going to turn into a giant caterpillar is he? How is this now my reality?
2. He’s on Facebook during a meeting…doesn’t he realize how bad this looks? The owners of the company are in the room. They’re talking right now. This is the dude’s second week. Really? Great professional move if you want to get fired.
3. That’s a very basic computer question…how was she hired again? I know you don’t always have all of the skills necessary when you begin a new job, but shouldn’t people spend a little time, I don’t know, practicing basic tech skills when they accept a tech oriented job?
4. Not entirely sure if you know what you’re talking about… I know. I know. You’ve researched this topic, but you’ve ended every line with an invisible question mark. Did he just tag “you know” onto the end of his sentence? No, I don’t believe I know. The better question here is, “do you”?
5. He’s trying to groom Zack. He’s reaching over again to pull the hair from Zack’s beanie. Abort. Abort. (30 seconds later). It’s like he’s a monkey pulling bugs from Zack’s hair. Weird.
6. She JUST answered that question! My God, I’m back in high school. I thought adults eventually progressed to not asking the “teacher” the same question over and over again.
7. He’s nodding off…the manager is facing him. He fell asleep. He’s awake again. Sleeping. Awake. The manager can see you. Now is not a good time to sleep, dude. Does he not want this job?
8. What do you actually do here? You don’t seem to be doing the job that was laid out in the employee manual. You have to be doing something every day, but a lot of things seem to be falling through the cracks here. I could ask…will it really change anything? Probably not.
9. Who? Who is *insert name here.* Think, think…why do I never bother to learn names? Too late now, I guess. They’ve already let him go. Just pretend you know who she’s talking about.
10. Everything he says sounds like the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard… be reasonable Samantha. He’s not an idiot. He’s just annoys the hell out of you. He does have the occasional intelligent idea. I can’t remember any off the top of my head. He has them. He has to. Right?
11. Wow, he’s really good at selling hope. This is like an epic fantasy movie quality speech. We’re actually getting somewhere.
12. You did not just stand in front of me!? I was here first, you abnormally tall giant. Now I can’t see anything. Why do tall people never think of the abnormally short people they’re inconveniencing? If you must stand in front of me, stop leaning back and forth. Why do I bother?
13. How are you still working here? Really, I’d like to know. Sometimes I really want to be able to get paid to do nothing. It’s impressive how well you’ve managed.
14. Who’s still here? Thank god I still have a job. I just sunk around $200 into Black Friday. What a horrible time to have an employee purge.
15. It’s cold. How are we supposed to focus when it’s always freezing? Not cool. Are they ever going to turn on the heat? I freeze from the moment I get into my car in the morning to the moment I get home at night. This is an office, not a construction zone.
16. Wait, what? Did he just say I suffered through a long and cold winter at work because management never bothered to turn on the heat? I know heating systems can be hard to figure out and the office is a construction zone, but you would think one of the managers would have figured out that all they had to do was flip a switch.
