Meetings in the Morning

astina

I had two meetings this morning, with exactly the same people and in exactly the same meeting room. You may wonder since this was the case, why there were two meetings instead of one. To tell you the truth, I wondered the same but could not figure out why.

9.15 in the morning, we were sitting in the meeting room, doing small chatting with each other which was the routine before a meeting anyway. The meeting got kicked off 5 minutes later and we started discussing various issues. Whenever someone accidentally touched upon the topic which was supposed to be discussed in the next meeting, someone else would say: “well, we can leave it for the time being. This is not included in the agenda for this meeting”. This happened a couple of times, all followed by similar comments. Five to ten, we finished the first meeting and went back to our own desks.

We checked our emails and found a message from the boss inviting us to a second meeting at 10 o’clock. We re-filled our mugs with tea or coffee and re-entered the meeting room. I groaned silently to myself when finding people doing small chatting again, pretending we had not already had a meeting earlier this morning. Even everybody was sitting in the same chair as they did in the first meeting. I suggested to the guy sitting next to me that we should swap seats so at least there would be some change but he declined this request. What boring accountants, not imaginative at all, I sighed.  But on second thoughts, ain’t I myself more or less the same?

The second  meeting was dominated by the boss while everybody else had obviously got exhausted from the first one, with little to contribute, or had not recovered from the previous weekend at all. The boss kept talking and I tried painfully to stop from yawning a couple of times. Looking around the room, I found people began to realise that from the way the boss talked, this meeting would probably last forever. As a result, they adjusted their pose and made themselves more comfortable as if preparing to remain in the seat for the rest of their lives.

Just when I was about to give up the idea that I could walk out of this meeting room alive, someone knocked at the door and announced it was already 11 and they had booked the room from 11 onwards. I could almost hear how people cheered quietly at this announcement, except for the boss of course. We almost rushed out of the room, not believing our luck and fearing that things might change if we did not grab the chance immediately.


Back to our own seat, much to our surprise, we found a big bag beside everyone’s desk. It contained 9 kilos of laundry detergents and was a gift from the company. It could be very handy to someone like me who machine-washes almost everything. Lucky that I forgot to include detergents in my shopping list last weekend. Finally there was something worth being cheerful at and after all life has got both negative and positive sides, hasn’t it? So for the first time on this Monday morning, I found myself in high spirits.

astina

比较新的一个帖子，偶自己觉得满好玩