Meeting Fever

Is there anything anyone loves more than meetings at work?  Think of all the things we do to make them palatable - snacks, locations outside the office, cheeky office wags with amusing anecdotes, and, my personal favorite, people singled out for doing exemplary work when all they actually did was THEIR JOB.  That has become such a rarity that it must be acknowledged with cleverly named awards.  At one place I worked, it was the "Golden Bone."  A shiny gold spray-painted dog bone. You were supposed to feel immense pride if the Bone got to sit on your desk for a month.  No, I never won it.
     Today, we were blessed with two meetings.  The Managers Meeting, which I refer to more accurately as the Justify Your Existence Meeting, since it consists of everyone reporting what they have done in the past month to earn their whopping paycheck.  The advent of PowerPoint means most people say the same things, but now they read it off a slide instead of a piece of paper.  And woe be to the person whose figures are not up to date.  You are obviously no longer justified in retaining your position here and have become a sucking vacuum of mediocrity and sloth.
     Later came the Staff Meeting, aka the Lecture.  The number of people who fall asleep in this meeting rivals the average freshman year history class.  But we have cake!  Or pizza!  Or both!
     Sigh.  From my seat in the back, hiding behind a wide-bodied fellow employee, I can look out the window and see bright fluffy clouds and a brilliant blue sky. Not that it makes things any better.  I'd still rather be re-reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.  Would that I could apperate out of the deathly hallows of these meetings.