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I work in the defense industry. I love it and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Working in the defense industry does, however, bring a lot of stereotypes along with it. There are a lot of grumpy former military officers in their 50s and 60s. There is a lot of lingo that boring civilians like me don’t understand. And there are a lot of briefings. If there is anything that can be discussed by more than two people, you bet your ass that there is going to be a briefing.
These briefings, or “meetings” as you non-DoD folk call them, are actually quite the experience. They are full of old man humor and a bunch of guys who don’t want to be there. There are plenty of unique curse words that get dropped. Everyone’s coffee is black. The chairs are comfy and the comradery is incomparable.
A lot of people hate meetings. I see daily tweets from countless millennials lamenting how awful their meeting is going to be or already was. Now, while we may be able to all agree on how much we hate conference calls, I refuse to join the “I Hate Meetings” crowd. I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative, one that I have never asked to be part of.
I absolutely love meetings. It’s a perfect opportunity to get away from my desk for an hour or so and not have to do any work at all. Most of the time, meetings don’t even pertain to me necessarily, but I’m just required to be there. You’d be surprised how much a meeting can actually benefit you. I have been able to not only pick up a ton of job knowledge but also learn more about internal processes and the way things work in other departments. Being in this particular industry, it’s been huge for me and my development. I have been able to learn the way things work and I’ve also begun my own dictionary of defense contracting slang and acronyms. Meetings are a great way to learn and also make an impression on all kinds of people. No pressure.
Meetings are also a prime opportunity to learn a lot of stuff that you’re not supposed to know. Of course, there’s always the typical office gossip and slandering of anyone that is not in attendance, but did you know you can learn all kinds of other company secrets that you aren’t supposed to hear? A common occurrence is a topic that should typically be “taken offline” ends up being discussed right there in front of your eyes. Congratulations! Now you know that the Director of Contracts is getting fired before even he does! Are you now obligated to tell his wife? Don’t worry, you can’t, because she already left him for the same reason he’s getting fired. Yeah, that went south real fast. Crazy what you can learn in meetings, isn’t it?
I challenge all of you to approach your next meeting with a positive attitude. Chances are you will be able to gain some job knowledge and maybe even connect with someone from another department just in case you want a breath of fresh air down the road. Who knows, maybe you’ll even learn that you’ve known a felon for two years. .
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@delph_13
@gdelph13
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Big meeting guy here. Easiest way to get nothing accomplished while looking busy. No one is going to bother you if you’re in a meeting, and if they do whoever is speaking just puts up the “one second” finger towards them without looking their direction and they leave.
I also love meetings. One of the few times I get paid to actually sit down.
Nurses. Always acting like they have a hard job
Right, because cleaning liquid poo off of an old man’s grundle is an easy job.
I mean, it IS easy. It’s unpleasant, but it’s easy.
Prob going to get downvoted hard here but it doesn’t seem like nurses take their work home with them and that’s awesome. They work their 36 hours for the week and when they clock out, they are done. Those of us that are in Sales, Finance, etc can never just be done. We have email on our phones that never allow us to really stop working that doesn’t count towards our 40+ hour weekly commitment.
Yeahhh I agree. Each job has its own difficulties but I work wayyyy more than 36 hours a week and I’m almost always “on-call” (like some of us here) meaning I never don’t think about business (that could be a problem though.) I’m not one to talk about how much I work but it’s really annoying when people complain about their jobs when there are always people out there working harder or doing more than you.
Next up: Teachers.
Woah I thought this was a post about how meetings are nice because you don’t really have to do much if you’re not the one running them… yikes
All joking aside, my little girl wants to be a nurse and I’m encouraging it, because you can’t outsource that shit; lets face it, knowing pivot tables and VLOOKUPs and how to make a PowerPoint is only going to dupe people into paying me a living for so long.
Plenty of other people are on their feet all day at work.
Hey man chill out. They do.
It was extreme sarcasm. My fiancé is a nurse. I have a good grasp on how hard they work. Just some fun Friday banter
Damn. I should have assumed it was. My wife is a nurse and I can’t imagine doing any of the shit she deals with.
meetings are great when there’s free food involved
I love it when they cater
I hear you love 1-on-1 meetings.
I love meetings. They break up the day and they usually consist of 15% important meeting related information and 85% shit talking/gossip.
Not a big fan of meetings personally, but I am a big fan of ducking phone calls and emails form customers then telling them “I was in a meeting all morning”
Being a meeting participant is awesome. Being the organizer… Not so much.
Just create an agenda that has topics with other names next to them…abdicate all responsibility
I like meetings as long as I don’t have to organize, plan the agenda or take note, which is usually the case for my position. Makes me want to scratch my eyeballs out.
When I used to work in customer service, everybody used to love meetings and even trainings because it would give us a break from talking to angry customers on the phone for a while.
I like my group’s weekly meeting because it’s actually useful information. I am also on our company’s version of the “party planning committee” and those meetings stretch to an hour when they could be wrapped up in 20 minutes, so I definitely brace myself for those.
Ex defense industry PM here: meetings were the best thing for someone my age who was so much younger than everyone else. I learned a ton of stuff and also got to see how these decision makers think. Although a lot of things a fucked up, that knowledge can be applied elsewhere. I also liked getting away from my desk so meetings were kinda like recess for me
My head is spinning from this comment that at no point touched on Bitcoin, shadow governments, or the overall pointlessness of life. You ok dude?
I have the power to bring out a different Nived.
What you don’t know is that Nived just crushed you guys with his perceived normalcy. Read between the lines.
Amen. When I first started my job I was shadowing someone who was in meetings constantly. I learned a lot about the work, and maybe more importantly, the other people doing it, just by sitting in, listening, and paying attention. In contrast, a new guy came into his first meetings running his mouth, answering questions he didn’t have any clue about, and now he has a bozo reputation. Meetings giveth, and meetings taketh away.