Meetings Can Be A Colossal Waste of Time!

glenmckenzie(justabitfurther)

Sep 2

Over the past seven or eight months, I've posted a few bits about a part-time gig working for our regional school board.

Now, with school starting in Nova Scotia for the kiddies on Wednesday of this week, of course, there needed to be a kick-off meeting for those in the same work position as yours truly.

That meeting occurred yesterday morning at 9:00am.

Now, over all the years I've worked, I bet I've been involved in hundreds if not thousands of meetings over the past 40 years. When I worked in the engineering and transportation planning field, if you weren't involved in at least one meeting a day, something was desperately amiss.

Now, I get that meetings are often needed. But, meetings can also be a colossal waste of time. A poorly organized and combined with a poorly chaired meeting is like a death by a thousand cuts for those in attendance. At least it was like that for me.

But, back to yesterday. For yours truly, it was a 45-minute drive to get to the location at 9:00 in the morning.

Once there, to suggest that the next 40 minutes were disorganized and chaotic would be at best a gross undervaluation of the entire 41 minutes or so, I hung in there.

At one point there was some discussion/reminder(which is a good thing) on the need for thorough documentation when dealing with student issues(something we all know). But, other than that 38-second reminder.....not much else.

It was about at the 18-minute mark I realized that the meeting essentially had nothing to do much with my casual position, but more, or should I say all to do with those who had contract positions(full-time).

And even for those folks whom the meeting was more focused on, it could have been a far quicker event.

Nevertheless, after toughing it out until the 41-minute mark, when it became obvious that no one there would miss me, I made a quiet retreat out of the building and into my car.

And I still had another 45-minute drive back to the "old homestead."

So, I essentially wasted my morning, including gas used in driving for about an hour and a half for a meeting that could have been an email.

Meetings can be a colossal waste of time.

--as always with love--

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