The Art of the Meeting

I'm sitting on a hard and cramped wooden bench in a smelly historical building, listening to a group of teenagers tell me about their summer raising pigs and goats. This is not what I came for (well, obviously....would anyone volunteer to listen to teenagers for two hours?). I am here to register my 7-year-old for the 4H Club. Except that these teenagers recognize they have a captive audience, and they are not going to let us go as easily as that. First we have to listen to THEM.

In fact, when we get fidgety (the room is full of parents with small children), the teenagers huff and roll their eyes. The president pouts purposefully and refuses to continue; then, when she finds herself still ignored (some people never do take a hint), begins banging her gavel. Her mother glares at her across the room. A mother-daughter spat ensues, in front of fifty irritated onlookers, who really just want to sign their kids up for goat camp and go home. It is clear that if we do not hold our tongues and suffer willingly, the torture will continue indefinitely.

I can't stand it when someone wastes my time. Why is it that so many meetings are like this? Here are a gaggle of sixteen and seventeen year olds, primed already for a lifetime of board meetings designed specifically to ensure that work never gets done.