You Gotta Work

Some work gripes this morning...afternoon. I didn't know that it was noon already. There is a person at work that schedules me in meetings to the point that sometimes it is hard to get stuff done. It would be no problem if we were getting stuff done, but it seems to be just a reason to go through Powerpoints and play pretend business. I was sitting in one this morning and it hit me of what it was starting to remind me of: fucking tea parties with my little sister growing up.

Little girls have tea parties. I have four or five sisters, so the seat gets put back down, I reference toxic shock syndrome and I know when to just leave something alone on a monthly basis. They all hit it at the same time for a while and it was a fucking war zone in the house growing up. I also have good produck in my shower and I am very comfortable with panties in the laundry without being too comfortable in a pervy trenchcoat kind of way. I wonder if kids have green tea or soy latte parties now.

Anyway, being in these meetings feel the same way that that did. You are kind of humoring the person in charge of the meeting and writing down notes that you will most likely throw away when you get back to your desk. It's a lot like drinking water out of tiny cups at a tiny table with your little sister while you stick your pinky out. I can't believe she was going off about how horrible I was to her yesterday at my niece's birthday. Yes, she was duct taped to the refrigerator one day and repeatedly thrown off of our loft onto a pile of pillows, but everything was methodically planned ahead of the time and she was never in harm's way. I guess I used to hide her in my hockey bag from my mom, too, but that was just a game that we played.

This morning in the meeting I noticed that I avoided eye contact with anyone in the meeting at all costs and just stared down intently and jotted down some things a for a presentation that I have to give in San Diego (4 vistors from SD to the blog in the last week, that's a shoutout) in a couple of weeks. So, we got our agendas with 13 points and 13 sub-points outlined on them to inventory some things in a particular building at work. It should have had one point that said "Inventory Things," but instead it's been spread out into two months of meetings when I could have carried out this task on a Saturday morning in the time it would take to drink a cup of coffee.

The king of the "teaparty" is dubbed Project Manager and I am part of the "Steering Committee." I went to that link right there and read the first line of my new responsibilities and lost interest. It sounds really nautical, but I didn't see anything about sterns, afts, rudders or pirates, so I'm not really interested. Don't you have to have an inkling of desire to be on a committee? I was never asked to be on this committee nor told that I was on it until I saw it in the agenda. What if NAMBLA was like "we are pleased to inform you that you are now a member of our esteemed association?" Or worse, the Republican party. Fuck that, there are rules.

Because of this involuntary assignation, I am actively boycotting this steering committee through a barrage of disinformation consisting of opposing committees and groups that I am already a member of. I'm also getting endorsements from allied committees such as the IBTC and the OHPGC. That is a pretty deep cut inside joke right there.

Anyway, I guess I'm just bitching about a colossal waste of time and a dislike of people going through the motions of working without actually doing it. Sometimes it's just better to shut up and finish your shit rather than creating ppts and agendas with bulletpoints and pulling people away from doing work so that you can avoid it yourself. I don't play well with others.

I'm such a hypocrite. I just wrote this while everyone else was probably working and now I have to sit here to try and figure out why the traits that I abhor in people the most are the traits that dominate my personality.