Current Events > Why are some people always asking for a meeting?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Welcome to my office rant at work.

Seriously.

Last thursday - "Hey, we have some question, would you be available for a meeting?"

Me: "Sorry, my schedule is already full. What do you want to know? Maybe I can answer it per mail, or prepare something until the meeting."

Today, 2 PM - "We would like to discuss the questions directly in the meeting. Are you available today?"

FFS, I don't know what you want, I don't know if I have to schedule 15 min or 2 hours, and we both don't even know if I'm even the correct person to ask and if I can help you in the first place, but you don't care and still put me on the spot as if preparing an ambush.

#BlogFAQs

Agree

Ofc this could have been a mail, and ofc they went on longer than agreed beforehand.

And ofc, 50% of the meeting time wasn't even about me.

"We want to display some information on this report."
"Sure, what kind of information do you want?"
"I don't know. Give me a second, I will quickly ask my boss"

They're lonely and you're all they've got

I see this, too. My belief is that it indicates that the meeting requestor has not yet organized their thoughts enough to write a clear email, which is inefficient and not entirely respectful of my time.

There are people that work for a living, and there are people that talk at work for a living. The latter are always on the hunt for their next meeting.

Maybe I'm just a bad worker but I much prefer people telling me the issues via voice than through emails and IMs. Especially if it ultimately involves more than just me and someone else.

Because too many people are unable to articulate what they're saying in layman's terms. Maybe they're too proud to explain things in a dumb down way for more people to understand.

I personally have no issue explaining shit like a 5 year old for people to understand me.

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This is it. I decline any meetings that I know can be solved in a couple IMs. I sure as shit am not going to accept a meeting where I don't even know the topic of discussion. There needs to be some sort of preparation prior to the meeting so the meeting is productive.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Oh yeah, I agree with giving some pre-meeting preparation for sure. It just makes the eventual meeting (if needed) smoother. Same with a quick post meeting email just to confirm anything that was agreed upon.

emblem-man posted...

Maybe I'm just a bad worker but I much prefer people telling me the issues via voice than through emails and IMs. Especially if it ultimately involves more than just me and someone else.

Oh, there is definitly a place for such things too.

Many problems can be faster explained with a quick call / meeting where someone shares the screen and explains the issue in 5 minutes.

There is a very big difference between "I have some issue with this, could we discuss this quickly?" and "We have some questions we would like to discuss in a meeting"

At least give me the general topic. Is it price calculation? Accounting stuff? Reporting? Just some small stuff or a full bucket list all around? Will it turn out in a simple yes/no/that's how you do it, or will it end in a full training session?

And when I'm in a meeting with 2 or 3 people from another company, who asked me for some support for our product, but it turns out that 90% of the issues are that they first have to talk to each other before they even know what they need from me, I can only shake my head.