Yes darling, I know you’re impotent……
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To (almost) start the week, I give you 5 things that you think make you look important but actually prove you’re a knob:
1) Being late for meetings – OK I get it, your diary is busy because of all of those wonderfully productive meetings that you attend. I really do. Because you know what? My diary is full of them at your behest. But the difference is that I’m always there, because I respect the other poor fuckers that have proper work to do but instead have to listen to you drone on and on.
2) Carrying your Blackberry around the building with you – Please…..the business wouldn’t know if you were run over by a bus, well ok they’d be less meetings but apart from that. You don’t need to demonstrate that you have a BB…everyone has one now. What’s that you say? Me? Yeah I’m always holding on to my phone…but that is because I’m tweeting what a cock you are.
3) Telling me how busy you are – Look around you, can you see anyone who isn’t busy? And you know what? They are mostly busy dealing with the last lot of crap that you caused through your ineffective presence on this earth. And if you really are that busy…then how come you have time to blather on to me about how busy you are? I know I don’t.
4) Sending me pointless emails anytime between 8pm and 6am – If you want to spend the night making love to your keyboard then fine. I have a family and a taste for wine, we each plot our own course. But sending me non-important “Thanks” or “Let’s talk” emails at stupid o’clock is….well stupid! I really don’t care and nor does anyone else. And no, I won’t reply. Delete.
5) Getting your letters pp’d – If you can’t be bothered to put your name on the bottom, I can’t be bothered to read it. I know you’ve read it, I know your hand has touched it, but you can’t be arsed. Unless your name is Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Jack Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorft Senior , there is no damned excuse.
My Hell is Other People 
All so true!
In several companies I have had the prayer ‘God save us from the CEO / MD meeting someone for lunch’, because that’s where most of the crackpot ideas would come from.
In the queue at the clinic for getting the snip, one man was asked why he was wearing a top hat and tails.
He replied “If I’m gonna be impotent, I wanna look impotent!”
Wait, what is pp’d? I need a translation.
“per procurationem” – when someone signs a letter for someone else and includes pp before their signature.
I’d take Number One a step farther and say if you just call for a meeting, you’re a knob. I have been lobbying to abolish meetings for a long time. To help us survive until that happy day, I offered different ways to end a meeting in an article at http://www.evilskippyatwork.com/?p=360. And please oh please, also save us from “busy” people. Come to think of it, “busy” people are usually the ones always wanting to have meetings, where they tell us how busy they are and make us all fall behind on the real work.
Can we also abolish bloody “minute taking”. Where the “busy” people waste half an hour asking who will “volunteer” to take the minutes. Pointless, useless, mind-numbing and let’s not forget what a waste of time typing up those notes and sending them out is. No one cares?!
I agree with each and every one of your points. In fact, I am incredibly tempted to print the list and post it at work. The main thing holding me back is that most people it applies to will not think that it applies to them.
I work with several flagrant offenders – you left out not just carrying your crackberry everywhere, but also continually CHECKING it during the meetings! Also, not just calling meetings, but not providing any agenda and THEN showing up and saying “What’s this meeting about?” — You called it you knob. If I had the balls I’d walk out right then – “call me when you figure out what this meeting is about!” (or not….). OH – and – “Who’d like to take the lead on this?” aka “I can’t be bothered to do any of the work, I’m too busy taking the credit for it already!”
I would have come by earlier but….see numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 above.
Yours sincerely
pp Lord Snoopington
@Barry Rees – Haha…..yes MDs are best kept in solitary confinement don’t you think?
@Stephen O’Donnell – *groan*
@Jim – I’ve used that hide and seek one……!
@Shereen – “ahh you’re in HR, you can take the minutes” eh????
@Corporate Daycare – You could always email it to their Blackberry? 🙂
@g-dog – Hahaha….sounds like this one touches a nerve there! I love the I have a great idea, now who is going to do the work angle….!
@Doug Shaw – Funny boy….. 🙂
Sadly – this crap is all too effective in the corporate world (may be everywhere). May be it triggers the primal “limited resource – must be valuable” in our brain stems???
Sorry I’m late to the comments here. I was busy having a holiday!!
Seriously, though, wearing my corporate hat, I’ve experienced pretty much all of these. In fact, if I’m meeting with a prospective new client from a corporate setting, on or off their premises, one of the things I’ll pay attention to is when they turn up.
Being late for an arranged meeting is abusive. It’s as much a lack of respect for oneself as for the other. As a coach or consultant, if I buy into it the implicit power play – my time is important: you are not – there will never be an equal relationship, and therefore the real development work will never happen.