Board Room Blues

You can give me as many coffee, and sugar laden donuts as much as you like, I still hate meetings.

Especially those that last the whole day.

I wasn’t thinking of creating a blog while at today’s meeting, but I was thinking about how we were all missing the opportunity for finger paints and those adorable “Hello my name is” branding name tags.  We have, however, paper passed out, where we kindly scribbled our first names in bold letters, so other people could place a name with the face.  Towards the end, it was a jostled, tired, mess.

I love nothing more to get away from every day, paper pushing, humdrum stuff.  The only way to get away from this is, to go to a meeting.  This was, by far, the longest meeting I’ve ever been to.  It could have been easily set up as adult day camp, and each of us assigned a camp counselor.  I don’t like crowds, let alone, being in a small crowded space with a lot of people I don’t know, few people I do know, and some I’d like to forget.  You always try to find those familiar faces and rush to find a seat next to them.  That can be your saving grace.  I was grateful it wasn’t going to be assigned seating, like on some cruise ships, where the person next to you will not stop guffawing at bad jokes, and smells like onions and hemorrhoid creme.  To my pleasant surprise, we had an exercise where we moved around, joined teams for “game time” and I scooted over to a couple of familiar faces I hadn’t seen for a while.  That was my saving grace for the day. I wasn’t, painfully alone, in this whole workshop ordeal.  Someone else was there to endear the same pain.

I have no complaints how today’s workshop went.  By no means.  It was an unfamiliar orgy of people that made my stomach queasy.  Most of them, women well over fifty, and ripe in menopause.  The majority of them sat at one table, and the “motley rest” sat at the other.  I was part of the “motley rest” and glad of it.  The intensity and passion was thick at the other table.  It felt like a live rendition of “The View” minus, Rosie O’Donnell taking charge.

Meetings never go as planned.  You have a group of people, who specially fly in from somewhere distant, like Miami.  These people, diligently, mapped out, what they wanted to cover, how they wanted to cover it, and what time frame.  Herding a group of people is harder then herding cattle.  You can’t use cattle prods or scare tactics on a group of angry, confused, people.  Granted, it did feel like, the running of the bullheads for a short while.  The table with the most menopausal people, won in that quick debate. The cattle herders, the people who made the special trip to speak at the meeting, lost slight rein for a spell, and there was an invisible podium stand by one of the handlers.

Whether it was coincidential, or purely by irony, pressure hit me between the eyes.  Maybe it’s the shrill of someone’s voice, trying to overspeak a small group of upset people, or my ability to not adjust with the weather well.  Either way, it was a good three or so minutes, where I don’t remember anything but pressure between the eyes, and feeling self concious of my behavior. With the glasses off and the eyes close, you still have a sense of people looking.  At that moment, I only cared about the pressure that had hit, and area it was effecting.  I wanted it gone.

My saving grace was the few office buddies I knew in the whole meeting.  One of them in particular, BJ. I appreciate his attentiveness and his concern kept me at bay.  After riding the storm out, I was a little groggy and unsure footed at first.  Its not an unfamiliar spell I go through.  My family has the same issue, when the barometric pressure changes suddenly, our head and body will react in unusual ways.  I joke with my friends, I’m a walking, breathing, barometric gauge.  Ask me if we’ll get rain today, and I’ll tell you when and how much.

This was a particular time I wished I was privately behind my desk, doing my usual humdrum work.  As the case may be, nothing ever turns out the way you like it to turn out.  One can never predict how people in large groups will react, and how long, the actual meeting will feel.  Or, when certain things happen, such as a spell, how grateful you are to be next to a saving grace.

For that, I’m grateful to my office buddies.

My saving grace from the Board Room Blues.