So, the case has been made in the past that I have a bit of an issue with effectively filtering the words that come from my brain and travel to my mouth. Some might say that I speak with candor or forthrightness. Others would say that I’m just plain stupid. To tell you the truth, it’s probably a bit of both.
The other day, our team had its monthly meeting with the COO (chief operating officer). These meetings usually occur to inform us of new initiatives that are going on at the higher levels of administration to make things run more smoothly. They’re generally high level discussions that aren’t necessarily directly related to what the developers do. After the meeting, he went from team member to team member asking what they thought of the meetings. One by one, everyone gave answers that the meeting were indeed informative. When it came to my turn, I said that I agreed with everyone, however I was feeling torn. I said that as much as the information was good to know, it’s so far above what I need to know that he was risking making the meetings less relevant than they could be. He agreed saying that he would have started the meetings closer to our level and moved up, but that situations were causing the meetings to take a top-down approach.
This is when he asked the following: “Well, I hope that these meetings aren’t completely worthless and that they’re at least marginally useful.”
In my head, I was thinking: “Well….”
What came out of my mouth: “Well, they’re not wooooorthless.”
His reply: “Ok, so they’re marginally useful. Thanks!” He then proceeded to (pretend to?) write something down in his notebook.
All I could do was look embarrassed and I put my head in my hands thinking, “Oh fuck, I’m dead.” My colleagues weren’t much help either as they were either in shock or laughing at my stupidity.
I’ve gotten wind that the COO has been mentioning in meetings that have occurred after that someone has called his meetings marginally useful.
Weeeeell, I’m still here…
Maybe next meeting I’ll just come in with duct tape over my mouth.
Possibly related posts:
3 comments
kyleen says:
Thu. March 22, 2007 at 1:17 pm (UTC -4 )
This made me laugh. And it sounds like your big boss has a sense of humor about himself as well since he’s repeating it.
Tell you what, don’t duct tape your mouth, but rather take in a big silver roll of it and set it in front of you. That will serve as a visual reminder of what you need to do. Plus I’d be willing to bet your co-workers would get a grin out of it.
(And yeah, that would be something I would totally do… I was always the bad girl of IT.)
Today I have to practice same sort of self restraint on a conference call I’m to be on at 4:00. Ugh…
Raluca says:
Fri. March 23, 2007 at 7:39 am (UTC -4 )
Oh no! The last person I told his meetings were useless was Bruce, and it didn’t seem to get me on his good side. I hope your guy does indeed have a good sense of humour (or at least doesn’t know your name).
Jay says:
Fri. March 23, 2007 at 9:34 am (UTC -4 )
Yeah but….Bruce….
The guy seems to have a sense of humor, and yes, he knows my name by now. Heh.
Kyleen, I’m SO doing the roll of duct tape thing.