to not be able to bear being in meetings any more?

[liltclassic]

I cannot take the sound of other people's voices going on and on and on any more. I've spent nearly all week stuck in meetings with people droning on about absolutely nothing and I honestly feel like weeping with boredom. I'm in one at the minute and someone has been speaking in the most monotonous voice imaginable for an hour and it's physically painful it's so boring. If he doesn't shut up soon I'm going to start crying.

AIBU to think that people shouldn't talk in meetings unless they've got something to actually say, and it's rude to keep going on and on and on?

Send this to the bores - anonymously.

Yanbu how people can’t understand the difference between a meeting and a general chat/counselling session is beyond me.

I don’t have to do them anymore but at my last place my manager was astounded to attend a meeting i’d Organised with IT that was done and dusted in half an hour with everyone going off with their tasks.... bloody NHS

I’ve often considered proposing a course called ‘getting to the fucking point’.

In meetings at my work we spend at least 20 minutes discussing minutes from the previous meeting, ie. all the nonsense we've already discussed!

I've never attended a meeting that couldn't have just been an email.

I can understand the reasoning behind pre meetings if they are for one set of people to agree what line to take when meeting with a different set of people. But pre pre meetings are just ridiculous.

We have one offender who insists on telling a fucking story to illustrate his point every single fucking time. I literally want to bludgen him at every meeting. His stories are always so turgid and so out of date and usually utterly irrelevant but for some insane reason we all politely sit and listen to them. I am getting the rage just typing this out.

The worst type of meetings are those where no decisions are on the agenda and the attendees are asked to give an update on what they or their team are doing.

Fatal. The boring people think that the more they ramble on, the more important they will look. The worst kind also attempt to point the finger at colleagues or involve them in their yawny projects, hoping that doing so in public will give them more credibility.

I'm going to stand for chair next year and chair harshly. I'll make myself unpopular, but at least it'll be a vent for my frustration.

I think you'll be a fresh air, blowing out all the hot, stale male air.

I always start meetings with "Why are we here - to learn, make a decision or to review?" (even when I'm not chairing). Ask the question again when individuals start posturing or mouthing off. When the meeting has outlived its use then "I think I've contributed as much as I'm able at this stage. I'll have to shoot off."

I do think many organisations hold meetings for the sole purpose of allowing people to be important and fill their day while the underlings do the real work

My job involves attending meetings all the time too. It's a public service thing. On the face of it they say it's all about collaboration and transparency but really, some people just love the sound of their own voices and to passive aggressively point fingers in front of others. I'm usually the person in meetings who says the least and I feel pressure to say more for the sake of it.

I went to a meeting last week that was literally a three line email crammed into a two hour meeting. I was so furious I had to actively concentrate on not punching the droner

I fell asleep once in a meeting of nonsensical droning feather preening and would have got away with it if a folder on my lap hadn’t fallen to the floor.

My loathing for waffly meetings made me a very good chair when I rose up the corporate ladder - let people make pertinent points but not hold forth for the sake of ‘I’d better make my presence here seem worthwhile’ . No wandering off agenda unless it was an exceptional and relevant addition to the matter in hand. I mainly worked in consultancy, with chargeable hours, and any sensible client would realise that meeting padding of ended up on their invoice anyway.

Yay to this venting thread!

hate it when, if we want any internal colleague to do anything, which is part of their job, people suggest having a meeting about it. Why?

The only meeting I remotely enjoyed was when a fellow manager dropped her notebook and let out a ripper of a fart when she bent down to pick it up. She quite calmly said 'oh excuse me, it's the pulses'. I thought I was going to die trying not to laugh.

In my old job we used to have meetings at 5pm on a fucking Friday. All the brown-nosers used to sit there nodding and lapping it all up while I used to drift off; on one occasion I fell asleep and my forehead hit the table with a loud thud A concerned colleague ushered me out and made me lie down

OP you need a pair of glasses as worn by Homer Simpson

I left an exec level role in the public sector after being ground down by things like endlessly being in meetings for days on end. I now take on interim roles instead that use my professional skills and experience.
I still work at a senior level but generally get to avoid too many meetings (clients prefer me to be engaged on productive work) and I'm much more satisfied as I'm doing useful work where I can see the end result. Best move I ever made. And the net pay is better with little problem finding assignments so far (5 years on).

We recently did communications training/personality profiling at work as a team exercise.

I'm in the SMT (2nd most senior out of 3), and a key gist of the training was that you are far, FAR more likely to get what you want out of myself and the chief executive if you are 'brief, bright and gone'. I.e. make a good and short case for your point then get out of our hair and let us decide and do it.

Yet does the 3rd ranked SMT member get this? Nope. He has to drone on, have his say, check that the other two of us 'have understood all of the dimensions' - um, yeah, cause we fucking have. He is appalling at handling his own workload because he chats all the time.

There's a colleague who always asks questions right at the end when it's asked if there are any. Without FAIL what they are asking has already been covered in depth during the meeting and their question is irrelevant to the situation.

'So, from next week we'll be having tea break at 10am on a Tuesday, but only on Tuesday, due to staff training'

'What about people who don't work on Friday?'

One time my line manager tried to arrange a meeting to discuss the meeting we'd just been in. Thankfully the head honcho just went 'No, that's ridiculous'.

Yes, the inability to understand when to raise an issue with a specific colleague - outside of the meeting - never fails to amaze me.

We had a director, who loved the sound of his own voice, it used to drive the MD mental.

He eventually re designed the canteen area and had tall tables, like you would see in a pub installed, when ever there was a meeting he would move all the bar stool type chairs to the side.

Once the meetings were conducted standing up, they lasted no time at all.

Once the meetings were conducted standing up, they lasted no time at all.

Someone actually did this without dire consequences for showing initiative??

I NEED STANDING UP MEETINGS IN MY LIFE

I've got a meeting next week. A four hour one.

It's boring as fuck and it's literally just the men in our department having a pissing competition and sucking up to the director.

I sit there with a running commentary
In my head like peep show.

My manager often texts me under the table saying "fml" and "make it stop"

Is that you, Theresa?

That made my day

Mansplaining.

Next time this happens, I might yawn and look at my watch, ostentatiously.