Monday, March 7, 2011

Meetings

I hate them.

When I was little, I liked to play Meeting, because my daddy went to them, and I thought it was terribly grown up to Go To Meetings.

Now I'm grown up and I know from years of going to them that they're pure damn evil.

When I worked at the paper, meetings would drone on and on and on, and they were usually about how the assistants (me and my little underling friends) could be replaced by any idiot off the street. When I became an underling of a higher caliber, the meetings became about how Deadlines! Must! Be! Met! and Approval! Tickets! Must! Be! Kept! To! A! Minimum!

I became so jaded by meetings that I started sitting near the door so I could get up and walk out, turning around at the door and saying, "Send me a memo, would you? I got deadlines."

We don't have many meetings around here, but when we do, they strike fear in my heart. Today we had one and my innards are still roiling.

The economy is bad, friends. We produce an expensive product, and people are hanging on to their money in ways that are harshing our groove.

So we have to expand our way of thinking, come out of our shells about how we're going to reach more people, get the ones who don't know we're here, and we've got what they need.

The good news is, we do have what they need. We're literally at the top of our industry, because we've outlasted the competition. We do good work here, work that I'm proud of, work that I personally stand behind.

We have laid out a course of action, and we will follow it until we need to change it, and it will be okay, because we work hard here.

And I will be okay, because I always have been before. There just aren't any other options.

1 comment:

  1. Bravo! You are stronger than many people I know and I know that you inspire me. A phrase I try to embrace now is the one that was to be used in England during WWII... "Keep Calm and Carry On"... but I don't always manage and that's when your phone rings.

    Read more here... very interesting!
    http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/keep-calm-and-carry-on

    ReplyDelete