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Brad is a freelance writer trying to make it big in the video game industry. When he's not desperately pleading for your attention with his weekly Employee Evolution column, he is an editorialist for 
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New here? Employee Evolution is a blog written by Ryan Healy. Ryan is a Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist, the webs #1 social network for young professionals. Ryan speaks with organizations on best practices for recruiting and retaining Generation Y and how to effectively use social media to reach your target market. To contact Ryan, please visit our contact page.
The company I work for is such that we are subject to full staff meetings every month. Basically, this event consists of all us underlings filing into the conference room to listen to VIPs talk about how good life is and eat stale bagels. One time we had green watermelon slices, and that was by far the highlight of my sad little career.
Our meetings normally kick off with an unfunny joke by one of our corporate VPs. Of course, we all laugh heartily at his tales of talking animals and husbands who just don’t understand their wives! Oh boy, comedy gold.
Once we’ve all stopped the forced belly laughs it’s time for the special inspirational speaker. This month’s guest was a biographer, talking about the book he was writing about a former organization president. However, rather than talking about our fearless leader’s fundraising prowess and genial personality, we were instead regaled with stories of family depression and suicide. Yeah, just what one needs to get through the workday. See kids, success breeds disdain for the world!
So now that we’re good and depressed it’s time to really bring it home with the investments report. This section should really be titled “Somebody’s Getting Rich, but It Ain’t You!” As we all sit and silently stew about how our retirement funds do nothing but lose money every quarter, the investments VP goes on and on about how many millions and millions of dollars the company’s coffers are raking in on dividends. One time, I asked if we could have some of that money and he gave me such a look that I’m pretty sure the next seven generations of my family will be stricken by some sort of gypsy curse.
Wrapping things up are the green tips and the open mic time. Our resident environmentalist goes to the podium and proceeds to give us helpful, simple tips to help save money and improve the planet. We talk about what great ideas they are and then continue to do what we’ve always done, because we can’t very well allow ourselves to be inconvenienced for the sake of a few polar bears. The process repeats every month, and she slowly dies inside.
Open mic time usually consists of someone trying to either get us to give money for a cause, or telling us how their last cause raised so much money. When it’s not that, we’re asked to volunteer for some event where there will be lots of rich people, all of which are seemingly incapable of parking their own cars or seating themselves, so we’ll have to do it for them. Next month, I get to be the vibrating footstool for the head of a major pharmaceutical company.
As I finish up the last bites of my bagel and we’re dismissed from the meeting, I wonder if there’s any way the last hour of my life could have been wasted any more. Then I think about the other seven hours a day I spend at my cube, and realize that the staff meeting was the most important thing I’ll do all day.
I can’t wait for next month.
Oh God, Staff Meetings. I know what you mean. Although ours here are not half as eventful (or is that uneventful?) as yours, the same applies. In fact, we skipped meeting in March because people were just too busy to bother. Also, we work in a small enough environment (14 people) that we meet when we need to.
One of my faves was when our Co. president came to speak about growth and financials and somewhere in there he threw in, “and we’d like you to know that we still care about your views on fair compensation”, then never touched on it again. It sounded to me like, ‘ask for a raise, if you dare’.
p.s -thanks for the link-over!
I was going to provide a substantive comment, but I was too depressed after reading this — knowing full well that this type of meeting is not isolated to a few departments in a few companies. Death by Meeting (it’s a great book for making meetings better).
I have seen myself and been a member of several of these meetings. As a presenter myself - I have a challenging time working with the VIP and CEO of organizations to lessen to gardious speech for some team development time. By team development I mean creating a meeting environment where the team actually feels that the meeting is worth their time and they leave the meeting feeling energy and enthusiasm about the place they spend sooooo much time! I have seen these meeting and even taken part in a few (very few). The worst I can think of is the 200+ slide power point where the presenter reads the power point slides word for word - while you sit with your workbook and fill in the blank - and they call that interactive learning?
One idea that the CEO and VIP need to realize is that they are where they are because the people in that room placed them there by working hard to make them stars.
You are a bitter guy. Hope you find a profession where you can be happy someday.