h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Today (29 April 1999), I have a day of meetings to look forward to - very little actual work, but an awful lot of meetings.

First of all, at 9.00 am we have the team meeting. This is where a lot of danish pastries meet their doom, nine people squeeze into a room that would be barely comfortable for six and three people bicker for an hour about what we're doing and whether we're on message or not, two people doodle in the margins of their agenda and one person(me) writes her latest novel. The other three are there in body, but little else. The night life in Teesside can be a full time occupation sometimes.

After that meeting we have a lunch break, and then, the highlight of the quarter, the full staff meeting. This time, all 120 of us will squeeze into the hospitality suite of the local football stadium, for two hours bum numbing mind wiping personality draining chat from our chief executive, on seats made to measure for no humanoid frame. (If there are any one buttocked no-spined 6ft 8in lifeforms out there - we have some chairs that will do your posture the world of good!) Then, let out into the early evening industrial smog of Teesside, we are reinvigorated with the ethos of our company to go out into the world and do some good.

So what do we do at Txxx Vxxxxx Txx? Don't ask me - I've only worked here for six years (hollow laughter), I haven't figured it out yet myself.

Still, another day beckons. 

Still, at least you're getting career satisfaction!!!!
I'm a mature student who is finishing a degree in four weeks time and frantically looking for one of these job things. Sonetimes I wonder why I'm bothering. It seems, from past experience, that if employers had any intelligence they would cut out all the measingless stuff and let us finish the week's work at 9:30 on a Monday morning. The company would be just as profitable and i'm sure we would all be more motivated and really work hard for that half hour.