Rules of Business and Industry

[The Good Reverend Roger]

To be added to:

1.  The earlier an engineer shows up for a meeting, the longer he will drag the meeting out.

For example, Mike has been sitting in the conference room for 10 minutes, for a meeting that starts in 5 minutes.  The 30 minute meeting will therefore last 60 minutes.

[Junkenstein]

I'd amend that rule to any meeting, personally. Many QS's are fuckers for that kind of behaviour. And finance directors. And Auditors. And Salesfolk(unless you kick them out). And clients. And any consultant on a billable hour rate. And so on.

1b - This applies regardless of if things are going well or not.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'd amend that rule to any meeting, personally. Many QS's are fuckers for that kind of behaviour. And finance directors. And Auditors. And Salesfolk(unless you kick them out). And clients. And any consultant on a billable hour rate. And so on.

1b - This applies regardless of if things are going well or not.

All of the above may have actual motives.

I postulate that engineers simply enjoy meetings, which classifies them with flatworms and spirochetes.

[Junkenstein]

Are you implying that auditors are not worms? Finance directors above the level of slime?

QS's are notorious for being very lonely, very sad obsessive people who take on the work mainly to get human contact to inflict their presence upon.

Let's be blunt here, in any meeting involving 5 people or more, at least two will be obnoxious and at least one of them will be socially maladjusted enough to confuse the meeting for some kind of impromptu attention seeking ceremony. Gods help you if the meeting involves 12 or more. Box off the day, shit will not be getting done.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Are you implying that auditors are not worms? Finance directors above the level of slime?

QS's are notorious for being very lonely, very sad obsessive people who take on the work mainly to get human contact to inflict their presence upon.

Let's be blunt here, in any meeting involving 5 people or more, at least two will be obnoxious and at least one of them will be socially maladjusted enough to confuse the meeting for some kind of impromptu attention seeking ceremony. Gods help you if the meeting involves 12 or more. Box off the day, shit will not be getting done.

8 seems to be the magic number.

Or "any number plus Mike", who today managed to get off on a tangent that "jury pools don't like engineers, because we base all of our decisions on logic", immediately after trying to suggest that the general contractor should reprogram the jet mill despite the fact that I have a programmer on staff.

I'm so alone.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

# The Law of Exponential Effort states that for every task assigned, an equal and opposite volume of excuses will arise, such that the amount of energy required to complete a task is equal to the number of times it has been assigned multiplied by the total number of years of "relevant experience" held by the people it has been assigned to. The result is that if you want anything done, you have to do it yourself.

# When something breaks, it is always because somebody broke it.

# The moment you understand how the system works, is the moment true terror sets in.

[LMNO]

Well, now I have something new to put on the walls around the office.