Disrupt Pointless Meetings Until They Fire You or You’re Happy
By: Taylor Foreman
Tags: Truth, Startup, Work, Meetings, Life

Disrupt Pointless Meetings Until They Fire You or You’re Happy

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

I would sit in these meetings, muted mic, and my phone positioned so that I could scroll through Reddit, but still look like I was engaged.

I would read comments from other people at work, doing the same thing as I was doing. They complain about endless meetings, talk shit about their bosses behind their backs, and act like if they were in charge, things would be better. I’m sad to admit that I was one of those people.

I knew that deep down if you actually challenged me, I would wilt like a flower.

Cowards Talk Shit Privately.

I don’t know exactly what made me realize that I was being a coward, but when that thought wiggled its way into my head, I couldn’t help myself.

I started participating in meetings, saying the things that everyone was thinking. I did a poor and inarticulate job, it was not appreciated and caused a lot of stress. I was sometimes unable to explain myself well when challenged, and I had more than one panic attack.

At least, I told myself, I was working on being less of a coward. I had the feeling that I was doing the right thing.

There is nothing more common than a person who has a lot of criticism that they aren’t willing to say to your face. It is a lot rarer to be the sort of person who does their best to voice criticism and is willing to make mistakes and put their job on the line. I didn’t really know how to be this sort of person, but I was willing to try.

Needless to say, my bosses hated it and I got in a lot of fights.

My Coworkers Secretly Thanked Me.

My co-workers would stop me in the bathroom and secretly thank me for speaking up. They, of course, preferred to support me in the bathroom and not openly, during meetings. That was fine with me. It turns out, being less of a coward feels better than keeping the peace.

I decided that I was going to keep being honest in meetings until they either everything resolved and I felt like my job made sense, or I got fired. You can always find another job, and I didn’t want to scroll Reddit anymore, complaining behind my boss’s back.

Disrupt The Meetings.

My CEO would say things like “Our values are centered around flat hierarchies and meritocracy.”

“What do you mean by that?” I suddenly started saying. Anxious eyes jumped to me.

“Well, it just means that we value people for their work, not their status.”

“I totally agree with you, but I just mean how specifically are we supposed to measure the value of our work? How do you compare a designer to an accountant? I have a feeling that a lot of us over here don’t even know what we are doing day-to-day. I know that I’m faking it pretty hard.”

Eyes went wide. I knew a lot of my coworkers felt the same way. They told me as much, and, the rise of meaningless work means that more and more people go to work with no idea what their job even is. They keep quiet about this fact, afraid to point it out and lose the job. In my experience, it’s worse to suffer a meaningless existence.

“You all don’t know what you’re doing?” My CEO asked.

“I won’t speak for anyone but myself, but, no. I haven’t done anything I would consider meaningful for the company for about a month.”

There was a deeply uncomfortable silence.

“We value people who can think of creative solutions and don’t need to be told what to do.“

“Totally appreciate the sentiment, but I really can’t connect it to anything actionable or meaningful. Currently, my biggest motivation is hiding the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing from my immediate superior. Honestly, this is making me so anxious that I’m having panic attacks. I would prefer to have something to do. I feel lazy and ashamed, but I want to be honest about it so that we can change it.”

Another profoundly awkward silence.

“Alright, let’s end this meeting here…”

I Was Put in a Performance Program.

I want to be clear about this, I think my company was a fine company — It’s just that meaningless work is rampant, and employees have zero motivation to disclose how meaningless their work truly is.

Since I had done exactly that, against better judgment, I was put into a performance program. Before letting anyone go, my company would give them a chance to do better and measure their performance for a while.

During the follow-up meetings, I continued to cause problems. “We need you to think of creative ways to attract clients.”

“Maybe I’m just bad at this job, but by ‘creative’ it feels like you mean, ‘we don’t know how,’ or ‘it’s an impossible goose-chase.’ I also notice that some senior people get leads and projects that might actually work, and others never do and they are expected to come up with ‘creative ideas.’ None of which have ever created tangible results. I checked the numbers.”

Again, these meetings were awkward as hell and painful, but I had decided to go down this road, and I wasn’t going to start second-guessing myself now. Besides, co-workers were calling me after work to thank me for speaking up.

My boss, on the other hand, seemed deeply and personally hurt by my rebellion. To me, this was the hardest part. I hated that speaking up meant that I had to hurt my boss, but in my estimation, that is the price of leadership. I couldn’t hold back to protect feelings.

Personal Feelings Get Involved.

When you stand up to “the man,” it’s never a faceless entity. It’s also never going to be a cartoonishly villainous character like the suspenders guy in Office Space. It’s often going to be a friend. My supervisor did happen to be a friend in this case.

It was really hard to challenge her and keep calling her out in meetings in front of the CEO. To her, it felt out of the blue, because I had been so good at hiding my discontent up until this point. To this day, I feel bad for the hard feelings I caused. But I don’t regret it.

Leaders need to be challenged. She had a higher paycheck and a better title, and that meant she was responsible for our successes and our failures. It would really be doing her a disservice to continue lying until the shit really hit the fan.

It’s Not Just About Causing Trouble.

For me, it was about the fact that I was internalizing my feelings of meaninglessness for fear that it was all my fault. What was actually my fault was the fact that I wasn’t being honest.

Up until now, I would go to meetings and insist that everything was fine and that good things were juuuust around the corner. I would commit to trying harder for a while, and then I got overwhelmed. Unable to ask for help because I couldn’t admit how little I was actually doing, I buried myself deeper and deeper. This is not a fun position to be in.

If I had just been honest about the fact that I didn’t know where to start, I could have stopped any of this from happening. I had stepped into a culture where this was the norm, but that doesn’t excuse it.

When I finally decided to take personal responsibility, it seemed vicious and out of the blue. That was a price that I had to be willing to pay. I knew that it wasn’t going to seem fair.

Finally, I Quit.

I had done nothing but disrupt meetings and bring up how little meaningful work I was doing for weeks. It became clear that I wasn’t going to find meaning in this particular job. Besides, lunch was getting incredibly awkward.

I had said all I could say about the matter, and nothing was going to change. I know when it’s time to walk away.

My CEO gave me a call.

The day after I quit, he gave me a call.

“I just wanted to thank you for being honest. I’m sad it wasn’t a good fit, but I really think we benefited from your feedback. I know that probably wasn’t easy.

If you ever want to get a coffee, honestly, give me a call.”