No one was in charge of the meeting; or rather the person who should have taken charge did not do so. This resulted in much bickering and needless arguing back and forth between the parties. It was bad enough that my part wasn’t until right before lunch (and was interrupted by lunch), but to make matters worse most of the meeting was conducted in German.
Now I don’t have a problem with that, seeing as how most of the reviewers and the reviewees were Germans. It only makes sense for them to discuss their issues in the language with which they are most comfortable. What this did; however, was basically shut me out of most of the conversations. And I don’t have a problem with that either, as most of the stuff they were talking about really doesn’t have anything to do with me, and really wouldn’t interest me in any language. However, not being able to understand anything that is being said brings a meeting to a whole different level of sucking.
Luckily I had purchased a copy of the Stars & Stripes that morning so I was able to leave the room at times and go read the paper. I know that it was not the most professional of behaviors, but neither is slouching in your chair with your head dangling over the back, open-mouthed, and snoring like a Harley in need of a valve job.
It wasn't until late in the afternoon when I began to think that if I had access to a firearm, I would have been able to go into the adjacent room and shoot myself in the head. At the very least the barrel would have some teeth prints in it as a result my deliberations. This is what I view as a symptom.
It became clear to me why the Germans have such tough gun control laws. The governments of this fine country (much like that of my own country) has chosen to treat symptoms instead of diseases. So instead of reducing the meeting length (the disease) they chose to reduce the number of firearms at the meetings, thus reducing the number of engineers committing suicide.
I can almost see the following events ...
... it's late in the afternoon.
PM1 - "Why are the finishes in this hallway teal?"
Architect - "You specifically required the color scheme to match that of the adjacent existing building"
PM2- "I don't like teal either. Can't we change it to melon?"
From the adjoining room - ***BANG!***
Archtiect - "Shit ... I think we just lost another engineer ..."
PM2 - "We should stop those guys from carrying guns"
They are only fooling themselves though, because that will only work for so long. Lttle did anyone know ... I had brought a pocket knife with me and had begun to whittle a chair leg to a point that was definitely sharp enough to break the skin. If that meeting would’ve lasted another half an hour, I’m certain that I would have thrown myself onto that chair leg, and drove that stake right through my heart.
Of course they would probably just require plastic chairs in future meetings.
2 comments:
Tony,
Your ability to capture the ARMY Corp of Engineering's standard meeting protocol has many factual elements, but I can assure you that my experience working at West Point is pointedly similar to the meeting you described in Germany.
Although our meetings are always in English, the incessant use of acronyms by the attendees leaves many without a clue as to the definition of the nouns in each sentence.
As you can imagine, not understanding the noun in a sentence can make grasping the topic difficult.
You might say "read the agenda for clues," but this can be fruitless for at least two reasons- 1. The agenda, which is issued at the start of the meeting, contains the acronyms we will hear later, and 2. more often than not, an agenda is not provided.
However, as in Europe, the 4 hour meeting at the US Military Academy is a staple for discussing even the most blatantly obvious issues, but instead of clarifying direction, the discussion is usually tabled until further analysis can be performed. This will of course generate another 4 hour meeting.
I have developed a game plan for Construction Progress meeting that I run, to limit endless discussion.
To get the meeting to move along, I remove all the chairs from the room and forbid leaning on the conference table or walls.
They usually last 20 minutes, tops.
Give it a try in Germany and let me know how it works out.
PMG
We have a mechanical consultant on one of my projects that is completely infatuated with the sound of his voice. At one meeting he talked at least three times as long as I did about the structural portion of the project.
When we started reviewing the mechanical part of the job he talked non-stop for three (3) solid hours. He would say, "Now I designed this wigget this this way for this reason (twenty-minute dissertation), I could have designed the wigget that way (twenty-minute dissertations), but there are a couple of reasons (fifteen-minute dissertation) why I think this way is better than that way." The owner would say, "I want you to design the wigget the way you think is the right way" which you would think would be the end of but you would be wrong. At this point he would say, "I want to be sure you understand why I designed the wigget this way instead of that way." (Another twenty-minute dissertation which summarized the preceeding fifty-minutes worth of dissertations.)
We literally talked for an hour over whether or not to put a light in a alcove that was to be used to store acetylene cylinders after the owner said, "I don't want a light in there because it would all have to be explosion proof". An hour over whether or not to do it after he was told not to do it. He wasn't trying to convince anyone that we should put a light in the alcove - he didn't think we should either - he just wanted to make sure he wasted and hour of everyones's life talking about the light in the alcove.
After going over the minutia of one element of the mechanical system in mind-numbing detail we would move on to the next element. And, I'm not talking about moving on from, say HVAC to fire protection. I'm talking about moving on from fire protection jockey pumps to starters for the fire protection jockey pumps (which, strictly speacking, is electrical - but that didn't fend our boy off at all).
I finally shut the windbag up by threatening to whip his ass. Okay, I didn't come right out and say, "It wouldn't be nothin' for me to whip your ass" ala Roy D. Mercer. I just told him we could settle things out behind the office building if it would make him happy. As unprofessional as that sounds - I was a hero to everyone in the room. I know that because everybody came up to me after the meeting and said, "You're my hero."
The moral of this story is that there is nothing like the threat of a good old county ass whippin' to shut-up your garden variety wind bag.
So, I would find out how to say, "Shut the f*%& up" in German and toss that our whenever someone starts droning on and on about teal paint versus pumkin paint.
Just an observation.
W.
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