People ask me for funny work jokes. I don’t have to write any. I just go to work.
Last week I got a calendar invite titled “Quick Sync.” It was scheduled for an hour, which is corporate for “bring a snack and say goodbye to your family.” There were fourteen people on it. Fourteen. For a sync. That’s not a meeting, that’s a flash mob with laptops.
I showed up, sat down, and within ninety seconds I realized what we were doing. We were not solving a problem. We were not launching anything. We were planning a meeting. A future meeting. About the thing we were currently meeting about. Somebody actually said the words “let’s take this offline” in a meeting that was already offline from reality.
Funny Work Jokes, Live From Conference Room B
The first twenty minutes were spent deciding what the next meeting should be called. Not what it should do. What it should be called. One guy suggested “alignment session.” Another guy suggested “deep dive.” A third guy, who had clearly peaked in life, suggested “synergy workshop,” and everybody nodded like he’d just cured something.
Then came the agenda for the meeting that hadn’t happened yet. Seven bullet points. Seven! For a meeting about a meeting. One of the bullet points was “review action items,” and I need you to understand: there were no action items. There couldn’t be. Nothing had ever been actioned. We were reviewing the concept of action items, the way philosophers review the concept of chairs.
Somebody shared their screen. It was a slide that said “Next Steps” and underneath it, in smaller text, “TBD.” We stared at it in silence for a full minute, like it was a painting. I think one person took a photo of it. A photo of the words “Next Steps: TBD.” That photo is now presumably in a deck somewhere, being presented to other people, who will take photos of it, forever, until the sun burns out.
The Cast of Characters in Every Meeting
Every meeting has the same cast, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
There’s the guy who repeats what the last person said, but slower, like he’s translating it into a more important language. “So what I’m hearing is...” No, Greg. What you’re hearing is what she just said, with your name on it now.
There’s the person who starts every sentence with “Just to piggyback off that—” and then drives the conversation into a ditch three counties away. Nobody asked for the piggyback. The piggyback has no destination. But here we are, riding it.
There’s the hero who says “This could have been an email” out loud, and the whole room laughs, and then the meeting continues for another forty minutes anyway, because saying it out loud is the closest thing to freedom any of us will ever get.
And there’s the boss, who joins twelve minutes late, asks “So where are we?”, gets a full recap, and then leaves early for another meeting, which is presumably about this meeting, creating an infinite loop that scientists are still studying.
The Follow-Up Meeting Was Scheduled During the Meeting
Here’s the part that broke me. While we were still sitting there, planning the future meeting, somebody sent the invite for the follow-up meeting. The recap. The debrief. The post-mortem of a meeting that had not yet occurred and might never occur, because at this rate we’ll all be retired before the original meeting happens.
I checked my calendar. I have now been invited to a pre-meeting, a meeting, and a post-meeting, and I still do not know what the project is. I have attended three stages of a meeting’s life cycle and I couldn’t describe the product if you paid me. If you asked me what we do here, I would honestly have to say: we meet. That’s the product. Meetings, all the way down.
The best part? Somebody closed the meeting by saying “Great discussion, everyone.” There was no discussion. There was a slow-motion car crash with an agenda attached. But we all nodded. We all said “great discussion.” Because in corporate America, “great discussion” doesn’t mean the discussion was great. It means it’s over. It’s the safe word. You say it and the door unlocks.
I Started Keeping Score
I have started bringing a notebook to meetings, not for notes — there is nothing to note — but for scorekeeping. Points for every time somebody says “circle back.” Double points for “bandwidth.” Triple points for “low-hanging fruit,” because somebody always says it while reaching for a metaphor they don’t understand.
Last week I got bingo in eleven minutes. Eleven! “Synergy,” “deep dive,” “take it offline,” “circle back,” and the free space in the middle, which is just a drawing of a man asleep at a table, which is me, spiritually, every single time.
The real kicker is the meeting notes. Somebody always volunteers to “send out the notes,” and the notes always say the same thing: “Great discussion. Action items TBD. Next meeting scheduled.” It’s a form letter now. You could automate it. You could replace the whole company with a bot that sends “Great discussion, action items TBD” every Tuesday, and productivity would go up, because at least the bot wouldn’t book Conference Room B for an hour to decide on a name for the next meeting.
So here is my survival guide, free of charge: bring coffee, bring a snack, and never, ever ask “what’s this meeting about?” Because the answer is always the same. It’s about the next meeting. And the invite for the recap just landed in my inbox while I was writing this sentence. We’re now planning a meeting to recap the meeting about the meeting. I have seen the future, and it has no agenda.