When drawing and quartering isn't quite punishment enough

Warriors, I‘m trying to think of a good punishment for people who schedule 9 a.m. meetings. Is there anything more annoying? Can someone be more inconsiderate and selfish? Maybe someone who schedules 8 a.m. meetings, but no one ever attends those, so they don’t matter.

However, you have no good excuse not to be at a 9 a.m. meeting. Legally, technically, according to HR, you should be at work and ready to go, with a smile.

But the truth is you need a good 30 to 60 minutes of coffee, chit-chat about True Blood, and YouTube video surfing before you’re actually ready to think about work, much less talk about it. Everyone in Cubeland should know this by now. It’s an unspoken agreement, “No 9 a.m. meetings!” And yet, they happen, scheduled either by the clueless or the evil.

In a 9 a.m. meeting this morning, I was literally daydreaming about the Starbucks I wasn’t visiting right then, about whether I’d get a plain latte or something more fancy, something with syrup, maybe vanilla. A muffin perhaps? Meanwhile, some jackass was yammering away about metrics and pick-ups and tie ratios and  some kind of Internet-y thing about a new smart technology that will send some kind of hook on a wire out of a hard drive and pick the pockets of website visitors.

Every web agency sounds the same when they talk about their magic money-sucking technology. And I swear they invent new acronyms and buzz words every time they present. Flyby, Buzzclick, Eyepopper, Smartdot, Invisopixel, Tastycookie…just a few samples.

Anyway, back to the punishments!

Let’s go with, if you schedule a 9 a.m. meeting, you must name your first born an internet agency pseudo-English buzzword…Pixellint (for a girl) or Ramdrop (for a boy).

If you schedule a 9 a.m. meeting for a Monday morning, and you sent out the meeting invite over the weekend, let’s just agree you get the death penalty. Sorry, but you have got to go. I have dibs on your chair.

If you have other suggestions, let me know!