Stop Producing Those Widgets! We Have Got To Have A Meeting!

When I was still working I found myself surrounded by Meet-Up America. The company I worked for had lots of meetings. It had meetings to plan upcoming meetings.

It got so bad that we called the Telephone the Meetephone. Almost every time it rang, it was a Meeting Set-up Person calling to set up a meeting. We laughed about it but it really wasn’t that funny.

I started telling the breathless and excited Meeting Set-up Person that I was not going to attend their meeting because my contract with the company only required me to attend 2,793 meetings each year and I had passed that number on April 21st.

The caller sounded confused and disappointed. I always relented and went to their meeting because, I had learned through the years, that something important would be said every 4th or 5th meetings and I did not want to miss out on that exciting information.

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The Foregone Conclusion Meeting

We were once called into Short Notice Emergency Meeting. These types of meetings were usually exciting. This one proved to be shocking to someone like me who had always been Task Orientated.

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Allow me to digress...

I was actually criticized by a supervisor one time for being Task Orientated. It took me a moment to understand that I was being criticized because I knew I was of such an orientation but, up until that moment, I had always thought that being Task Orientated was a good thing.

I asked what was I to strive to be if I were to correct this deficiency. I was told I should re-make myself to be more People Orientated. I was sitting in a position where I could not see myself but, if I had been able to see myself, I am sure I would have seen myself sitting there with my mouth open.

It was not long after this happening that I retired. I welcomed retirement because I was having a hard time walking away from all those unfinished tasks and instead throwing myself into those seemingly never-ending Birthday Parties, Anniversary Parties, Birth Announcement Parties, Dog Adoption Parties and Retirement Parties.

I was training myself to sing loudly. This was a hard thing for me to adapt to because I had always believed no one should hear me sing, no matter how special the special occasion was.

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I am done digressing. Let’s get back to the Short Notice Emergency Meeting I started to tell you about above...

The meeting had been called to develop a Plan of Action to address a very important issue that Cecil (our boss) was concerned about. We had been directed to put our heads together and develop a plan to take away Cecil’s anxiety.

We had yet to make much progress when Missing Ralph came in. He was not always missing and today we did not know he was missing until he came in late.

We could all tell immediately by his body language that he was excited. He told us that he had gone to talk with Big Cecil before he came to our meeting in order to pick Cecil’s brain and get a sense of how Cecil felt about the Important Issue which had caused him to direct us to hold Short Notice Emergency Meeting.

Missing, but now no longer missing, Ralph was so pleased because he now knew what Cecil hoped would be the Plan of Action our Short Notice Emergency Meeting would recommend to him as the prudent way to go.

The Short Notice Emergency Meeting then moved forward quickly as its members assembled Cecil’s Prudent Course of Action into a smooth presentation to recommend to Cecil for his approval.

At some point during the meeting, I interrupted my fellow workers and stated that I thought Cecil might like to know what we thought about how to address this important issue rather than what he thought about how to address this important issue.

My fellow workers were never rude but were very practiced at looking at me with disdain and they were anxious to get this meeting over with because there Dog Adoption Party scheduled to start shortly. They looked at me with such disdain that I felt my body start to quiver to the point where I thought Scotty from Star Trek had latched onto me and was starting to beam me up.

The end result was Cecil did quickly approve our meeting’s Prudent Course of Action which he should have approved because it actually was his Prudent Course of Action before it was the Short Notice Emergency Meeting’s Prudent Course of action.

I’m sure Cecil was really impressed with how clear thinking, logical and organized the Short Notice Emergency Meeting Members were.

After the Disdaining, Fella just sat there with his mouth open.

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Meet-Up America does not know it but its Vision Statement goes something like this...

At Bigger and Better Widgets, Inc. we are committed to conducting ever bigger and better Planning Meetings in order to lay out complicated Plans of Action about how we could make our Widgets faster and in greater quantity if only we were not always in Planning Meetings dedicated to developing complicated Plans of Action about how we could make things faster and in greater quantity.

Would I kid u?

Smartfella