Meeting Invite Pet Peeve

the_Grinch

Anyone else have this issue? My VP loves just sending a meeting invite without either talking to your directly about what it relates to or at least putting a short description in the Outlook invite. It burns me up to no avail because I never know exactly what I am walking into. On the other side of it, it takes me away from work I could be doing. Most of the time it turns into a meeting about something completely unrelated and then I can't do work that should be getting done. Sorry, just really ticking me off recently.

paul78

LOL - I got a chuckle... It really is a pet peeve of mine as well.

I have 3 rules about calendar invites. I don't accept:
a) same day invites
b) no agenda
c) double bookings.

paulgswanson

My biggest annoyance it getting an invite 2 minutes before the meeting and then they ask why I was late. I don't accept them anymore unless its from either my boss or his bosses.

the_Grinch

Glad I'm not the only one. Thankfully, I don't get any last minute invites. But it was sent on Monday and I haven't responded. I sent an email asking what the nature of it is and no response. I don't like walking into a crap storm and not knowing which way the wind is blowing.

SouthSeaPirate

I simply decline and send a response with; Sorry, but I do not have time to have a meeting about nothing. Thanks anyway.

krjay

This annoys me almost as much as people that request read receipts with every email. Sure I could set it up to automatically decline them, but that's no fun.

ptilsen

You know what my met peeve is? Meetings. Sure, they have their time and place (so to speak), but at every organization I've worked, 90% of them are a complete and utter waste of time. The most common purpose seems to be so people can hear themselves talk.

I decline virtually all meetings I'm not expected/required to attend. The rare exception is a meeting I find valuable.

the_Grinch

ptilsen my place love meetings! At one point I was in a daily hour meeting about testing a web application. Then they started trying to switch the time and the meetings amounted to 55 minutes of non-sense followed with "any snags?" Once I declined the last switch we stopped meeting (oh and my response with the decline helped). Today was 45 minutes to speak with someone who the VP thought was looking for technical information on the tool we used only to find out he was looking for market perspective before taking a job with a company who built on top of the tool we use. Very productive, efficient, and just plain awesome use of my time.

About7Narwhal

ptilsen wrote: »

90% of them are a complete and utter waste of time.

Have a 30 minute meeting like this every two weeks where I work...

As for the meeting issue, I would approach the person doing it via email or person and explain that you would like to have a description of what the meeting is about so you can be prepared and current on the topics that will be discussed. Bold faced lie or not is irrelevant in this case. What is the point of the meeting when you are surprised and can only say, "I will have to look into that" or "I wasn't prepared for these types of questions?" Spin it as a way to make the meetings more productive.

paul78

the_Grinch wrote: »

ptilsen my place love meetings!

Ahh - meetings... a guise for "teamwork" and "collaboration" -

Reminds me of this thread - http://www.techexams.net/forums/jobs-degrees/80728-how-much-time-do-you-spend-meetings.html