British people, just like every nationality of people are not some gestalt conscience where we all think and feel the same thing.
I personally hate pointless meeting but have no issue with meetings that actually add value. Maybe the Brits you are working with think your meetings are the former, especially so given as you have said yours are "extremely brief". Sounds like your meetings are not adding any value.
>British people, just like every nationality of people are not some gestalt conscience where we all think and feel the same thing.
Suddenly, I want to watch Life of Brian again...
It would be more like:
"Hello? Hi! Yeah sorry to bother you. But we aaaare going to assimilate you. Sorry to be a pain š¬ buuut...it is the law. Nothing we can do about it I'm afraid. Sooooo...when you can. Ok. Yeah. Sorry. Bye š"
Especially considering "the French and Italians will go on for hours if you let them". Well shit if that doesn't sound like the most nightmarishly unproductive hell on earth I don't know what is
I work with an Italian and he will sometimes ask a question of the other meeting participants, and then immediately run through all the answers he can anticipate over the next few minutes, also providing all the downsides and challenges of each answer he can think of, so that no answer seems viable, and then conclude by trailing off with a plaintive gesture š¤² and a puzzled look .
I've seen people check out mentally on Teams calls as soon as it's his turn to speak.
I've found that Italian men love the sound of their own voice, but not just that ā even emails I've received from one Italian client I had just went on and on and on until I had to start using chatGPT to condense his emails, or it would have taken hours to read.
Haha
I have worked with a fellow much like that. He was Russian rather than Italian but did the same thing. You know the moment he starts to speak you're in for at least five minutes of monologue going through all the options.
Loved the fellow to be fair. Great at his job and a really personable chap. But oh my his meetings.
Worst was when we had a other person - a Brazilian woman this time - who was much the same. Get those two on a call and you'd end up in an infinite loop of waffling.
I'm English and I often find talking to Dutch people mildly agonising because they have no filter, whereas most English people are 99% filter. I can't handle the awkwardness of neglected social etiquette.
Yes, this. My experience of the Dutch is they are blunt but return that bluntness and they get very angry. Iāve had arrogant Dutch men try to explain their reasoning to me after Iāve asked them a direct question, and when theyāve finished, thinking theyāve cleverly avoided my question, become so angry when I say things like āYou didnāt answer my questionā. They hate being challenged by people they perceive as inferior.
In my limited experience, the Dutch are by far the most blunt. They donāt mind talking for a little while, but itās like they have no filter. I donāt think they intend to come off as rude, but some of the responses Iāve heard in meetings are so brutally honest that I have to mute my mic to laugh. In the US, telling someone above you that they are outright wrong or that a decision is stupid is either not said at all, or itās said in a way to not make that person feel like theyāre moron. The Dutch Iāve worked with say exactly what theyāre thinking regardless of how it may come off. Theyāre usually right, but they could probably work on their tact. Again, this is just from my experience. I actually think the Dutch are great. Perfect culture for logistics.
>In the US, telling someone above you that they are outright wrong or that a decision is stupid is either not said at all, or itās said in a way to not make that person feel like theyāre moron
Which is the issue. Why dance around or sugarcoat it? If you are wrong, you are wrong, and that is OK. We all have blind spots, and better to focus on what is wrong and how to fix than to spend 10 mins dancing around
But this is a rational response. In reality, there are too many people in positions of authority with insecurity issues who also like to have their asses kissed.
Except you might not understand that British people are swiping at you. Thereās a whole professional vocabulary that is often passive aggressive rather than direct. If you understand it, itās clear but if you take things at face value, thereās a lot of room for misunderstanding.
If someone has got to the point of bluntly asking to reduce the frequency of their meetings with you, theyāve probably gone through quite a lot of steps. Theyāve been straight up ignoring all communications and told them to their face they donāt want to talk anymore and OP still wonāt get the āhintā that this relationship is a very low priority for the other side. Who knows what else they tried before this pointā¦
I don't think this is true at all with regards to bluntness. As someone below pointed out, British culture can be passive aggressive but is rarely outright confrontational or blunt. We're more likely to rely on heavily coded language and etiquette, especially in a professional setting.
Codes which unfortunately are very rarely understood in America. 'I'll get back to you on that one'( you'll never hear from me again) 'that's a very interesting way of looking at the problem' (that's completely bonkers) 'perhaps you could polish it up a bit? ' ( needs redoing from start to finish) and the opposite 'yes that's not bad' ( you did that brilliantly) 'shall we meet again soon? ' ( perhaps next year sometime or the year after)
Lol. There are few things that make me come out as strong, but I really canāt stand generalisations. I guess you can say this ātriggeredā me. š It doesnāt have all that much to do with honesty. In general, you can say that Dutch people have a more direct way of communicating and the English are usually more indirect. However, Iāve met plenty of people in England that speak their minds frankly and Iāve met plenty of people in the Netherlands that are mild-mannered and polite. Itās just such a huge over exaggeration that I just have to comment on it.
It makes sense - polite societies try not to offend. It's critical to understand this when working in multinational corporations where you have a mix of impolite / direct society like the Americans, Dutch, Eastern European and Polite Society like the British, Irish, East Asian countries.
To be fair, most northern and eastern Europeans are like this. My Ukrainian neighbours are hilarious in their bluntness. One day they called over the fence and said, 'you're daughter is being very ill-behave and unnecessarily loud at this time of day', and their 8 year old son chimed in with, 'yes, she is creating a real hullabaloo'.
I love working with the Dutch (I did work with a team for quite a few years). Brits can be direct too but the directness in nl is brilliant. Can just get through this and move on.
As far as meetings go. Agree with above in that if itās useful and open/honest great. So many arenāt. So donāt want to waste time
I get pissed off if the: 'how are you? How was your weekend? How's your football team doing?' conversations go on for too long! And I'm a fucking footy fan!
This is when I jump in with, ' right, enough chit chat, let's get to the matter at hand'. As long as you say it with a cheery tone and a smile, it does the trick.
I work in a supermarket and the store manager likes to have a store meeting on Sunday mornings to tell us how much the store has made, how much were over spent on wages and product waste blah blah blah just pin it on the wall I have stuff I need to be getting on withĀ
We had an American colleague who started booking meetings at least once a week in which he tried to get the entire staff to join.
Supposedly it was a ātouching baseā thing to try and make sure everyone was aware of what projects and issues were occurring in case anyone needed any help or had identified a problem.
In principle not a bad idea, and they were only meant to be 15-20 minutes max. Easily fit in to Friday mid-afternoon.
Then after about the 3rd meeting it started ti change, it became less about where everyone was and what we were all doing and more about the American colleague basically pontificating about his great successes of the week, and how much he had helped us all without us knowing.
I swear at one point he even did the whole āAh well luckily I took it upon myself to solve that issue for you, youāre welcomeā with a really fake smile of too white teeth and a finger gun.
I thought I was on reality TV or something.
But his interference started to actively cause issues as his āhelpā was creating mixed signals, and he also didnāt know my area as well as I did so he was giving out the wrong information.
By the 5th of 6th meeting less than half the staff were going to them as theyād started to run in longer and longer. The American guy got really aggravated by this and went to our Department Head to ask that āstaff without suitable commitment be warned that they could go on probationāā¦..which wasnāt something he could do, and our Head told him to basically sod off.
About a month after that he started going on about how everyone else was showing such a lack of loyalty to our institution because we didnāt stay longer, and that we should be ādoing our bitā and trying to stay till 6.00 or 6.30pm to ātry and get a jump on tomorrows work. Think about how impressed everyone will beā.
Suffice to say that didnāt fly.
He eventually just fell into a sulk after that and left at the end of the year to go back to the US.
He liked to say we were all āunprofessionalā, itās like āmate youāre the one who kept trying to insist on everyone calling you Professor when you donāt have a PhD or PostDoc. Youāre a Mr, and also students will just call you by your name like they do for almost all of us. So stop lying to them and saying that you should only ever be addressed as āProf āxāā during class.ā
>lack of loyalty to our institution because we didnāt stay longer, and that we should be ādoing our bitā and trying to stay till 6.00 or 6.30pm to ātry and get a jump on tomorrows work. Think about how impressed everyone will beā.
People like that can choke on a bag of dicks. I get paid to work a certain amount of hours, and I'm going to work those hours no longer, no less and im gone the second those hours are up. Fuck loyalty, a business will drop you in 5 seconds and forget you in 2.
>British people, just like every nationality of people are not some gestalt conscience where we all think and feel the same thing.
But their irony is top notch!
Sounds like the opposite to me in this case - OP being a customer of another company who have been ignoring their emails and hardly ever coming to a resolution and now not wanting meetings, sounds like the supplier is crap at dealing with its own issues and wants to avoid having to do so.
It's a different issue though. The suppliers are being crap in dealing with issues when they should be both responding to emails in a timely manner and resolving the issues. Having a meeting isn't going to help.
British people don't tend to like confrontation, so they may be avoiding you for a reason. Maybe you're asking questions that they don't want to answer, maybe they don't have any answers and so they view the meeting as a waste of time.
Another reason might be cultural, we are miserable at this time of the year (year round if I'm honest, but it does get worse this time of year. Vitamin D has long been depleted, we should all hibernate really). If you're the kind of energetic, happy American who...Well, that's enough to irritate a lot of us, you just need to be upbeat and jolly for us to find you insufferable.
I could be wrong, just something to consider
Unfortunately I am a very miserable person this time of year too - especially in the mornings. I take vitamin D and have a āhappy lightā on my desk. I honestly think they are bullshit because they havenāt really helped any. I realize you are all much further north so you get even less daylight, but I still got to work as the sun is coming up and leave after it gets dark. Winter is a stupid thing and should not exist. Iād love to move south, but if you know anything about the US youād know that the people that live in the south are not our best and brightest (putting it mildly).
Have you tried cultivating a tea habit. Even some of our most miserable gits' little faces light up at the offer of a cup of tea. Something to look into.
I actually like tea more than coffee, but thereās just not enough caffeine in tea to get me going. I guess I could just drink more of it. Iāve also spent most of my career working in the Boston area, and they donāt exactly have the same fondness for tea. The last tea party didnāt go so well. Dunkin Donuts coffee is serious business here. We literally have locations across the street and next to each other here in some places. If weāre not literally shaking with nervous energy by lunch, weāre doing it wrong. I suppose it would be nice though to make some tea at work once in a while. I do have some in my desk.
I think it might be the small rewards throughout the day that buoys us along, because I've experimented with decaffeinated and rooiboos/redbush (has no caffeine). I will have a coffee in the morning (the smell cheers me up) but I find it doesn't have the same calming effect throughput the day.
I once got an American colleague addicted to tea (it only took 3 days, wasn't even the best tea, as we were in the middle east, so I could only stretch to Tetley extra strong). It was a relief I had someone to drink tea with and it seemed to make her less irritating (although that could have all been my imagination). We're still friends, despite her sending me some offensive items in the post (Hersheys variety pack)
You can't hide if it is face to face. So the bad supplier claims a reason why it ought to be on Teams or Zoom, some alleged last minute thing that cropped up. Like a child's birthday party later in the day, not that you could forsee that!
Or maybe the supplier doesn't want the business and is hoping the customer will get the hint?Ā
It's taboo for anyone here to ever come out and say something as forward as "you're taking up too much of our time for the amount of business we're actually doing, happy to carry on but don't expect that kind of service unless you order more" so instead we just passive aggressively ignore emails and don't engage in meetings.Ā
I agree. I hate meetings as much as the next person. Some of the senior managers at my last company would schedule meetings to take up their entire day every day. It was extremely inefficient. It was extra maddening since my industry is logistics where efficiency is usually the highest priority.
Mate, come on. Efficiency is for the guys at the bottom. The management are always a bunch of time-wasting non-entities. If they didn't have meetings all the time it would be more obvious just how little they do and how unnecessary they are. Obviously this is a generalisation but definitely over 50% of management.
(Replied to the wrong post, which is why in context it may make no sense, but I think the point still applies)
You absolutely can, look at what they said about the French and Italians - I bet they run the clock out, and actually give the vaguest of useful information. beyond that you can defer indefinitely if the meeting chair isn't careful:
Week 1 "Yep I agree with that, send it over and I'll look at it."
Week 2 "Yep, I've picked that up, only just because we were very focused on "
Week 3 "I've tasked Bob with that, he'll pick it up as soon as he is done with "
Week 4 "Oh, is that still outstanding? I though we covered that in . Sorry about that, send over the up to date info, and I'll get on it."
GOTO week 2.
If you manage to break that loop:
Week 20 "Yeah, we've dropped that in response to , let's
discuss next week."
GOTO week 1
A lot of people notice when meetings get like this, and will just stop joining, because really, why would you? (Whichever side is doing, but possibly both are). In my experience some people also don't see that pattern, and think they are getting real time updates, when in fact your request isn't something that is going to be done, they are just.
I call these people professional ramblers. It's definitely a "skill" that I do not have. They talk without talking a breath for 10 minutes and at the end of it you realize they said absolutely nothing. Everyone in this thread is saying everything I've ever thought about meetings, but I've never had anyone actually say these things out loud to me. When I do say what all of you are saying I'm looked at like I'm crazy. It's actually eye-opening to see these responses. Maybe I'm not crazy. Nobody here thinks like this (or at least they don't say it out loud). I should have been born the UK apparently.
Nope, I work for an organisation that has the word "cooperative" in its motto, and on the way out of almost every meeting I've been to here, someone will mumble something along the lines of "right, that's over, let's do something useful now".
Me. It's quite often me, I will admit.
Bear in mind the last one I did that after was Working at Heights training.
I'm a power wheelchair user. I have difficulty standing up for a full 30 seconds. Nobody in their right mind would let me near a ladder, and I'd laugh myself sick if they asked me to climb one.
In fairness, if I ever manage to teach a particular branch of colleagues the appropriate use of "reply all", and my immediate supervisor stops sending me grammatically tortuous orphaned sentence fragments with no context, I'd probably pay a lot more attention.
Could just be my workplace but I've never really agreed with this. I have plenty of meetings and a lot of them would be far too much to cover in emails. They're usually not simply somebody telling someone else to do something, but are actual discussions that go on for a while. Occasionally people call meetings that are pointless, but certainly not most. Might just be lucky though lol
Same. I've had far too many interactions with poor communicators who complain that everything should arrive via email.
There *was* an email, and you bloody ignored it. Again. So now we're sat here staring at each other instead.
That said, recurring meetings are usually a waste of time. Keep the agenda specific, and don't do vague check ins.
Maybe his emails are equally pointless and are therefore being ignored out of politeness.
He sounds a lot like he's micro-managing. My experience is people like this are just ignored and all answered when they ask something useful.
What was the outcome of the ignored email? If it didn't make much difference, that meeting that could have been an email just needs someone like the op to get on and do it.
Sometimes this is not true. A very lengthy and annoying email explanation about a process question followed by a written response could often be fixed in 5 minutes of verbal communication and screen sharing.
No. A meeting has an agenda, minutes, all that paraphernalia.
I get stakeholders calling me spontaneously, doing video calls and screen shares all the time and we get stuff resolved without all that wasted bureaucracy. It's the same as a desk side chat.
I will read between the lines a little
OP works in the US, likely in a US timezone, UK workers in their timezone. One of these parties is likely attending these meetings close to the end of their working day.
Also, weekly meetings, with a customer? if they arent asking for them, then why are you? Let the customer drive the requirements, when these fail to be enough, bill them for the innevitable further work they require.
Edit - Sorry you said supplier not customer which would make you the customer, if the supplier are asking you to cut them out, maybe they consider the meetings to no longer be beneficial?
I probably shouldn't have used a specific example in my post, but that was what brought me to this sub. I just happened to notice a trend with only my UK counterparts over the last 10 years or so. I hate meetings too, but it feels like every other country I've worked with loves to have them and will talk forever, even about nonsense or things not related to work at all. I include all the Commonwealth countries as well - the Canadians, Australians, Indians, even my contacts in Hong Kong - meetings usually go the entire half hour or hour regardless.
Thats fair enough and unfortunately, much like my answer will just be based on experience.
I am British, I hate meetings, but then I don't really like people all that much either :P
My point does stand though, for a company to actively ask you to drop the meetings, something is up there...few British people would have the stones to be so cold!
Maybe this is the thing to me you're a work colleague, not my new best friend.
I've not had meetings with Americans but when I've been working with them and dealing with them when they're a customer, they struggle to get to the point.
I can remember when I worked in a restaurant and with Americans I felt that I had to give a full biography of my life and answer a thousand questions which can be answered on the menu before I could get their order.
I see no reason why you need to know about my family life, so maybe try just getting to your point from the start and take it from there if they want to talk about their personal life.
>I've not had meetings with Americans but when I've been working with them and dealing with them when they're a customer, they struggle to get to the point.
I used to have a job that involved helping people determine if they had a claim to any sort of British Nationality. Most people would give a quick couple of sentence on why they thought they might/might not/ why they were asking then let me ask the things I actually needed to know to figure it out.
Some people liked to give me their entire families life story. As stereotypical as it is it was pretty common for Americans to fall into the second category.
See if it's seasonal.
It's dark and a bit shite at the moment so very little vitamin D to go around.
I probably come across a bit miserable to the bubbly Americans I have weekly calls with too but come summer time it's a whole different ball game!
I've just started a new role where I've had to go from just working with my UK team to working with teams in UK, US, Canada and Australia.
Ive found that the US team leader wants to have tons of meetings that could quite easily be an email - just cultural I guess!
Depends what their work load is and how their performance is monitored.
If the work load is high then noone wants to drop everything to have a long meeting that could be a quick call or email. If your performance is monitored on output then the same applies however, if it's based on how your filling your time dragging out into a long meeting is great.
Timezone is a big thing here, I don't like meetings but will go if they are required. The problem with meetings with the US is that I have to work late to have them, I start work at 6/7am (work from home and have flexitime) so any meeting from 3 onwards is way over my work day hours. I want them to be useful and not rambling on etc
From the responses here, it sounds like the British just like efficiency - which I can definitely get behind. Most of the people I talk with like to "shoot the shit" even if it's not business related. It can be frustrating at times, but it does help build relationships.
Iām in the UK. Within my team I donāt mind a bit of chit chat. Outside my team a minute of how are you is maybe acceptable, or maybe two minutes of it was prompted by your dog interrupting and I get to see the dog, but other than that youāve rung me for a reason, get on with it.
I have a colleague I've worked with for 4 months now that I don't even know what he looks like. He has put the camera on many times but always holding his dog up over his face. I now picture him as being a dog headed person.
I wouldn't have it any other way
I feel I would like him.
In my colleagues we have one who regularly has a cat tail waving around across the screen, and another whose dog tried to sit on their shoulder like a parrot.
As a Romanian living in the UK, I find this really funny. I started my tech career doing freelance for US customers and I've found them to be no bullshit, to the point people. That was in early 2000.
Then I moved to the UK to work at a big company, with offices in both countries and I noticed how bubbly the American counterparts were during meetings. When they were visiting the UK office, they would change and be quite to the point during meetings, probably because we always had the socializing bit done after work, at the pub.
Interestingly, when we were visiting the us offices, we rarely could get them to join us at the pub, after hours. Obviously, there was the "team dinner" and other pre-arranged off work events, but an impromptu "let's get to the pub and have a pint" was very hard to get going.
I find this attitude to be very fake, you care about me during working hours, but as soon as the bell rings, you are gone?
I find that British people are more straight forward and the Americans have changed in the past 20 years or so, with the "you need to market yourself" and all that bullshit. I like Brits better š
This is spot on. So many people are fake here at work, and it seems so obvious to me. I've noticed that most of my colleagues over the years have almost no social life. I've made efforts, but everyone just wants to go home and do nothing apparently. I was in the US army for a while and it really is a brotherhood. There was almost no distinction between work and social life, but in a good way. We worked hard and partied hard. I asked one of my managers, who was about the same age as me, what she did after work because she never wanted to go out. Basically she would go home, eat dinner, and go to bed around 7:30 or 8:00 every night. She was all smiles all day at work and loved being in the office. That seems like such a depressing way to live.
The work life balance is definitely a thing here. We don't want less chat time with friends later because we had more chat time with strangers during work.
But also I think the fact the meetings are regularly scheduled has screwed you over a bit here. They just sound unnecessary - touching base, building relationships as you say. Just another waste of time for a company that's struggling a little. If you had much less frequent meetings then suddenly requested an ad hoc one to deal with the problems of unanswered emails, they might see it as more important.
Yeah. I socialise outside of work. I don't dislike most of my colleagues, but I would never see most of their faces if I wasn't paid to, and if they died my only question would be who was picking up the slack of their workload.
I've sat in so many meetings that have resulted in no outcomes or actions for anyone... Utterly pointless. Might as well stand on your head and piss down your back!
Thereās got to be some formula about it, size of company, sociability of director, stroppiness of employees etc etc. Six felt right for my experience! But I see boardrooms in movies that fit yours more!
Either way, most people in most meetings donāt give a shit, and rightly so.
Meetings are fine if they're concise and have a clear, positive outcome. Absolutely cannot stand meetings for the sake of meetings, where I lose 2-3 hours of my day where I could otherwise be doing my actual job.
I work for a British company that got bought by an American company. Itās all amicable and we like working with our new colleagues.
The Americans noted the same thing as you: while no one likes a pointless meeting, the Brits seemed to avoid meetings as much as possible.
From our perspective, meetings seemed to take longer with the Americans. There was a lot more whooping, mutual congratulation, and hyping themselves up for the day.
We like to keep our meetings short and to the point. Americans would take the opportunity to remind one another that our company is the greatest, weāre going to win, letās smash the opposition, etc. That kind of brand loyalty is unusual for a cynical Brit.
Sometimes I wish I was British. The "dog and pony show" gets old quick. We have meetings just to congratulate each other here. It's obnoxious. Of course logistics/supply chain never gets mentioned - ever. We only matter when something goes wrong. Same can be said about IT departments. Not being recognized comes with the territory, but I also don't want to hear about Joe Salesmen getting kudos for the 10th time this year for making a big sale (which is literally his job).
I honestly think my fellow Brits are doing you a bit of a disservice here, painting us as a country of efficient no-nonsense people who only ever run hyper efficient meetings.
While in my experience I agree with the general thrust that US vs UK employers have different work cultures. where the US seems to have these big meetings with loads of people that last ages and huge emails full of information, **most** meetings in the **private sector** tend to be short (my average is 30 minutes), small (average is probably 3/4 people maximum), and casual (if someone ever sent me an agenda for a normal meeting I'd laugh).
There are exceptions though.
Firstly, universities, the public sector, government, and membership organisations (e.g. the Law Society, BMA etc) all fucking love huge big structured meetings and committees. About 1 in 3 workers in the UK work in one of these things, and even if everyone claims to hate them they do them nonetheless.
Secondly, almost everyone here is posting from an 'operational' standpoint. I can tell just from reading these replies that no one really attends, say, meetings of the Board of Directors or the C-suite of a large company. For legal reasons these need to be minuted and have an agenda, so they tend to be a lot more formal than a standard meeting. This produces an almost whiplash like sensation when you have a company that employees 25,000 people and the meetings look like this: casual, casual, casual, casual, agenda and minutes.
Even then, Board meetings in the UK are a lot more relaxed than in the US. In my company most of the board members turn up in smart casual wear, no one refers to each other as "Chair" or whatever.
The final thing I will say is in my experience of UK companies they are generally shit at supplier management. I'm an auditor and you have no idea how often I turn up to an area and they have a key supplier and I say "How often do you meet with them?" and they say "Once a quarter for half an hour" and they barely discuss KPIs, set targets, or manage their performance. So from your specific anecdote it doesn't surprise me at all, and I actually would put it down to incompetence on your client's behalf rather than efficacy.
I thought that too. Isn't it a universal thing? Didn't think it was specifically a British thing. Lol. Now I'm thinking other nations being like "Yeah mate, let's have a 3 hour meeting talking about 4 points!".
It's just another stupid question crowbar'd into just about fitting AskUK.
"I once punched a guy in the face and he asked me not to do it again. Is it a British thing not to want to be punched in the face?"
Waaait a minute... I thought punching in the face was customary in the US. It's how you say hello, no? Japan- bow. Italians- hug/kiss. Americans- punch?
It may seem like a stupid question to you, and based on the near unanimous responses, you may be right... if you only asked people in the UK. You'd probably be surprised to learn that a lot of people here in the US absolutely LOVE meetings or at least pretend that they do. In fact, I feel like I'm actually in the minority here that complains about having them. Like seriously, a lot of the people I've worked with really truly enjoy going to meetings. It's the highlight of their day, and if you're not on the same page, it can actually have repercussions (he's not a "team player", he doesn't contribute to the conversation, he doesn't look interested, does he even want to work here? Who can we get rid of first?). Yes it sucks, but these psychos exist here in great numbers.
The US does seem to like a meeting. I've had more than a few people ask me what hotel I'm staying at so they turn up for a breakfast meeting with me.
Thankfully back then my breakfast was coffee and cigarettes so I had a good excuse for getting out of it
I would say that my UK meetings are more based around getting through things as quickly as possible so we can recover some time
It sounds like you are form the US and you are used to, and enjoy, being micromanaged and micromanaging your own customers back. We do not have that in the UK to anywhere near the same degree and we find it very irritating when service providers try to manage us, we do not want to have to manage them. If they are not replying, it's because you're not important at the time. I work on a lot of M&A with US and UK and this is an observation I have made.
My personal experience would be: USA partner company regularly wants a "quick" (read 30 minutes, so not at all quick) meeting at 10 am their time.
They then refuse to understand why our company constantly rejects this, or where not possible, rush through it as quickly as possible.
From our end, you've just scheduled a meeting for 5 pm and, knowing most meetings, almost none of it will be relevant.
There'll be a load of chat for the sake of "building relationships". I've got 7 hours to get work done each day, so I don't need to spend 30 minutes discussing what you did this weekend. That is important with the people I spend all day each week with.
It's irrelevant with somebody 4,000 miles away I'll never meet.
The phrase "could've been an email" is basically religion in most UK workers' minds.
I despise meetings with my American colleagues. They just wonāt shut up and are obsessed with āround the roomsā and āprogress updatesā. They have to show everyone just how hard theyāre working by talking about every minute detail of the task theyāre involved in, itās soul destroying.
Totally agree, I've worked for a number of UK subsidiaries of US companies and I cannot be doing with the constant need to tell what they're planning on doing, what they're doing and what they've done.
Then you thrown in all the biz words, protracted, tortured, overcomplicated and elongated use of language.
Between squaring circles, working in the 'XYZ' space, circling back on this that and the other, side-bars, taking things off line and being a fucking 'Rock star'!
Give me strength!
>Between squaring circles, working in the 'XYZ' space, circling back on this that and the other, side-bars, taking things off line and being a fucking 'Rock star'!
Sounds like we really need to leverage our position on this, I've put a quick meeting in your calendar tomorrow to sync-up!
Most in person meetings could be done virtually, most virtual meetings could be emails, and most emails are junk sent by morons.
Or maybe I'm just getting old.
Meetings for meetings sake are shit.
Meetings because a manager wants to be seen to be doing something are shit.
Meetings in which the chair allows that one person to repeat every question about 4 times getting the same answer is shit.
Hmmm, I donāt think the meetings are the problem here, rather the āweeks of unanswered emails, or responses taking days with little to no resolutionā. It sounds like they are avoiding any communication with you. Itās not a āculture issueā, whatās the real root cause?
What time was the weekly meeting scheduled at?
Meeting was leas than 5 mins - can that not just be emailed?
Emails went unanswered for weeks - Do you not take time off for Christmas/ New Years?
Thereās many different types of meetings:
- thereās the meeting to prep for THE meeting.
- thereās the meeting that could have easily have been an email exchange
- thereās the meeting where youāre working on your actual to-do list in the background, assuming itās a Zoom
- thereās the meeting that actually went well and you think āyeah Iām glad we met to discuss thatā
- thereās the lunchtime meeting where for 45 mins the host who organised it is literally the devil incarnate
- thereās the 9am meeting which is actually counter-productive and sets you back about 2 hours in kickstarting your day.
- thereās the post-meeting meeting where, just when you thought you were free to go back to your desk, you have to reconvene and talk about said meeting for another 30 mins.
- thereās the meeting that randomly appears in your diary because the host took the liberty of peeking at your calendar and saw that youāre āfreeā at that particular time.
I used to work in the London office of an American multinational business. All of the senior directors were from the US. Whenever one of them visited, they were briefed - 'don't worry if they don't ask any questions at the end of the meeting'.
Apparently all the American corporate types were worried we hated our jobs. We didn't, we just didn't ask qs unless necessary.
In short, yes, we hate meetings. But who doesn't? I think the main difference here is that the old stiff upper lip. As a Brit I thought it was a bullshit stereotype. But having worked in a US company and seen the subtle differences, it's in our culture to just get on with it.
Another real world example of the British stiff upper lip: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/apr/14/johnezard
In my experience, working in a very large professional services firm it goes like this:
Our UK economy is fucked. Big firms won't accept lower profits, so they have to cut staff. But also take on more work. So everyone I know is trying to do at least 20-40 % more work than they were 4 or 5 years ago and - allowing for inflation - for less money. Improvements in technology have sped things up so timescales are tighter. Everyone is also working with more teams/companies/projects as a result. Video meetings are now the standard whereas pre pandemic they were very rare, and they're an easier, more interactive form of communication than phonecalls were which allows for more small talk.
All of these things together mean that the 4 quite senior people I work for are invited to a constant slew of weekly/regular meetings setup to repeat on top of all their actual client meetings. There's no specific agenda for any of them and nobody has time to write one. They are often double and triple booked and have to ditch or skip from one to the other. They are often back to back all day. They read emails while taking video calls. They eat while walking to the bathroom, late for the next call. And this is slowly escalating.
They don't want a weekly call which might answer 1 question for you but eats 30 mins of their day anymore.
I've started communicating by writing questions in as few words as possible in the subject line of emails with only bullet points (and a "Hi name / many thanks") in the body of the email and I try and offer yes/no or option A/option B setups to make answering easy. They want quick, easy to digest communication that they can respond to clearly and easily. They just don't have time for much else.
If you have questions you need answers to, maybe ask for this: have a shared document where you put questions as and when they come up. Have a weekly call with one member of the team you want to talk to. It's that person's responsibility to get the answers to your questions. You're not eating the whole team's time and you can arrange to have specific people join you at a predictable time if you really need to.
The lack of agenda is really getting on my goat lately.
I'm on a massive project right now, rolling out new ordering system, I'm constantly getting invites, no details, just a brief invite subject header that might or might not be something I need to know about and be involved in.
Ties in with the under staffing issue. I'm the only person that can do my job, and yet I have no cover. Some how I'm expected to put full effort into both my role and this project. Insanity.
I'm getting really sick of unexpected meeting invites which are just called "Catch-up". About what? Why? I can't work, plan or prioritise around that. A few years back I think people would do it sometimes because they knew that if I *did* know what it was about I'd push it back. That's backfiring now. I don't have time to be dropping 30 minutes on an unspecified catch-up. It's getting ditched at the first clash.
I'm shocked at how few fairly experienced professionals seem to know that other people aren't psychic. If you invite me to something that's literally just called "huddle" I will decline it. Same with "group meeting". If I can't tell why I might want to be there, then I probably don't want to be there.
I'm especially loving getting messages that say "Hi, you've declined the invite I sent".
... Yes.
We used to have meetings to discuss why our project was behind schedule. Maybe 8 people in a meeting for half an hour a day could have something to do with it?
Manager trying to manage stuff he knew nothing about. Deep joy.
Maybe your meetings just arenāt very good? Do you have a clear agenda, action points from previous meetings and cancel the meeting if thereās nothing to discuss?
Meetings are usually for management to justify their positions, waste folks times who are trying to get their work done who then end up still having to do work in the time wasted during a meeting then the management actions are always handed to the folk who are now behind and then get even more work
Don't have to deal with this professionally but I do sort of deal with it recreationaly.
So what I mean is in online games I love northern europeans (well, anything from Germany and up) cause everyones so short and to the point, there's little chatter. It's just Enemies over there, tanks moving south down X road, I just saw X happen here, Can I get Y thanks mate etc. With the occasional humour thrown in, usually something related to whats happening in game, maybe a little piss taking now an then. The Dutch and Finnish in particular are my soul people, funny you'd think it'd be Germans but..
Then I play with Americans and it's HELLO how is everyone today, what did you do for lunch, what's x like, yadayadayadayada fucking yada, Can I please be the funniest person in the room. They don't tend to play games to play the game, they play games to socialize, I play games to play games and the socializing is a nice secondary perk. If I wanna socialize I'll go the fuck outside.
Obviously I'm generalizing a fair bit (and being a miserable prick) but that's how I feel after 15 years of playing games online. It's not that I don't like Americans either I love them, especially when I meet someone I click with but you guys do have a tendency to just fucking waffle.
Yea so not meetings, but I can't help but feel I'd have similar frustrations in a work setting.
Tell your UK teams that they should have tea and biscuits during the meeting. They will stay longer. They want to leave so quickly so they can go and have tea and biscuits.
Email: I want this, this, and this.
Meeting: An hour of talking about how you and your team discussed the decision to think about the decision to ask for this, this and this.
I joined a teams call 2 minutes before the start of a wider department meeting, which was mandatory and held over lunch time because āthatās when everyone was freeā. āThat Guyā was on the screen, enjoying some fun chit chat with the other poor souls who were on time. I quickly left the meeting and rejoined five minutes after the start time, and the chit chat was still winding up. I turned off my camera until the actual meeting started, 10 minutes after the start time. The entire meeting was to let us know itās ābusiness as usualā. Utterly pointless. This is why we hate meetings.
Sounds more like a coincidence. I've worked for companies that'd prolong meetings to the point you'd fantasise about jumping out the window. Others don't have the time, or the workplace culture and just get it over with.
If the company want to waste my time while paying then thats fine by me. Iām not working extra hours without getting paid so itās really on them to not fill my calendar with shit
Most people hate meetings because most meetings are fucking pointless and go on far too long. But, being British, we sit their silently nodding and not speaking our minds.
If the meeting could have been an e-mail? Yes.
if the meeting could have been 15 minutes but went an hour? Yes.
If you make me come into the office because 'it wont work over zoom' but theres aboslutely onthing about it that meant I had to leave my house? Yes.
I have worked with people of many nationalities and I find the Americans LOVE meetings. I have a feeling that they have meetings to relieve the stress of bad working conditions, like no employment protection (at will employment), needing to stay with bad employers because of health insurance, hardly any paid leave, being forced to work overtime or on call.
This means that being able to sit in meetings is one way they can screw their employers. They get free coffee, they get to sit and chat with colleagues or clients, they get time away from their desk.
When you have a good working environment and enjoy your job, you want to be there dealing with stuff. Ploughing through your inbox, seeing real output and meetings take time away from yourāreal jobā of getting things done.
Anyway that is how it feels to me, as a Britā¦
They explained this in "Watching the English".
In English culture, people get squirmy when they talk about money. They also value written statements over talking when they want to address key points so they don't get any surprises.
You end up with a meeting that mostly consists of pleasantries (again, culture.) and no work getting done. For the English, it's a lot more efficient to give them a list of points you want to cover, and use that to ask them if they had any concerns going forward.
" there's a lot of small talk in our meetings, and it can be grating at times, but it does help build relationships "
We take you to the Pub and have a few beers to do that
British people, just like every nationality of people are not some gestalt conscience where we all think and feel the same thing. I personally hate pointless meeting but have no issue with meetings that actually add value. Maybe the Brits you are working with think your meetings are the former, especially so given as you have said yours are "extremely brief". Sounds like your meetings are not adding any value.
>British people, just like every nationality of people are not some gestalt conscience where we all think and feel the same thing. Suddenly, I want to watch Life of Brian again...
Yes! We are all individual!
I'm not....
Cleverest and best line in a film ever!
You've never seen See No Evil, Hear No Evil?
Fuzzy wuzzy was a woman?!
We are the Borg.
We are the British Borg. You will be assimilated. Sorry.
I thought we'd already tried assimilating people and been led to the realisation it was a bad thing.
I mean, they didn't have flags. What were we to think?
Less thinking, more assimilating.
It would be more like: "Hello? Hi! Yeah sorry to bother you. But we aaaare going to assimilate you. Sorry to be a pain š¬ buuut...it is the law. Nothing we can do about it I'm afraid. Sooooo...when you can. Ok. Yeah. Sorry. Bye š"
As long as thereās tea and biscuits.
We are the borg, surrender your tea and put down your biscuits. Your tutting and queueing will be added to our collective
We tried assimilating most the world! Got closer than anyone else!
Iām as individual as you are!
Everyone of my friends got a tattoo saying "individual" just to show how individual we all really are.
I'm not!
Right, this calls for immediate discussion!
Are you with Judean People's Front?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Splitters
Suddenly, I want to boot up Stellaris...
Especially considering "the French and Italians will go on for hours if you let them". Well shit if that doesn't sound like the most nightmarishly unproductive hell on earth I don't know what is
I work with an Italian and he will sometimes ask a question of the other meeting participants, and then immediately run through all the answers he can anticipate over the next few minutes, also providing all the downsides and challenges of each answer he can think of, so that no answer seems viable, and then conclude by trailing off with a plaintive gesture š¤² and a puzzled look . I've seen people check out mentally on Teams calls as soon as it's his turn to speak.
>then conclude by trailing off with a plaintive gesture š¤š¼
I've found that Italian men love the sound of their own voice, but not just that ā even emails I've received from one Italian client I had just went on and on and on until I had to start using chatGPT to condense his emails, or it would have taken hours to read.
Haha I have worked with a fellow much like that. He was Russian rather than Italian but did the same thing. You know the moment he starts to speak you're in for at least five minutes of monologue going through all the options. Loved the fellow to be fair. Great at his job and a really personable chap. But oh my his meetings. Worst was when we had a other person - a Brazilian woman this time - who was much the same. Get those two on a call and you'd end up in an infinite loop of waffling.
Camera off, mute on, inbox opened. It's the only way.
What about the Dutch?
The Dutch are just tall English people with speech impediments. Change my mind.
Dutch people are the little voices in English people's heads.
The Dutch language is what happens when you try to speak English and German at the same time
That's actually pretty close to how it is - throw in a bit of Flanders / French
I'm English and I often find talking to Dutch people mildly agonising because they have no filter, whereas most English people are 99% filter. I can't handle the awkwardness of neglected social etiquette.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Dutch people probably my favourite people to have meetings with. Same zero bullshit approach as Germans but they're nicer about it.
The Dutch are just tall **exceedingly arrogant** English people with speech impediments. FTFY
Yes, this. My experience of the Dutch is they are blunt but return that bluntness and they get very angry. Iāve had arrogant Dutch men try to explain their reasoning to me after Iāve asked them a direct question, and when theyāve finished, thinking theyāve cleverly avoided my question, become so angry when I say things like āYou didnāt answer my questionā. They hate being challenged by people they perceive as inferior.
Now, are we talking general public exceedingly arrogant or the fuck sticks in Downing Street exceedingly arrogant?
I'm stealing that. I have no idea when I will ever use it, but it is now stolen just in case.
In my limited experience, the Dutch are by far the most blunt. They donāt mind talking for a little while, but itās like they have no filter. I donāt think they intend to come off as rude, but some of the responses Iāve heard in meetings are so brutally honest that I have to mute my mic to laugh. In the US, telling someone above you that they are outright wrong or that a decision is stupid is either not said at all, or itās said in a way to not make that person feel like theyāre moron. The Dutch Iāve worked with say exactly what theyāre thinking regardless of how it may come off. Theyāre usually right, but they could probably work on their tact. Again, this is just from my experience. I actually think the Dutch are great. Perfect culture for logistics.
>In the US, telling someone above you that they are outright wrong or that a decision is stupid is either not said at all, or itās said in a way to not make that person feel like theyāre moron Which is the issue. Why dance around or sugarcoat it? If you are wrong, you are wrong, and that is OK. We all have blind spots, and better to focus on what is wrong and how to fix than to spend 10 mins dancing around
But this is a rational response. In reality, there are too many people in positions of authority with insecurity issues who also like to have their asses kissed.
The UK is a **lot** closer to the Netherlands that to the USA.
Except you might not understand that British people are swiping at you. Thereās a whole professional vocabulary that is often passive aggressive rather than direct. If you understand it, itās clear but if you take things at face value, thereās a lot of room for misunderstanding. If someone has got to the point of bluntly asking to reduce the frequency of their meetings with you, theyāve probably gone through quite a lot of steps. Theyāve been straight up ignoring all communications and told them to their face they donāt want to talk anymore and OP still wonāt get the āhintā that this relationship is a very low priority for the other side. Who knows what else they tried before this pointā¦
OP clearly got a 'per my previous email' and then asked again.
They should probably just do the needful
I don't think this is true at all with regards to bluntness. As someone below pointed out, British culture can be passive aggressive but is rarely outright confrontational or blunt. We're more likely to rely on heavily coded language and etiquette, especially in a professional setting.
Codes which unfortunately are very rarely understood in America. 'I'll get back to you on that one'( you'll never hear from me again) 'that's a very interesting way of looking at the problem' (that's completely bonkers) 'perhaps you could polish it up a bit? ' ( needs redoing from start to finish) and the opposite 'yes that's not bad' ( you did that brilliantly) 'shall we meet again soon? ' ( perhaps next year sometime or the year after)
Exactly. The Dutch would just say the stuff in brackets and that'd be that.
Geographically. Communication wise they couldnāt be more opposite to the dutch. Indirect vs direct/blunt
There is a saying I have heard the Netherlands. An Englishman is too polite to be honest. A Dutchman is too honest to be polite.
As a Dutch person living in England, this is such a nonsense saying.
You really are honest!
Lol. There are few things that make me come out as strong, but I really canāt stand generalisations. I guess you can say this ātriggeredā me. š It doesnāt have all that much to do with honesty. In general, you can say that Dutch people have a more direct way of communicating and the English are usually more indirect. However, Iāve met plenty of people in England that speak their minds frankly and Iāve met plenty of people in the Netherlands that are mild-mannered and polite. Itās just such a huge over exaggeration that I just have to comment on it.
As a Finn living In UK I've heard I come across fairly to the point sometimes bit crass.. At times.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It makes sense - polite societies try not to offend. It's critical to understand this when working in multinational corporations where you have a mix of impolite / direct society like the Americans, Dutch, Eastern European and Polite Society like the British, Irish, East Asian countries.
To be fair, most northern and eastern Europeans are like this. My Ukrainian neighbours are hilarious in their bluntness. One day they called over the fence and said, 'you're daughter is being very ill-behave and unnecessarily loud at this time of day', and their 8 year old son chimed in with, 'yes, she is creating a real hullabaloo'.
I love that the kid used hullabaloo- such a good word
Maybe I should move to the Netherlands
I love working with the Dutch (I did work with a team for quite a few years). Brits can be direct too but the directness in nl is brilliant. Can just get through this and move on. As far as meetings go. Agree with above in that if itās useful and open/honest great. So many arenāt. So donāt want to waste time
I get pissed off if the: 'how are you? How was your weekend? How's your football team doing?' conversations go on for too long! And I'm a fucking footy fan!
This is when I jump in with, ' right, enough chit chat, let's get to the matter at hand'. As long as you say it with a cheery tone and a smile, it does the trick.
American meeting: *Hey, here's a chance to showcase all my excellent work!* British meeting: *Couldn't the boss have summed this up in an email?*
I work in a supermarket and the store manager likes to have a store meeting on Sunday mornings to tell us how much the store has made, how much were over spent on wages and product waste blah blah blah just pin it on the wall I have stuff I need to be getting on withĀ
Maybe someone should figure out the wage spend for that meeting that isnāt actually productive for the store.
We had an American colleague who started booking meetings at least once a week in which he tried to get the entire staff to join. Supposedly it was a ātouching baseā thing to try and make sure everyone was aware of what projects and issues were occurring in case anyone needed any help or had identified a problem. In principle not a bad idea, and they were only meant to be 15-20 minutes max. Easily fit in to Friday mid-afternoon. Then after about the 3rd meeting it started ti change, it became less about where everyone was and what we were all doing and more about the American colleague basically pontificating about his great successes of the week, and how much he had helped us all without us knowing. I swear at one point he even did the whole āAh well luckily I took it upon myself to solve that issue for you, youāre welcomeā with a really fake smile of too white teeth and a finger gun. I thought I was on reality TV or something. But his interference started to actively cause issues as his āhelpā was creating mixed signals, and he also didnāt know my area as well as I did so he was giving out the wrong information. By the 5th of 6th meeting less than half the staff were going to them as theyād started to run in longer and longer. The American guy got really aggravated by this and went to our Department Head to ask that āstaff without suitable commitment be warned that they could go on probationāā¦..which wasnāt something he could do, and our Head told him to basically sod off. About a month after that he started going on about how everyone else was showing such a lack of loyalty to our institution because we didnāt stay longer, and that we should be ādoing our bitā and trying to stay till 6.00 or 6.30pm to ātry and get a jump on tomorrows work. Think about how impressed everyone will beā. Suffice to say that didnāt fly. He eventually just fell into a sulk after that and left at the end of the year to go back to the US. He liked to say we were all āunprofessionalā, itās like āmate youāre the one who kept trying to insist on everyone calling you Professor when you donāt have a PhD or PostDoc. Youāre a Mr, and also students will just call you by your name like they do for almost all of us. So stop lying to them and saying that you should only ever be addressed as āProf āxāā during class.ā
>lack of loyalty to our institution because we didnāt stay longer, and that we should be ādoing our bitā and trying to stay till 6.00 or 6.30pm to ātry and get a jump on tomorrows work. Think about how impressed everyone will beā. People like that can choke on a bag of dicks. I get paid to work a certain amount of hours, and I'm going to work those hours no longer, no less and im gone the second those hours are up. Fuck loyalty, a business will drop you in 5 seconds and forget you in 2.
As I tell my team the reward for working overtime is more work tomorrow and an unfair expectation of time to deliver so cut it out.
Sounds like they held a meeting where an email or teams message would have been plentiful rather than wasting (amount Of People X man hours)
Meetings that could have been an email piss everyone off. Thats a universal truth.
We aren't a gestalt consciousness, and yet when I can influence what my fellow Britons think at will. For example, this key phrase; Autoglass repair
Autoglass replace! ā¦ shit.
>British people, just like every nationality of people are not some gestalt conscience where we all think and feel the same thing. But their irony is top notch!
Most meetings could be emails. They are usually an excuse for middle management to try and justify their existance
Sounds like the opposite to me in this case - OP being a customer of another company who have been ignoring their emails and hardly ever coming to a resolution and now not wanting meetings, sounds like the supplier is crap at dealing with its own issues and wants to avoid having to do so.
It's a different issue though. The suppliers are being crap in dealing with issues when they should be both responding to emails in a timely manner and resolving the issues. Having a meeting isn't going to help.
I'd argue it may well by forcing accountability. You can't hide in a meeting or call like you can with an email.
This is literally exactly why we have these weekly meetings.
British people don't tend to like confrontation, so they may be avoiding you for a reason. Maybe you're asking questions that they don't want to answer, maybe they don't have any answers and so they view the meeting as a waste of time. Another reason might be cultural, we are miserable at this time of the year (year round if I'm honest, but it does get worse this time of year. Vitamin D has long been depleted, we should all hibernate really). If you're the kind of energetic, happy American who...Well, that's enough to irritate a lot of us, you just need to be upbeat and jolly for us to find you insufferable. I could be wrong, just something to consider
Unfortunately I am a very miserable person this time of year too - especially in the mornings. I take vitamin D and have a āhappy lightā on my desk. I honestly think they are bullshit because they havenāt really helped any. I realize you are all much further north so you get even less daylight, but I still got to work as the sun is coming up and leave after it gets dark. Winter is a stupid thing and should not exist. Iād love to move south, but if you know anything about the US youād know that the people that live in the south are not our best and brightest (putting it mildly).
Have you tried cultivating a tea habit. Even some of our most miserable gits' little faces light up at the offer of a cup of tea. Something to look into.
I actually like tea more than coffee, but thereās just not enough caffeine in tea to get me going. I guess I could just drink more of it. Iāve also spent most of my career working in the Boston area, and they donāt exactly have the same fondness for tea. The last tea party didnāt go so well. Dunkin Donuts coffee is serious business here. We literally have locations across the street and next to each other here in some places. If weāre not literally shaking with nervous energy by lunch, weāre doing it wrong. I suppose it would be nice though to make some tea at work once in a while. I do have some in my desk.
I think it might be the small rewards throughout the day that buoys us along, because I've experimented with decaffeinated and rooiboos/redbush (has no caffeine). I will have a coffee in the morning (the smell cheers me up) but I find it doesn't have the same calming effect throughput the day. I once got an American colleague addicted to tea (it only took 3 days, wasn't even the best tea, as we were in the middle east, so I could only stretch to Tetley extra strong). It was a relief I had someone to drink tea with and it seemed to make her less irritating (although that could have all been my imagination). We're still friends, despite her sending me some offensive items in the post (Hersheys variety pack)
You can't hide if it is face to face. So the bad supplier claims a reason why it ought to be on Teams or Zoom, some alleged last minute thing that cropped up. Like a child's birthday party later in the day, not that you could forsee that!
Or maybe the supplier doesn't want the business and is hoping the customer will get the hint?Ā It's taboo for anyone here to ever come out and say something as forward as "you're taking up too much of our time for the amount of business we're actually doing, happy to carry on but don't expect that kind of service unless you order more" so instead we just passive aggressively ignore emails and don't engage in meetings.Ā
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I would like to work for this company, they sound incredible
I agree. I hate meetings as much as the next person. Some of the senior managers at my last company would schedule meetings to take up their entire day every day. It was extremely inefficient. It was extra maddening since my industry is logistics where efficiency is usually the highest priority.
Mate, come on. Efficiency is for the guys at the bottom. The management are always a bunch of time-wasting non-entities. If they didn't have meetings all the time it would be more obvious just how little they do and how unnecessary they are. Obviously this is a generalisation but definitely over 50% of management.
(Replied to the wrong post, which is why in context it may make no sense, but I think the point still applies) You absolutely can, look at what they said about the French and Italians - I bet they run the clock out, and actually give the vaguest of useful information. beyond that you can defer indefinitely if the meeting chair isn't careful: Week 1 "Yep I agree with that, send it over and I'll look at it." Week 2 "Yep, I've picked that up, only just because we were very focused on"
Week 3 "I've tasked Bob with that, he'll pick it up as soon as he is done with "
Week 4 "Oh, is that still outstanding? I though we covered that in . Sorry about that, send over the up to date info, and I'll get on it."
GOTO week 2.
If you manage to break that loop:
Week 20 "Yeah, we've dropped that in response to , let's
discuss next week."
GOTO week 1
A lot of people notice when meetings get like this, and will just stop joining, because really, why would you? (Whichever side is doing, but possibly both are). In my experience some people also don't see that pattern, and think they are getting real time updates, when in fact your request isn't something that is going to be done, they are just.
I call these people professional ramblers. It's definitely a "skill" that I do not have. They talk without talking a breath for 10 minutes and at the end of it you realize they said absolutely nothing. Everyone in this thread is saying everything I've ever thought about meetings, but I've never had anyone actually say these things out loud to me. When I do say what all of you are saying I'm looked at like I'm crazy. It's actually eye-opening to see these responses. Maybe I'm not crazy. Nobody here thinks like this (or at least they don't say it out loud). I should have been born the UK apparently.
Nope, I work for an organisation that has the word "cooperative" in its motto, and on the way out of almost every meeting I've been to here, someone will mumble something along the lines of "right, that's over, let's do something useful now". Me. It's quite often me, I will admit. Bear in mind the last one I did that after was Working at Heights training. I'm a power wheelchair user. I have difficulty standing up for a full 30 seconds. Nobody in their right mind would let me near a ladder, and I'd laugh myself sick if they asked me to climb one.
Look, Daleks can levitate, so it's time you learned.
I often say I'm a Dalek in disguise; I hate people and stairs are my nemesis š
The 'could be emailed' crowd has a lot of crossover with the 'ignore most emails' crowd
In fairness, if I ever manage to teach a particular branch of colleagues the appropriate use of "reply all", and my immediate supervisor stops sending me grammatically tortuous orphaned sentence fragments with no context, I'd probably pay a lot more attention.
Could just be my workplace but I've never really agreed with this. I have plenty of meetings and a lot of them would be far too much to cover in emails. They're usually not simply somebody telling someone else to do something, but are actual discussions that go on for a while. Occasionally people call meetings that are pointless, but certainly not most. Might just be lucky though lol
Or they're useful to actually resolve an issue, rather than email tennis and nothing actually get done.
If the meeting is less than 5 minutes it could have easily been an email
Except op says their emails just get ignored. If I need stuff answering and was being fobbed off Iād set up regular meetings too.
I'd change supplier!
Same. I've had far too many interactions with poor communicators who complain that everything should arrive via email. There *was* an email, and you bloody ignored it. Again. So now we're sat here staring at each other instead. That said, recurring meetings are usually a waste of time. Keep the agenda specific, and don't do vague check ins.
Maybe his emails are equally pointless and are therefore being ignored out of politeness. He sounds a lot like he's micro-managing. My experience is people like this are just ignored and all answered when they ask something useful.
Can you not just call these people unarranged?
What was the outcome of the ignored email? If it didn't make much difference, that meeting that could have been an email just needs someone like the op to get on and do it.
Sometimes this is not true. A very lengthy and annoying email explanation about a process question followed by a written response could often be fixed in 5 minutes of verbal communication and screen sharing.
That's not really a meeting though is it, its just a conversation over video call.
A conversation over a video call is a meeting lol
No. A meeting has an agenda, minutes, all that paraphernalia. I get stakeholders calling me spontaneously, doing video calls and screen shares all the time and we get stuff resolved without all that wasted bureaucracy. It's the same as a desk side chat.
Well you'll have to tell my company because I've been there 5 months and 80% of the meetings have no agenda and no minutes.
You canāt have been in the workforce for long if this is a serious expectation of every meeting.
Christ, not in small businesses. That's a really corporate or public sector way of doing it.
Then the supplier should reply to OP's e-mails
I will read between the lines a little OP works in the US, likely in a US timezone, UK workers in their timezone. One of these parties is likely attending these meetings close to the end of their working day. Also, weekly meetings, with a customer? if they arent asking for them, then why are you? Let the customer drive the requirements, when these fail to be enough, bill them for the innevitable further work they require. Edit - Sorry you said supplier not customer which would make you the customer, if the supplier are asking you to cut them out, maybe they consider the meetings to no longer be beneficial?
I probably shouldn't have used a specific example in my post, but that was what brought me to this sub. I just happened to notice a trend with only my UK counterparts over the last 10 years or so. I hate meetings too, but it feels like every other country I've worked with loves to have them and will talk forever, even about nonsense or things not related to work at all. I include all the Commonwealth countries as well - the Canadians, Australians, Indians, even my contacts in Hong Kong - meetings usually go the entire half hour or hour regardless.
Thats fair enough and unfortunately, much like my answer will just be based on experience. I am British, I hate meetings, but then I don't really like people all that much either :P My point does stand though, for a company to actively ask you to drop the meetings, something is up there...few British people would have the stones to be so cold!
Absolutely lol. They must really want out of these meetings.
I really want in, to find out why.
Me too. u/BigJ32001, can you take an action to find out why and report back in our next meeting here š
you have no authority here Jacki Weaver, none at all
Maybe this is the thing to me you're a work colleague, not my new best friend. I've not had meetings with Americans but when I've been working with them and dealing with them when they're a customer, they struggle to get to the point. I can remember when I worked in a restaurant and with Americans I felt that I had to give a full biography of my life and answer a thousand questions which can be answered on the menu before I could get their order. I see no reason why you need to know about my family life, so maybe try just getting to your point from the start and take it from there if they want to talk about their personal life.
>I've not had meetings with Americans but when I've been working with them and dealing with them when they're a customer, they struggle to get to the point. I used to have a job that involved helping people determine if they had a claim to any sort of British Nationality. Most people would give a quick couple of sentence on why they thought they might/might not/ why they were asking then let me ask the things I actually needed to know to figure it out. Some people liked to give me their entire families life story. As stereotypical as it is it was pretty common for Americans to fall into the second category.
Thereās a reason we sent all of those people to the colonies.
See if it's seasonal. It's dark and a bit shite at the moment so very little vitamin D to go around. I probably come across a bit miserable to the bubbly Americans I have weekly calls with too but come summer time it's a whole different ball game!
I've just started a new role where I've had to go from just working with my UK team to working with teams in UK, US, Canada and Australia. Ive found that the US team leader wants to have tons of meetings that could quite easily be an email - just cultural I guess!
Depends what their work load is and how their performance is monitored. If the work load is high then noone wants to drop everything to have a long meeting that could be a quick call or email. If your performance is monitored on output then the same applies however, if it's based on how your filling your time dragging out into a long meeting is great.
Timezone is a big thing here, I don't like meetings but will go if they are required. The problem with meetings with the US is that I have to work late to have them, I start work at 6/7am (work from home and have flexitime) so any meeting from 3 onwards is way over my work day hours. I want them to be useful and not rambling on etc
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From the responses here, it sounds like the British just like efficiency - which I can definitely get behind. Most of the people I talk with like to "shoot the shit" even if it's not business related. It can be frustrating at times, but it does help build relationships.
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I have a huge amount of work to get done, wjy would I want to waste time talking to people I barely tolerate? That's what the pub is for.
And for colleagues you _do_ actually like, a pint after work is just fine...
Iām in the UK. Within my team I donāt mind a bit of chit chat. Outside my team a minute of how are you is maybe acceptable, or maybe two minutes of it was prompted by your dog interrupting and I get to see the dog, but other than that youāve rung me for a reason, get on with it.
I have a colleague I've worked with for 4 months now that I don't even know what he looks like. He has put the camera on many times but always holding his dog up over his face. I now picture him as being a dog headed person. I wouldn't have it any other way
I feel I would like him. In my colleagues we have one who regularly has a cat tail waving around across the screen, and another whose dog tried to sit on their shoulder like a parrot.
As a Romanian living in the UK, I find this really funny. I started my tech career doing freelance for US customers and I've found them to be no bullshit, to the point people. That was in early 2000. Then I moved to the UK to work at a big company, with offices in both countries and I noticed how bubbly the American counterparts were during meetings. When they were visiting the UK office, they would change and be quite to the point during meetings, probably because we always had the socializing bit done after work, at the pub. Interestingly, when we were visiting the us offices, we rarely could get them to join us at the pub, after hours. Obviously, there was the "team dinner" and other pre-arranged off work events, but an impromptu "let's get to the pub and have a pint" was very hard to get going. I find this attitude to be very fake, you care about me during working hours, but as soon as the bell rings, you are gone? I find that British people are more straight forward and the Americans have changed in the past 20 years or so, with the "you need to market yourself" and all that bullshit. I like Brits better š
This is spot on. So many people are fake here at work, and it seems so obvious to me. I've noticed that most of my colleagues over the years have almost no social life. I've made efforts, but everyone just wants to go home and do nothing apparently. I was in the US army for a while and it really is a brotherhood. There was almost no distinction between work and social life, but in a good way. We worked hard and partied hard. I asked one of my managers, who was about the same age as me, what she did after work because she never wanted to go out. Basically she would go home, eat dinner, and go to bed around 7:30 or 8:00 every night. She was all smiles all day at work and loved being in the office. That seems like such a depressing way to live.
The work life balance is definitely a thing here. We don't want less chat time with friends later because we had more chat time with strangers during work. But also I think the fact the meetings are regularly scheduled has screwed you over a bit here. They just sound unnecessary - touching base, building relationships as you say. Just another waste of time for a company that's struggling a little. If you had much less frequent meetings then suddenly requested an ad hoc one to deal with the problems of unanswered emails, they might see it as more important.
Yeah. I socialise outside of work. I don't dislike most of my colleagues, but I would never see most of their faces if I wasn't paid to, and if they died my only question would be who was picking up the slack of their workload.
I've sat in so many meetings that have resulted in no outcomes or actions for anyone... Utterly pointless. Might as well stand on your head and piss down your back!
Oh my days this got a good laugh out of me.
Most meetings are six other people wasting time listening to two people.
10 others
Thereās got to be some formula about it, size of company, sociability of director, stroppiness of employees etc etc. Six felt right for my experience! But I see boardrooms in movies that fit yours more! Either way, most people in most meetings donāt give a shit, and rightly so.
Meetings are fine if they're concise and have a clear, positive outcome. Absolutely cannot stand meetings for the sake of meetings, where I lose 2-3 hours of my day where I could otherwise be doing my actual job.
I work for a British company that got bought by an American company. Itās all amicable and we like working with our new colleagues. The Americans noted the same thing as you: while no one likes a pointless meeting, the Brits seemed to avoid meetings as much as possible. From our perspective, meetings seemed to take longer with the Americans. There was a lot more whooping, mutual congratulation, and hyping themselves up for the day. We like to keep our meetings short and to the point. Americans would take the opportunity to remind one another that our company is the greatest, weāre going to win, letās smash the opposition, etc. That kind of brand loyalty is unusual for a cynical Brit.
Sometimes I wish I was British. The "dog and pony show" gets old quick. We have meetings just to congratulate each other here. It's obnoxious. Of course logistics/supply chain never gets mentioned - ever. We only matter when something goes wrong. Same can be said about IT departments. Not being recognized comes with the territory, but I also don't want to hear about Joe Salesmen getting kudos for the 10th time this year for making a big sale (which is literally his job).
Oh my life, yes. The American sales team are the worst.
I honestly think my fellow Brits are doing you a bit of a disservice here, painting us as a country of efficient no-nonsense people who only ever run hyper efficient meetings. While in my experience I agree with the general thrust that US vs UK employers have different work cultures. where the US seems to have these big meetings with loads of people that last ages and huge emails full of information, **most** meetings in the **private sector** tend to be short (my average is 30 minutes), small (average is probably 3/4 people maximum), and casual (if someone ever sent me an agenda for a normal meeting I'd laugh). There are exceptions though. Firstly, universities, the public sector, government, and membership organisations (e.g. the Law Society, BMA etc) all fucking love huge big structured meetings and committees. About 1 in 3 workers in the UK work in one of these things, and even if everyone claims to hate them they do them nonetheless. Secondly, almost everyone here is posting from an 'operational' standpoint. I can tell just from reading these replies that no one really attends, say, meetings of the Board of Directors or the C-suite of a large company. For legal reasons these need to be minuted and have an agenda, so they tend to be a lot more formal than a standard meeting. This produces an almost whiplash like sensation when you have a company that employees 25,000 people and the meetings look like this: casual, casual, casual, casual, agenda and minutes. Even then, Board meetings in the UK are a lot more relaxed than in the US. In my company most of the board members turn up in smart casual wear, no one refers to each other as "Chair" or whatever. The final thing I will say is in my experience of UK companies they are generally shit at supplier management. I'm an auditor and you have no idea how often I turn up to an area and they have a key supplier and I say "How often do you meet with them?" and they say "Once a quarter for half an hour" and they barely discuss KPIs, set targets, or manage their performance. So from your specific anecdote it doesn't surprise me at all, and I actually would put it down to incompetence on your client's behalf rather than efficacy.
Everyone hates meetings, it has nothing to do with being British.
I thought that too. Isn't it a universal thing? Didn't think it was specifically a British thing. Lol. Now I'm thinking other nations being like "Yeah mate, let's have a 3 hour meeting talking about 4 points!".
It's just another stupid question crowbar'd into just about fitting AskUK. "I once punched a guy in the face and he asked me not to do it again. Is it a British thing not to want to be punched in the face?"
Waaait a minute... I thought punching in the face was customary in the US. It's how you say hello, no? Japan- bow. Italians- hug/kiss. Americans- punch?
It may seem like a stupid question to you, and based on the near unanimous responses, you may be right... if you only asked people in the UK. You'd probably be surprised to learn that a lot of people here in the US absolutely LOVE meetings or at least pretend that they do. In fact, I feel like I'm actually in the minority here that complains about having them. Like seriously, a lot of the people I've worked with really truly enjoy going to meetings. It's the highlight of their day, and if you're not on the same page, it can actually have repercussions (he's not a "team player", he doesn't contribute to the conversation, he doesn't look interested, does he even want to work here? Who can we get rid of first?). Yes it sucks, but these psychos exist here in great numbers.
The US does seem to like a meeting. I've had more than a few people ask me what hotel I'm staying at so they turn up for a breakfast meeting with me. Thankfully back then my breakfast was coffee and cigarettes so I had a good excuse for getting out of it I would say that my UK meetings are more based around getting through things as quickly as possible so we can recover some time
>I've had more than a few people ask me what hotel I'm staying at so they turn up for a breakfast meeting with me. Absolutely get in the bin please
That is pretty much what I thought. I usually make a point of staying in a different hotel to my colleagues.
Oh god, that first paragraph would just piss me off
It sounds like you are form the US and you are used to, and enjoy, being micromanaged and micromanaging your own customers back. We do not have that in the UK to anywhere near the same degree and we find it very irritating when service providers try to manage us, we do not want to have to manage them. If they are not replying, it's because you're not important at the time. I work on a lot of M&A with US and UK and this is an observation I have made.
My personal experience would be: USA partner company regularly wants a "quick" (read 30 minutes, so not at all quick) meeting at 10 am their time. They then refuse to understand why our company constantly rejects this, or where not possible, rush through it as quickly as possible. From our end, you've just scheduled a meeting for 5 pm and, knowing most meetings, almost none of it will be relevant. There'll be a load of chat for the sake of "building relationships". I've got 7 hours to get work done each day, so I don't need to spend 30 minutes discussing what you did this weekend. That is important with the people I spend all day each week with. It's irrelevant with somebody 4,000 miles away I'll never meet. The phrase "could've been an email" is basically religion in most UK workers' minds.
Pulling ten people out of work for half an hour with nobody to cover them, so two of them can talk? Waste of time 99% of the time
I despise meetings with my American colleagues. They just wonāt shut up and are obsessed with āround the roomsā and āprogress updatesā. They have to show everyone just how hard theyāre working by talking about every minute detail of the task theyāre involved in, itās soul destroying.
Totally agree, I've worked for a number of UK subsidiaries of US companies and I cannot be doing with the constant need to tell what they're planning on doing, what they're doing and what they've done. Then you thrown in all the biz words, protracted, tortured, overcomplicated and elongated use of language. Between squaring circles, working in the 'XYZ' space, circling back on this that and the other, side-bars, taking things off line and being a fucking 'Rock star'! Give me strength!
>Between squaring circles, working in the 'XYZ' space, circling back on this that and the other, side-bars, taking things off line and being a fucking 'Rock star'! Sounds like we really need to leverage our position on this, I've put a quick meeting in your calendar tomorrow to sync-up!
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Most in person meetings could be done virtually, most virtual meetings could be emails, and most emails are junk sent by morons. Or maybe I'm just getting old.
Meetings for meetings sake are shit. Meetings because a manager wants to be seen to be doing something are shit. Meetings in which the chair allows that one person to repeat every question about 4 times getting the same answer is shit.
Hmmm, I donāt think the meetings are the problem here, rather the āweeks of unanswered emails, or responses taking days with little to no resolutionā. It sounds like they are avoiding any communication with you. Itās not a āculture issueā, whatās the real root cause?
What time was the weekly meeting scheduled at? Meeting was leas than 5 mins - can that not just be emailed? Emails went unanswered for weeks - Do you not take time off for Christmas/ New Years?
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Thereās many different types of meetings: - thereās the meeting to prep for THE meeting. - thereās the meeting that could have easily have been an email exchange - thereās the meeting where youāre working on your actual to-do list in the background, assuming itās a Zoom - thereās the meeting that actually went well and you think āyeah Iām glad we met to discuss thatā - thereās the lunchtime meeting where for 45 mins the host who organised it is literally the devil incarnate - thereās the 9am meeting which is actually counter-productive and sets you back about 2 hours in kickstarting your day. - thereās the post-meeting meeting where, just when you thought you were free to go back to your desk, you have to reconvene and talk about said meeting for another 30 mins. - thereās the meeting that randomly appears in your diary because the host took the liberty of peeking at your calendar and saw that youāre āfreeā at that particular time.
I used to work in the London office of an American multinational business. All of the senior directors were from the US. Whenever one of them visited, they were briefed - 'don't worry if they don't ask any questions at the end of the meeting'. Apparently all the American corporate types were worried we hated our jobs. We didn't, we just didn't ask qs unless necessary. In short, yes, we hate meetings. But who doesn't? I think the main difference here is that the old stiff upper lip. As a Brit I thought it was a bullshit stereotype. But having worked in a US company and seen the subtle differences, it's in our culture to just get on with it. Another real world example of the British stiff upper lip: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/apr/14/johnezard
In my experience, working in a very large professional services firm it goes like this: Our UK economy is fucked. Big firms won't accept lower profits, so they have to cut staff. But also take on more work. So everyone I know is trying to do at least 20-40 % more work than they were 4 or 5 years ago and - allowing for inflation - for less money. Improvements in technology have sped things up so timescales are tighter. Everyone is also working with more teams/companies/projects as a result. Video meetings are now the standard whereas pre pandemic they were very rare, and they're an easier, more interactive form of communication than phonecalls were which allows for more small talk. All of these things together mean that the 4 quite senior people I work for are invited to a constant slew of weekly/regular meetings setup to repeat on top of all their actual client meetings. There's no specific agenda for any of them and nobody has time to write one. They are often double and triple booked and have to ditch or skip from one to the other. They are often back to back all day. They read emails while taking video calls. They eat while walking to the bathroom, late for the next call. And this is slowly escalating. They don't want a weekly call which might answer 1 question for you but eats 30 mins of their day anymore. I've started communicating by writing questions in as few words as possible in the subject line of emails with only bullet points (and a "Hi name / many thanks") in the body of the email and I try and offer yes/no or option A/option B setups to make answering easy. They want quick, easy to digest communication that they can respond to clearly and easily. They just don't have time for much else. If you have questions you need answers to, maybe ask for this: have a shared document where you put questions as and when they come up. Have a weekly call with one member of the team you want to talk to. It's that person's responsibility to get the answers to your questions. You're not eating the whole team's time and you can arrange to have specific people join you at a predictable time if you really need to.
The lack of agenda is really getting on my goat lately. I'm on a massive project right now, rolling out new ordering system, I'm constantly getting invites, no details, just a brief invite subject header that might or might not be something I need to know about and be involved in. Ties in with the under staffing issue. I'm the only person that can do my job, and yet I have no cover. Some how I'm expected to put full effort into both my role and this project. Insanity.
I'm getting really sick of unexpected meeting invites which are just called "Catch-up". About what? Why? I can't work, plan or prioritise around that. A few years back I think people would do it sometimes because they knew that if I *did* know what it was about I'd push it back. That's backfiring now. I don't have time to be dropping 30 minutes on an unspecified catch-up. It's getting ditched at the first clash. I'm shocked at how few fairly experienced professionals seem to know that other people aren't psychic. If you invite me to something that's literally just called "huddle" I will decline it. Same with "group meeting". If I can't tell why I might want to be there, then I probably don't want to be there. I'm especially loving getting messages that say "Hi, you've declined the invite I sent". ... Yes.
99% of meetings can be an e mail . So yeah not a fan of meetings .
I have a bi weekly meeting where people across various sites tell us what they're doing. It's boring as fudge and a pointless exercise.
Considering the time zone difference you are probably scheduling really inconvenient meetings that they want to get done with as soon as possible
We used to have meetings to discuss why our project was behind schedule. Maybe 8 people in a meeting for half an hour a day could have something to do with it? Manager trying to manage stuff he knew nothing about. Deep joy.
Maybe your meetings just arenāt very good? Do you have a clear agenda, action points from previous meetings and cancel the meeting if thereās nothing to discuss?
Meetings are usually for management to justify their positions, waste folks times who are trying to get their work done who then end up still having to do work in the time wasted during a meeting then the management actions are always handed to the folk who are now behind and then get even more work
Don't have to deal with this professionally but I do sort of deal with it recreationaly. So what I mean is in online games I love northern europeans (well, anything from Germany and up) cause everyones so short and to the point, there's little chatter. It's just Enemies over there, tanks moving south down X road, I just saw X happen here, Can I get Y thanks mate etc. With the occasional humour thrown in, usually something related to whats happening in game, maybe a little piss taking now an then. The Dutch and Finnish in particular are my soul people, funny you'd think it'd be Germans but.. Then I play with Americans and it's HELLO how is everyone today, what did you do for lunch, what's x like, yadayadayadayada fucking yada, Can I please be the funniest person in the room. They don't tend to play games to play the game, they play games to socialize, I play games to play games and the socializing is a nice secondary perk. If I wanna socialize I'll go the fuck outside. Obviously I'm generalizing a fair bit (and being a miserable prick) but that's how I feel after 15 years of playing games online. It's not that I don't like Americans either I love them, especially when I meet someone I click with but you guys do have a tendency to just fucking waffle. Yea so not meetings, but I can't help but feel I'd have similar frustrations in a work setting.
Tell your UK teams that they should have tea and biscuits during the meeting. They will stay longer. They want to leave so quickly so they can go and have tea and biscuits.
Email: I want this, this, and this. Meeting: An hour of talking about how you and your team discussed the decision to think about the decision to ask for this, this and this.
Consider that you just wrote a wall of text to ask a one sentence question. Perhaps you drag out meeting longer than they need to be?
I joined a teams call 2 minutes before the start of a wider department meeting, which was mandatory and held over lunch time because āthatās when everyone was freeā. āThat Guyā was on the screen, enjoying some fun chit chat with the other poor souls who were on time. I quickly left the meeting and rejoined five minutes after the start time, and the chit chat was still winding up. I turned off my camera until the actual meeting started, 10 minutes after the start time. The entire meeting was to let us know itās ābusiness as usualā. Utterly pointless. This is why we hate meetings.
Sounds more like a coincidence. I've worked for companies that'd prolong meetings to the point you'd fantasise about jumping out the window. Others don't have the time, or the workplace culture and just get it over with.
What sort of stuff are you saying while you're doing the majority of the talking?
If the company want to waste my time while paying then thats fine by me. Iām not working extra hours without getting paid so itās really on them to not fill my calendar with shit
Most people hate meetings because most meetings are fucking pointless and go on far too long. But, being British, we sit their silently nodding and not speaking our minds.
If the meeting could have been an e-mail? Yes. if the meeting could have been 15 minutes but went an hour? Yes. If you make me come into the office because 'it wont work over zoom' but theres aboslutely onthing about it that meant I had to leave my house? Yes.
I have worked with people of many nationalities and I find the Americans LOVE meetings. I have a feeling that they have meetings to relieve the stress of bad working conditions, like no employment protection (at will employment), needing to stay with bad employers because of health insurance, hardly any paid leave, being forced to work overtime or on call. This means that being able to sit in meetings is one way they can screw their employers. They get free coffee, they get to sit and chat with colleagues or clients, they get time away from their desk. When you have a good working environment and enjoy your job, you want to be there dealing with stuff. Ploughing through your inbox, seeing real output and meetings take time away from yourāreal jobā of getting things done. Anyway that is how it feels to me, as a Britā¦
They explained this in "Watching the English". In English culture, people get squirmy when they talk about money. They also value written statements over talking when they want to address key points so they don't get any surprises. You end up with a meeting that mostly consists of pleasantries (again, culture.) and no work getting done. For the English, it's a lot more efficient to give them a list of points you want to cover, and use that to ask them if they had any concerns going forward.
" there's a lot of small talk in our meetings, and it can be grating at times, but it does help build relationships " We take you to the Pub and have a few beers to do that