Tf am I doing here?
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
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I think "What is the purpose of this meeting and why am I being included" is almost polite as-is, but "why am I being included" sounds a little rude. Maybe "what is the purpose of this meeting and is my presence needed?" Maybe "beneficial" instead of "needed" depending on who exactly you're emailing.
If you ask the person who invited you to a meeting "is my presence beneficial" they're going to answer "yes". That's why they invited you.
The purpose is to figure out whether your presence is actually needed, not whether they think it is.
I do like a lot of your ideas though, I might suggest:
"What is this meeting about? I'm trying to figure out if my presence would be beneficial."
That way you are the determinant of whether your presence is necessary, and the other person has to articulate what the actual benefit would be as opposed to just saying "yes".
If someone sends me a one word reply of "yes" to "what is the purpose of this meeting and is my presence beneficial" then it wouldn't matter what I asked lol. They're clearly on auto pilot. I'd probably add my manager and see what they say
If someone sends me a one word reply of "yes" to "what is the purpose of this meeting and is my presence beneficial" then it wouldn't matter what I asked lol.
lol
But just to reiterate the point I was making earlier, the idea is to avoid someone responding to "what is the purpose of this meeting and is my presence beneficial" with something along the lines of "the purpose is to discuss X, Y, and Z. Yes your input would be a big help thanks."
Curious on your thoughts on the suggestion I made and whether it improves communication or not?
Someone telling me my input would be a big help would be satisfactory to me though. Maybe I've just had a different meeting style since I've been working from home though. If a meeting is something I'm not needed in I just work on other stuff. And because nobody can see me it doesn't have the same vibe as doing it on the room. Plus my calendar isn't teeming with meetings today like it has been at other jobs in the past. Back in 2019 not only was I in the office but I had a ton of meetings. I would probably take a different approach then. Or ask my manager if I was unsure.
I had a situation like this where I'd like to be involved in the meeting that I was requested and they thought I was required to be in. I'm a just barely above entry level employee and was told by my supervisor that I should not be attending the meetings anyhow the request is coming from project managers.
Finally get pinged in a meeting chat asking where I was and told them I was informed I should not be attending these moving forward. The project manager asked if this input came from a director that is 5 levels above me. I told them no, it came from my supervisor, if you need me, I will attend the meeting however I'm not sure if my input would be the information you are looking for.
2 months later, still getting required meeting invites but told by my supervisor to not accept it.
Nah, fuck this lickspittle corpo speak!
"What is the purpose of this meeting and why do I need to be included?" is a perfectly polite sentence appropriate in any work environment consisting of mature and distinguished adults.
Do not enslave yourself to the machine, because the people running it will treat you like a slave.
That is absolutely not something to say if the meeting is pulled together by management on high. Peers? Sure you can say stuff like that, but to someone you may not know or have little interaction with that can be a death knell for your reputation.
The trick is to be so reliable that no one would conceive of getting rid of you even if you come off a little assholish sometimes. I started on the help desk at my last job (fairly large company with around ~25k employees and within a year or two I was the go to for a few of the c-levels when they had issues. I pissed off middle management types occasionally when I couldn't do something they wanted right away because I needed more information or whatever and had to wait on something. Anytime they tried to start shit with me it never took long for a bigger fish to get involved and have my back because they were familiar with my work and knew I wasn't just fucking around.
consisting of mature and distinguished adults
That part can actually be problematic in many places in my experience.
I often find that misappropriating an out of context Paul Rudd quote arguably condoning sexual harassment works perfectly to describe the level of effort one should put in;
"Work 60% of the time, Alllll the time"
Any more than 60% effort and it becomes a drain, any less and management will look to replace. 60% effort is the sweet spot for surviving corporate life rather than succumbing to it.
Eh, useless meetings are great for timesheet filler while playing Pokemon Go.
Useless meetings are the perfect time to charge all your portable battry packs too, check out gearscouts.com if you need a new one for those extra long "strategic planning sessions" lol.
Sometimes my wife says she doesn't like so much downtime at work. I understand her frustration, but I don't empathize.
Pay me to slack off, that's the life.
When I first started my job, I was really anxious about being seen as "slacking off" whenever there was downtime (which is pretty frequent and can range from 10 minutes to two hours). That made it pretty exhausting, which in turn fed the anxiety because "how can doing nothing wear you out?"
Luckily my colleagues and leads were great people and helped me get more comfortable with it, and I'm really grateful for that.
#Corpo-Pro-Tips
Corpospeak. Never a clearer way to be sure that someone or something doesn’t give a fuck about you as a human being.
The original way the first person asked was polite, if intoned gently.
The recommended response is corpospeak.
Corpospeak is never polite.
It just pretends to be.
Like a sociopath.
Corpospeak [...] Like a sociopath.
And this is why LLMs are so well suited for the task! People get genuinely excited by the prospect of using AI to read/reply email... because they don't mean actual thoughtful email written with intent, maybe even emotions or even reasoning. No... no they mean corpospeak that is entirely pointless, empty of meaning and definitely written for a human by human, but rather for a cog, to another lifeless cog in the corporation.
This is why people are investing tons of money and expending tons of CO2.
What a fucking farce of a species we are.
All things considered our species is doing relatively well. Having the ability to assign purpose and use tools does cause us to get stuck in a stupid rut all too often, though.
I can't fathom why a person would willingly use corpospeak. I can't imagine anyone actually likes to speak that way.
I would invite the reader to always call it out when it occurs, and call for all involved parties to speak plain.
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True but that seems to be what she was actually asking for. Her question would be too straightforward, she wanted to get out of the meeting without even hinting at that
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I work on the floor in a pretty specialized role, so I can always just use the excuse of having to attend to any given machine coincidentally whenever they want to have a meeting I don't feel like attending.
None of the managers really understand what we do, so they don't challenge the excuses ever.
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Y'all are invited to optional meetings??? Lol
Meetings are the viable alternative to work. Meetings that you don't need to contribute to are even better. Take a break. Catch some zees.
yeah what the fuck; when you're asked to do nothing on company time, you take it!
go to meetings to avoid other meetings
Problem is, that the work is still there after the meeting
This is definitely a difference between people that believe the work they do is important and people just punching a clock.
I teach at a community college (salaried) and my partner works as staff in the same school (hourly). She works her ass off, but when she gets to the end of the day, she is done and leaves work at the office, so attending meetings is no big deal to her. Meanwhile, I've gotten involved enough in peripheral committee work that I regularly stay up working until 1AM because there are literally not enough hours in the day to get done what needs to get done. I could try to leave work at work, but I'd be hanging students and fellow instructors out to dry, so that's not always an option.
I could try to leave work at work, but I'd be hanging students and fellow instructors out to dry, so that's not always an option.
Not your problem that your college hasn't decided to fund enough positions to get things done within the workday.
It's not my fault, but it is definitely my problem if I'm in a position to help people and decide not to. Make no mistake, I raise holy hell while I'm doing it, but the lack of workers doesn't lessen the amount of work that needs to get done. Maybe it's just naivete, but I'm idealistic enough to believe that helping students is the most important thing I can do, so I only say yes to things that are directly helping students, faculty, and staff (admin and their busy work can fuck right off with their bloated salaries and support staff)
One thing I’ve learned is that sometimes you need to let the problems happen. You can raise hell and keep talking about how more hands are needed, but unless issues actually start coming up and affecting people, then no one is going to care/listen.
I had a job in the past that was vastly understaffed. I kept getting more and more, and working longer hours. I brought this up with management many times but nothing was happening. “Not in the budget to hire more” is what I kept getting.
When it got to be too much, I decided I would only work 40 hours, and whatever happens, happens. Our lives are too short to be wasted away at work.
So tasks started to take longer, and whenever something needed doing, it was added to the queue and prioritized appropriately. Sometimes that meant I couldn’t get to it in weeks. At first, I came under fire. “Why haven’t you done this yet??” But each time I explained my situation. “There’s not enough hands and I am doing the best I can with the resources given to me”. And guess what? Most people empathized and understood my predicament. So now I have an army of colleagues who understand the issue here, and now the issue gets more visibility with management as more people rally to my side.
A few months of this, and they decide to hire two more positions to help with the overload of work.
It’s a risky move for sure. They could just fire you and dig themselves into a deeper hole. But then if they do that, is that really the type of environment you’d want to work in anyway?
People are surprisingly understanding when you explain yourself. You don’t need to fix everything and everyone’s problems. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to let the problems happen and observe how others deal with it.
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Never do more than what is in your contract.
It is not like the company is going to pay you more than what is written in there. So why should you compensate when they clearly wouldn't?
It is not your job to get everything done. But it is their job to make sure there are enough people for the work available.
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When I started my career I quickly became convinced that meetings are the opposite of work. Now a large part of my career is hosting meetings. 😬
My biggest piece of advice to junior staff is: if you're not provided an agenda prior to a meeting, your attendance is not required. RSVP with Yes if it sounds interesting/beneficial and you have the time, otherwise Nope (or Tentative) your way out of it.
The obvious caveat is if that meeting is called by someone with role power over you. In which case: as they clearly don't respect your time, it's on you to (politely) ask them to provide an agenda. It may also indirectly train them to be less shit.
When I started my career I quickly became convinced that meetings are the opposite of work. Now a large part of my career is hosting meetings. 😬
I feel/felt similarly but I am now calling for meetings because it seems to be the easiest way to get my peers and superiors to do their fucking job so that I'm not stuck in limbo waiting for their parts to be finished. It seems like they only respond to slack mentions / emails / task assignments at random which leaves important, unanswered requests/questions just sitting there.
Sorry, this past year I've been working with another department for a project that, due to aforementioned woes, has run about 6-12 months more than it needs to.
I'm in the public sector and everyone is very busy and pulled in many directions so I kind of get it... but I want to be done with this thing.
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I used to work at this company where like 3 guys took care of basically everything. All but one of them, let's call him Rob, eventually left to better companies. About a month after that, my team had to deal with a pretty big issue and we were having trouble coming up with a solution so this idiot had the brilliant idea to page Rob. As if the poor guy hadn't spent the last month doing the job of 3 people who were already doing the job of a 5 people each. Rob got online, said "Why did you page me?" and immediately left before getting a response. I liked Rob.
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'Do you really need me? I still have a lot on my desk and would like to get to work on it, if you don't mind.'
Never did anyone have an issue with that, including my boss.
The beauty of this is its not using brainrot LinkedIn language
What do I need prepare for my contribution in this meeting? Nothing. Ok I'll watch the recoding.
Email recap never comes. Miss out on key decision points. Attend next meeting. Nothing is agreed just talk for the sake of talking. Objections disregarded. Side meeting happens without you. Key points agreed with management in your absence. You're just a cog in a giant hamster wheel. Not even the hamster. Cry at night.
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"What is the purpose of this meeting and why do I need to be included" is a perfectly polite series of words to use. The wording matters far less than the tone of voice.
I vastly prefer clear and direct questions over the reply that sounds passive aggressive from the very beginning.
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