Let’s not dance around it — meetings are a modern corporate disease. Not all of them, sure, but a solid 90% are an absolute waste of time. You know the ones. The invite drops into your calendar with a cryptic title like “Catch-Up” or “Strategy Check-In,” no agenda, no context, just vibes. Immediately, your stomach drops because deep down, you know — this is going to be an hour of your life you’ll never get back.
The Meeting Begins: Lights, Camera, Bullshit
You join the call. Your camera’s off. Your mic is muted. Your brain is already begging for release.
The host shows up ten minutes late but somehow still manages to kick things off like they’re delivering a keynote at a tech conference. No one knows what this meeting is actually about, including the person running it, so they default to the classic opening line:
“Let’s just go around the room and share what we’ve been working on.”
Which really means:
“I didn’t plan anything, but I want credit for being a leader.”
And so it begins. One by one, people read their calendars out loud.
“I’ve been working on the API integration.”
“I’ve been triaging some tickets.”
“I’ve been in a lot of meetings.”
Yes. You’ve been in a lot of meetings. This one, for example. Right now. Accomplishing nothing.
No new ideas. No decisions made. Just a round of socially mandated corporate karaoke where everyone pretends they’ve been productive so they can avoid awkward questions.
The Real Purpose of This Nonsense
Let’s be honest. Most of these meetings aren’t for the team. They’re not for progress. They’re not even for collaboration.
They’re for visibility.
Someone, somewhere, usually a middle manager with a vague job description, wants to be seen as doing something. They want to “foster communication” and “promote alignment” because that’s what their performance review is based on. Not actual outcomes. Not delivered work. Just how many meetings they hosted and how many buzzwords they said while doing it.
This is the same person who replies to a message three days late with “Let’s discuss this live.” Because of course. Why solve a problem in two Slack messages when you can burn a 45-minute time slot to say the same thing while smiling awkwardly into a webcam.
The Chaos of Inaction
And then comes the golden hour — when the meeting should be ending. Everyone’s done their little performance, we’ve achieved the corporate equivalent of a shrug, and people start silently praying for mercy.
But there’s always one.
“Just before we wrap…”
You know what follows. An irrelevant question. A new discussion thread. A complete derail. It’s always someone who hasn’t spoken in 45 minutes and suddenly remembers they exist. They drop a random bomb, stir the pot, and then look proud of themselves like they just contributed something world-changing.
Then the host, never one to let a bad idea go to waste, says,
“That’s a great point. Let’s schedule a follow-up.”
You stare at your screen in pure disbelief, wondering how much of your life has been sacrificed to keep this clown show running.
The Unspoken Truth We All Know
Let’s call this what it is.
Meetings have become a replacement for actual work. They’re a safe space for indecision, a distraction disguised as alignment, and a convenient way for people to avoid committing to anything.
Some people have built entire careers off meetings. It’s all they do. They don’t build, they don’t ship, they don’t fix — they talk. Constantly. Endlessly. About priorities, about blockers, about other meetings.
I once worked with a person whose full-time job seemed to be repeating what someone else said in a more “strategic” tone. Every meeting, they’d chime in with a rephrased version of a teammate’s point, then nod at themselves like they’d just solved climate change. The worst part? Leadership ate it up.
This is the game. Say a lot, do very little, sound confident, and book the next call.
The Moral of the Story
If you’ve ever left a meeting thinking,
“We could’ve just handled that over email,”
You’re not crazy — you’re the only one still holding onto sanity.
We’ve let meetings become the default, the fallback, the excuse. They give people the illusion of progress while preventing any actual progress from happening.
So here’s a thought. If you don’t have an agenda, a decision to make, or something new to add — maybe don’t book the meeting. Maybe just say what you need to say, in a message, with actual clarity and respect for people’s time.
Because every time you hijack an hour to “touch base,” someone else is losing an hour they could’ve spent actually getting shit done.
Meetings aren’t where work happens. They’re where good ideas go to die, suffocated by small talk, vague updates, and people who haven’t built anything in years.
The next time you’re tempted to say “Let’s jump on a quick call,”
Ask yourself this:
Would anyone miss this meeting if it were cancelled?
If the answer is no
Cancel the bloody meeting.
The Toxic Boss 
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