Oh, look at you. Mr. Big Shot Meeting Organizer. You wrapped up your pointless status update in 22 minutes instead of the scheduled 30, and now you’re sitting there with that self-satisfied smirk, bestowing upon us peasants the generous gift of “eight minutes back.”
“I know everyone’s busy, so I wanted to give you some time back!”
You didn’t give me anything. You took 22 minutes of my life that I’m never getting back. The fact that you didn’t take the full 30 you threatened me with doesn’t make you a hero. That’s like a mugger stealing $20 from my wallet instead of $30 and expecting a thank you card.
Here’s a radical concept that’s apparently going to blow your tiny mind: meetings don’t have a minimum runtime requirement. There’s no Meeting Police who’s going to bust down the conference room door if you end at 11:17 instead of 11:30. Your Outlook invitation is not a binding contract that must be fulfilled to the second.
You scheduled 30 minutes because you’re terrible at estimating how long things take and you wanted to build in a buffer for your own incompetence. That’s fine. We all do it. But when you realize at minute 22 that you’ve covered everything, you don’t get to act like you’re doing us a favor by not continuing to waste our time discussing the font choice on slide seven.
And here’s the thing that really grinds my gears: you’re not “unblocking” me or “giving me time back.” I was already blocked. That’s what being in your meeting means. I’m blocked from doing my actual job. The job I’m measured on. The work that actually matters. You ending early isn’t a gift—it’s just you stopping the thing you shouldn’t have been doing in the first place for that long.
It’s the professional equivalent of someone standing on your foot for 22 minutes, then stepping off and expecting gratitude because they didn’t stand there for the full 30 minutes they warned you about.
“Well, I didn’t want to schedule a shorter meeting in case we needed the full time.”
Then schedule 20 minutes. If you need more, you can always ask people to stay. But no, that would require you to actually justify extending the meeting. Much easier to hold everyone hostage from the start and then play the magnanimous benefactor when you deign to release us slightly ahead of schedule.
You know what would actually give me time back? Not having the meeting at all. Sending an email. Using Slack. Making a decision without requiring 12 people to synchronously stare at each other through webcams while you slowly read through slides that you could have just shared.
But sure, pat yourself on back for only wasting 22 minutes of collective productivity instead of 30. That’s 96 minutes of human labor across the 12 people you trapped in that conference room. Two person-hours of work, gone forever, discussing something that could have been a three-paragraph email.
Next time you want to “give me my time back,” here’s an idea: don’t take it in the first place. Send a document. Make a decision. Trust that people can read. Do literally anything except putting “30 minutes” on my calendar because you can’t be bothered to figure out how long your update actually takes.
And when you inevitably ignore all of this and schedule another meeting anyway, at least have the decency to end it when it’s actually done without fishing for praise like you just cured cancer by clicking “End Meeting” at 10:52 instead of 11:00.
You didn’t give me anything back. You just stopped taking.
Now get out of my calendar.
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