The uselessness of meetings

[trystinn]

Last night's meeting wasn't quite as painful as I'd thought it would be, but twice as annoying as it should have been. Whoever thought having a required meeting for 5000 begin at 6pm on a Thursday night is a masochist. I-5 was a disaster, not to mention the poor MPs at the gate who were completely unprepared for the onslaught. Really, couldn't this have been done on a Saturday?

First up was a power point demonstration of "necessary information". Just bloody send it to me, will ya? Better yet, spare us the goofy clip art. Its not cute anymore. Second up was a little speech by the Lutheran chaplain who had zero charisma whatsoever. Blah. Third up were multiple quickie speeches by various family support groups, each seemed to have sent their bronchitis-laden softest spoken person to speak on their behalf. Needless to say, I heard not a single sentence out of the Red Cross employee, which is a group I've volunteered with before and was interested in getting involved with again.

Thoughts -
If your presentation is mostly to support families with children, do the rest of us a favor and have a Child Free meeting so we can get through all this in one quarter the time and without screaming children. 90% of the meeting was completely useless to Josh and I as 1) we don't have children, 2) we manage to live within our means (most of the time, anyway) and 3) we own our own home.

Comments

[rhiannonbw.livejournal.com]

http://www.despair.com/meetings.html

[tryst-inn.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's precisely the one I thought it would be and very much what was going on at that meeting.

Thank you.

how to drive away people in 40min or less

[kajiracad.livejournal.com]

After the 3rd diployment, I stopped going to these "mandatory" meetings. Sigh. Submarines (boomers anyway) are at sea way more than not, so, after awhile, it's all the same babble and bull anyway.

(and, hey! I volunteered as a caseworker for ARC and eventually got PAID to do the same thing from home 2-3 days a week, in the weedarkdamnearly hours when most of the world sleeps. High 5!)

Re: how to drive away people in 40min or less

[tryst-inn.livejournal.com]

I may well avoid them, too. I'm interested and willing to support the AB Oak Harbor group but honestly the Everett Naval base is just too damn far to be supportive of. Plus, the hoochie ratio is pretty dismal.