Oh, It's Time
Maybe it's the rain, or maybe it's the end of September, or maybe it's me, but whatever it is, I've had just about enough. I've been warning my co-teacher for the past few days that a Jerry Maguire-level flip out is coming, and I'm not sure who's gonna be on the receiving end. At first I think she thought I was kidding, but as the week's progressed, I've noticed her sort of saying something to me, glancing at me, and then backing up slowly. I'm not even joking.
I just have one question: why does every decision an adult makes have to be validated at an official meeting? I swear, since I've graduated college, I've spent more time in meetings, talking about working, than actually working. And yes, I understand that part of that mathematical phenomenon is because I was also unemployed for some of that time, and I was meeting about finding a job, but still, I've found that while employed, I spend the majority of my time talking to people about the work I'm going to do, or the work I did, or the work I'm supposed to be doing. What's more troubling than that fact alone is that I seem to be the only person who actually cannot handle this.
I look around at my colleagues and try to gauge whether they think it's torture to sit through an hour meeting talking about the same things we talked about last week and the week before that and the year before that, but I can't tell. The closest that I've seen anyone come to admitting the truth about meetings was when someone listed "we had snacks" as a positive from one of our sessions. If the best thing that happened was you put some triscuits and Cracker Barrel cheese on a plate, well, I think you need to reevaluate the time you're spending in these meetings.
Where I work, we not only have meetings every single day, but we have meetings to plan for those meetings and meetings to talk about how they went. This is all called planning and debriefing, so that you think you're doing something really important and essential to your job, but in reality, all you're doing is talking about what you'll be talking about and talking about what you did talk about.
What's worse is what we meet about. For example, earlier this month, we had to meet to discuss who would take which kids to the bathroom before lunch. I'm not kidding: this was an item on our meeting agenda. Not only that, it took several sessions to come to a conclusion. Apparently it's a huge deal which teachers take the boys and which teachers take the girls to the bathroom before lunch. Nobody can quite tell me why, but we have to hear about the successes of the line in years past, and of course, the failures and the injustices. We have to hear about how teachers led students to the bathroom in schools in Texas and schools in Vermont. We also think about how they escort prisoners to the restrooms, just to make sure we're not allowing the children too many freedoms. When I mentioned that I thought it might be unfair to tell a child that he or she can't go to the bathroom until 10:05, even if it was 7:50 AM, I was quickly silenced, yet another irony: anyone with a different point is immediately silenced. We can only listen to repetitions of the same opinions.
Anyway, my point is, we met for about 45 minutes to discuss who'd take the kids to the bathroom. Not that the actual deciding was the issue. People quickly volunteered for which kids to take, but then we had to listen to why our decision made sense. We actually spent time hearing about how great our decision was.
Then, when we tried it out, one teacher decided it DID NOT WORK. This was a major problem. It was put on the next week's meeting agenda, but referenced in every conversation we had. Finally, when the problem was announced, I quickly volunteered to change my role, thinking that by doing so, I would be averting another major summit on Bathroom Duty. We heard about ten minutes of why my switch made sense and how it would now work, and right when I thought I'd been on the ledge, I could feel myself calming down and anticipating moving on to our next scintillating agenda item: whether we should extend homeroom for five minutes to allow a guest speaker (vote: yes, and that took the remainder of the meeting -30 minutes). As I began to breathe again, the teacher who wanted the change, who approved the change, who told stories of how the change would now work, piped up, "OK, but let's set up a meeting time for those teachers who just said they'd take the boys to the bathroom so we can discuss how it will work."
For the record, I did not end up meeting about the bathroom policies, mainly because I think people were afraid to bring it up to me because I made one of those "I will hang myself" gestures at anyone who mentioned the possibility of further discussion. But here's the amazing thing: even without this extra meeting and extra discussion, I still show up everyday to do my part. I still honor my responsibility, and it works out. Boys go to the bathroom, then to lunch. Nobody dies.
I know that my workplace isn't any different from many others. A lot of people have to meet about a lot of stupid things, just as ridiculous as who takes which children to use the bathroom. But my question remains: why do so many people continue to put up with it? People wonder why co-workers have such rage against each other, but I don't really anymore. There's only so many times you can sit across a round table from someone (we're all equal with equal voices, but some are allowed to talk longer) and hear their voice before you want to prick their eyeballs out.
I just have one question: why does every decision an adult makes have to be validated at an official meeting? I swear, since I've graduated college, I've spent more time in meetings, talking about working, than actually working. And yes, I understand that part of that mathematical phenomenon is because I was also unemployed for some of that time, and I was meeting about finding a job, but still, I've found that while employed, I spend the majority of my time talking to people about the work I'm going to do, or the work I did, or the work I'm supposed to be doing. What's more troubling than that fact alone is that I seem to be the only person who actually cannot handle this.
I look around at my colleagues and try to gauge whether they think it's torture to sit through an hour meeting talking about the same things we talked about last week and the week before that and the year before that, but I can't tell. The closest that I've seen anyone come to admitting the truth about meetings was when someone listed "we had snacks" as a positive from one of our sessions. If the best thing that happened was you put some triscuits and Cracker Barrel cheese on a plate, well, I think you need to reevaluate the time you're spending in these meetings.
Where I work, we not only have meetings every single day, but we have meetings to plan for those meetings and meetings to talk about how they went. This is all called planning and debriefing, so that you think you're doing something really important and essential to your job, but in reality, all you're doing is talking about what you'll be talking about and talking about what you did talk about.
What's worse is what we meet about. For example, earlier this month, we had to meet to discuss who would take which kids to the bathroom before lunch. I'm not kidding: this was an item on our meeting agenda. Not only that, it took several sessions to come to a conclusion. Apparently it's a huge deal which teachers take the boys and which teachers take the girls to the bathroom before lunch. Nobody can quite tell me why, but we have to hear about the successes of the line in years past, and of course, the failures and the injustices. We have to hear about how teachers led students to the bathroom in schools in Texas and schools in Vermont. We also think about how they escort prisoners to the restrooms, just to make sure we're not allowing the children too many freedoms. When I mentioned that I thought it might be unfair to tell a child that he or she can't go to the bathroom until 10:05, even if it was 7:50 AM, I was quickly silenced, yet another irony: anyone with a different point is immediately silenced. We can only listen to repetitions of the same opinions.
Anyway, my point is, we met for about 45 minutes to discuss who'd take the kids to the bathroom. Not that the actual deciding was the issue. People quickly volunteered for which kids to take, but then we had to listen to why our decision made sense. We actually spent time hearing about how great our decision was.
Then, when we tried it out, one teacher decided it DID NOT WORK. This was a major problem. It was put on the next week's meeting agenda, but referenced in every conversation we had. Finally, when the problem was announced, I quickly volunteered to change my role, thinking that by doing so, I would be averting another major summit on Bathroom Duty. We heard about ten minutes of why my switch made sense and how it would now work, and right when I thought I'd been on the ledge, I could feel myself calming down and anticipating moving on to our next scintillating agenda item: whether we should extend homeroom for five minutes to allow a guest speaker (vote: yes, and that took the remainder of the meeting -30 minutes). As I began to breathe again, the teacher who wanted the change, who approved the change, who told stories of how the change would now work, piped up, "OK, but let's set up a meeting time for those teachers who just said they'd take the boys to the bathroom so we can discuss how it will work."
For the record, I did not end up meeting about the bathroom policies, mainly because I think people were afraid to bring it up to me because I made one of those "I will hang myself" gestures at anyone who mentioned the possibility of further discussion. But here's the amazing thing: even without this extra meeting and extra discussion, I still show up everyday to do my part. I still honor my responsibility, and it works out. Boys go to the bathroom, then to lunch. Nobody dies.
I know that my workplace isn't any different from many others. A lot of people have to meet about a lot of stupid things, just as ridiculous as who takes which children to use the bathroom. But my question remains: why do so many people continue to put up with it? People wonder why co-workers have such rage against each other, but I don't really anymore. There's only so many times you can sit across a round table from someone (we're all equal with equal voices, but some are allowed to talk longer) and hear their voice before you want to prick their eyeballs out.
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