The Meeting From Hell

What’s the worst work meeting you’ve ever been involved in?

Recently, a strongly denied story came out involving the Justice Secretary Dominic Raab and some salad tomatoes. ???...

The allegations were that he hurled the tomatoes from his Pret a Manger salad across a meeting room when he became unhappy at how he was being briefed.

During the pandemic, Jackie Weaver may well have been at the world’s worst Zoom meeting, but she became a bit of a celebrity off the back of it. 

So, when you think of your worst ever meetings, what made it so bad?

If you’ve got a spare 6 minutes over coffee today, you could do a lot worse than spend it watching the very witty TED talk by David Grady “How to save the world (or at least yourself) from bad meetings”

It may save you from the terrible epidemic in offices he calls MAS – Mindless Acceptance Syndrome. A condition where you simply accept an invitation to a meeting that pops up in your calendar with no agenda and probably doesn’t need you there.

David dares to suggest you don’t click ‘Accept’ and instead try that ‘Tentative’ button instead and ask for more details on the meeting and how you can help.

Sometimes the worst meetings don’t need to involve fruit throwing or kicking people out of Zoom meetings. Sometimes it’s the goal-less, agenda-less dull conference calls repeated over and over than slowly kills our enjoyment of work.

Sound familiar?