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This last Friday I had a 2 hour meeting with my 2 new packaging staff members and it reminded me why I hate meetings so much. This was more of a get to know everyone type meeting and lay some ground rules which are important so we all work under the same principles. Business meetings are different to work meetings as spending time with a client or a prospective client is time you do not mind giving as long as it benefits both parties.  

When I worked for a blue chip company many years ago they used to have a monthly meet up on the last Friday of the month at various hotels dotted around the M25 motorway that encircles London. The 8.30 m start often meant I had to leave home by around 5.30 am in order to avoid the rush hour traffic especially if the hotel was on the Northern side which was the opposite side where I lived. Eventually I would bypass the traffic by checking in the night before instead and have an extra few hours sleep.

Those meetings were an absolute waste of time and being an employee it was the equivalent of a day off. You were there to present the work you had done over the previous 4 weeks and with all of us covering different sectors of the trade it made absolutely no sense. There was a specialist duty free manager whose figures seemed to be identical each month and trust me we had to stay awake and look interested. The only interesting part was the chap who did the hotels and restaurants and was part of their Guild.

Very few understood my forecasting figures with the cash and carry wholesaler accounts because we never wanted to over stock them especially before the yearly budget as the less we sold the the more we made as long as we bought the cigarettes across the duty line before the dead line. 

I have never understood why people like meetings so much and if you need to speak to someone go directly to them. I am sure it was boring for the managers hosting the meetings as well and probably also saw this as a day off. The crazy part is we would all be done by lunch and would have to hang around until 4pm in case there was an advertising delivery.

The meetings did improve when I suggested when I was the host my area meeting would move to the golf club. When we finished at lunch time we could play a round of golf instead of doing nothing. This became so popular that this became our only venue and suddenly we had head office visits on our meeting day and they all bought golf clubs along. This goes to show you it was a work day, but unofficially under the guise of a meeting it was a day off.

Now the tales are turned and I have 2 employees in the packaging business I will visit them for one on ones whilst visiting clients helping them earn more money. I could never justify a day off and I am sure they would feel the same way. I do not have enough time in the week these days and work most evenings even if it is for only a couple of hours each night.

The warehouse has a meeting with our client weekly via a zoom meeting which I no longer attend as it seems forced as most have better things to do like work and nothing is ever achieved. Again a phone call would suffice if there is a problem and not a complete shut down for an hour. I guess that side of the business (client) does not understand dead lines.

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