The Staff Meeting

Today I went to the company staff meeting for the first time in 5 years. And it was just as painful as I remembered.

When I first started a million years ago, my boss had me attend so I could see what they were all about. Ever since then, I've never gone back because I've always had to stay and answer the phones. Now we have two receptionists. And the more I thought about it, why should I stay and work while everyone else gets an hour off? Just because there's a staff meeting doesn't mean the phones stop ringing, and to make matters worse, callers call back complaining about getting a voicemail.

Yes, I know. Everyone is at a company staff meeting. Why aren't I there? Because someone has to answer the phones. Surprisingly, callers didn't understand that, and ya know what? It doesn't make any sense. So yes, I think I will attend this meeting - how bad could it be?

...

It wasn't bad. It was terrible. The VP of HR started off the meeting with having us a do a wave. I almost walked out right then.

The rest of the meeting pretty much showed me that I have absolutely no knowledge of the company that I work for. I mean I know the basics and know the appropriate information in order to transfer calls correctly (and how to deliver pizzas to meetings...) but when the CEO started talking about quarterly percentages about raising certain sectors, with the lovely use of pie charts and excel spreadsheets, I felt like the dumbest person in the room. Talk about feeling insignificant in a huge company.

If that wasn't bad enough, we had two new managers from our stores come in and pretty much give their life stories about how they've been with the company for 7 years, and wooowwww, look at me, I've done soooo much with myself in the past 7 years. Meh. Whateverrrrrrr.

Anywho, once the meeting was over, I enjoyed the free catered lunch - that I didn't have to order, set up, or do anything for - well, kind of. I had to help keep the lines moving and silly things like that, but once that was over, I got to pick through the scraps and get myself some chicken marsala. haha. (Oh, and don't worry. It wasn't the same caterer who gave me food poisoning, although, that could have made for a really interesting blog... haha!

I get back to my desk and hop on email. My 9 meetings for the week had doubled to 18. After having a slight panic attack, I broke it down to list what absolutely had to be done today. I *only* had to order a breakfast and 3 lunches for tomorrow, and make sure drinks were put in the fridge so they'd be cold for the meetings. How did this happen?? Wasn't everyone just in the meeting? Of course, NG decided she needed "a real lunch" and left me answering phones while trying to figure out how I was going to get everything done.

I didn't really, I made her in charge of dealing with the meetings for tomorrow, so I could go back to Kathy's desk and try to get the rest of the week sorted out. Wish me luck. I have no idea if the breakfast for tomorrow will arrive.

Long story short - what is the point of staff meetings?? Pretty much all I got out of it was that I don't know much about the company, and I was stuck running around for the last 2 hours of my shift trying to catch up on work and not to freak out on people.

Good thing the company provided cupcakes for dessert, or I'd really start to complain, haha! ;)