Fruck Takes Meeting by Storm

As an employee, Hans was noted for his cooperative and carefree spirit.Recently Publishing Inc employee Hans Fruck publicly thanked colleague Wilson Wilson for inspiring his recent attack of goal-setting verbosity. Fruck, an inveterate poo-pooer and team-meeting wet blanket was taken to task by Wilson for not pulling his weight in team meetings, and thereby leaving too great a participatory burden on his colleagues.

“I would find myself”, said Wilson, “not only doing my fair share of team-meeting talking, but also having to take up the slack left by Hans, who generally sat there in sullen silence. With our recent spate of goal-setting meetings, this burden became too great. I just had to say something.”

For his part, Fruck admitted to frequent meeting recalcitrance at both a team and departmental level. “When Wilson expressed her dissatisfaction at my team-meeting performance, I was flustered”, he said. “Of course, I resorted to some diversionary humour, but when I sneaked a look at Wilson, she had a steely, unimpressed look in her eye… I felt intimidated.”

According to Fruck, afterward in the solitude of his right-angle, he subjected himself to a period of scathing self-appraisal. “I recognised”, he confirmed, “that I was in danger of becoming my own biggest cliché. That my anti-meetingism had calcified into a repetitive, naysaying template.

“This”, he admitted, “was a humbling realisation. So I abandoned my normal arsenal of team-meeting tics and gambits: the deep sigh, the obstinate silence, the facetious comment, the sarcastic aside, the sudden discussion-halting venting of spleen. In short, I became a participant, not a spectator.”

“It was a rewarding experience”, Fruck confessed. “I can’t say that I altered any agendas, shifted any paradigms, or even set any goals—but I believe I was, nonetheless, a shaft of team-meeting sunlight rather than my customary cumulo-nimbus.

“At one stage in the latest installment of our ‘goal-setting’ indoctrination, I believe Wilson gave me a twinkly look, as if to say: Welcome to the team, Hans. It’s nice to have you back on board, esteemed colleague. Together—as a team—we shall prosper. It was a moment of solidarity that I shan’t soon forget”, Fruck declared.

Briefly, Fruck called a halt to the interview while he sniffed and dabbed daintily at his eyes. “Sorry, had something in my eye. Damn air-conditioning."

While bullish about his latest team-meeting performance, Fruck did acknowledge that there was still room for improvement. “I admit that about three-quarters of an hour into the meeting I did commence my customary tree/mountain landscape doodle. In my defence, the doodling was far less elaborate than normal: it lacked my usual meticulous cross-hatched style, and had no clouds, or birds in flight—though it did have a bridge, a stream, a road, and a copse of trees. All in all, it was a charming and bucolic scene… But, ah, as I said: it was less elaborate than usual.

“It’s also true that, at times, my mind did wander into wonder. One moment I was trying to understand how to improve departmental communication, the next I’m contemplating how cool invisibility would be. One moment I was considering how to improve editorial efficiency, the next I’m thinking how interesting it would be to have a time-lapse camera recording the growth spurt of the plant stem that’s protruding through the toilet window at home… I recall simply sitting there, raptly contemplating the summery burgeoning of burgeoning.

“Then I remember grappling with some arcane procedural point—something about whether the ‘actions’ we took to fulfil our ‘goals’ were ‘measurable’. Next thing I know, I’m imagining interrupting the team meeting to deliver my resignation. In my mind, I’m acting out a series of pithy and memorable exchanges between myself and my colleagues. I’m supplying dialogue for both sides, and feeling great satisfaction with my own eloquence…

“Of course, when I stopped daydreaming, I realised that my goal-setting printout was opened to the wrong page. Not wanting to arouse suspicion, I made a show of shuffling my printout around, as if consulting an earlier point. The others were talking about how to improve communication with project managers… I nodded thoughtfully, and said ‘yes’ a few times, just to show I was on the ball.

“I must have tuned back out, because next thing I know I’m imagining the lolly container’s a bomb, the desk’s a lifeboat, and I’m a film critic. This, in turn, enmeshes me in a complex series of moral and aesthetic conundrums.

“My conclusions are as follows:
1A. I would be more likely to survive a bomb explosion by throwing myself below the desk than by using a colleague as a human shield.
1B. Depending on the colleague, using a human-shield might be more satisfying.
2. If I could rescue only one teammate from a stormy sea, it would be Wilson Wilson.
3. That great though Scarface is The Godfather II is better.

"This led me to ponder related questions:
Was throwing someone onto a bomb planted in a lifeboat an interesting film scenario? How would you choose which person?

“While intriguing, I concluded that these questions weren’t worth pondering, because regardless of who you threw on the bomb, it would blow a hole in the boat, and the boat’d sink—you’d all be fucked, anyway.

“Through all this, I still made intermittent excursions into Meetingville. Admittedly through a lack of attention, interest, and intellect, the finer goal-setting points escaped me. I did, however, compensate by seizing on the really obvious points and loudly banging on about them… before fading back into much more interesting lifeboat-related considerations.

“Look, I realise that my meeting performance was far from faultless. But it was an improvement. Don’t forget, every journey starts with a single step. Well, today I started mine. One day I will reach my destination, and on that day I too will be debating—at elephantine length and in the very latest and most meaningless jargon—needlessly complicated issues of dubious application.

“Yes, that day will come. On that day I’ll have a process for every breath. A goal for every second. A feedback form for every bowel movement. I’ll bore you with banalysis; I’ll cavil over the ninth part of a hair. I’ll put myself under surveillance; I’ll put you under surveillance. I’ll gather data; I’ll standardise data—you will be that data. I’ll wonder why you’re not happy.

“Well, speak up, you fucker. Why aren’t you happy?”

-- Hans Fruck