Guide to Being Stuck Somewhere You Really Don’t Want To Be.

Does anybody else get frantic when this happens? Oh, right. Everybody does.

I was at a meeting recently and the only thing I could do to calm myself down was to think of this guide. And I also peed like 10 times because I was drinking a lot of Diet Coke. And I also asked a lot of questions that I didn’t care about the answer to. And then one time I just left for like 5 minutes to go be outside for a little while. I didn’t handle it especially well, I guess. My body language was just about the worst you could imagine. I was Johnny Leanback. I had practically turned my chair into a hammock. For text messaging. A text hammock. If you’d seen me, you’d be like “that guy is ruining this meeting. If he was out of here, this would be a more productive meeting.” Which I guess is sort of what I was going for, but that’s a prima donna way to act, and it sucks. I’d like to think I’m better than that. I am not. I’m a whiney little bitch when it comes to meetings.

You know what else sucks? Focus Groups. They’re hardly ever worth the money. I did one that was an all-day jury exercise kind of thing, where they present a group of random idiots with the legal arguments for some kind of class action suit, and they see what are sticking points for those idiots, and then they use that to refine their arguments for the actual group of idiots that will really be in the court room. It’s a fascinating look into the inner… [SNOOOOOOORE].

So basically I spent the whole day with a group of idiots talking about whether or not factory X should be responsible for malady Y in person Z. The answer is yes. Always. Factory X is a bastard, and it makes a lot more money than person Z, and it’s closing down and moving to Mexico in two years anyway whether it wins this case or not because people in Mexico don’t sue anybody. You’ve gotta take the money whenever you can.

But I spent the entire day arguing passionately for Factory X’s rights. Why? Because the biggest, most unswayable idiot in the room was very pro-Factory X. And she was clearly going to keep spewing irrational nonsense while the other idiots got more and more agitated about how irrational she was being. All day long. That’s what was going down. It’s fine for comic relief when people are screaming, “well at leas’ he GOTTA job,” over and over again for like 20 minutes while other people really try to reason out the alternative argument in a way that will finally get through to “at leas’ he GOTTA job” lady. But when you’re faced with a full 8-hour day of it, you’ve pretty much got to take some action. And talking is better than jabbing your focus group pen all the way into your ear.

So I Twelve Angry Menned it. I didn’t have a choice, really. I was going to get the same amount of money from suffering in silence as the time on the clock slowly ticked away. I used the time honored tradition of time passing more quickly if you’re talking pointless nonsense than it does when you’re listening to it. When pointless nonsense is the only option, this tactic alone is all I’ve ever used in these situations that seems to work.

Nine times out of ten, when you’re stuck somewhere you don’t want to be, it’s because you’re required by arbitrary protocol masquerading as “common decency” to “voluntarily” show interest in something you don’t care about in the least. Most of the time, it’s a meeting of some kind. Sometime’s it’s playing a board game with your girlfriend’s family, which is a meeting of some kind. But that at least has the potential for fun. Worst case scenario is they’re hyper competitive with no sense of humor about it, in which case you cheat relentlessly at whatever it is and they actually get angry that you’re distracting them during Taboo, which is funny. Best case is they’re hyper competitive with a sense of humor and you cheat and they think it’s funny, because it is. I recommend cheating at all board games. But this is a tangent.

Usually when you’re stuck at a place you don’t want to be, we’re talking about a floor meeting to discuss our attitudes about supply usage where “nobody’s pointing the finger at anybody here,” except we’re all clearly pointing the finger at Candace, because she always steals the copy room stapler and then uses the Brother P-Touch labelmaker to re-label it, and nobody wants the meeting except for Geraldine, who’s the floor leader because nobody else wanted the job but she always calls floor meetings because she’s OCD. And people are going to come to this meeting and solve this problem, by God.

Those are tough, because you can’t really Twelve Angry Man it. There are equal idiots on both sides, and this is their time to face off. Well, I suggest getting as involved as you possibly can in both sides of an argument. Contradict yourself as often as possible. Say, “I just want to piggyback on what Pam just said,” and then repeat exactly what Pam just said. Talk about how good it is to be together communicating openly about this important issue, encourage “active listening” and “getting down to the root of the problem” while at the same time interrupting people and thinking in as small terms as possible. Turn it into a circus. Meetingpalooza. Every time. Really stretch your acting muscles so nobody knows you’re being sarcastic or doing it as a performance. It’s going to be very hard not to telegraph that you’re above this, because you and the rest of mankind really are above it, but if you try your level best to seem like you’re honestly really getting to work here, one of three things will happen:

1. You will be extremely successful at your shitty day job that you hate because management has taken notice that you’re a real go-getter, because management is just as stupid as everybody else and they can’t tell the difference between a smart person and somebody who makes them look smart by loudly agreeing with things. If this is the case, they will invite you to come to more meetings and encourage your input even more. And eventually you’ll get a promotion and a raise because you’re so good at meetings, and you’ll get to be the management idiot for once, and you can call everybody “buddy” or “champ” even though your rose to your position of power by being stupid on purpose.

2. People will think you’re a nightmare and stop inviting you to meetings.

3. You will fail to convince them of your sincerity, and they will grow tired of your antics and eventually fire you, and you’ll bounce around from office support position to office support position, which is fine with you because you have a low-expense low-responsibility douchebag lifestyle that can easily be supported on less than 30k a year, and eventually you’ll write a blog about meetings.

It’s win-win-win, really. And creating synergistic, win-win-win situations is what YouCorp is all about, from the consumer base, via our distributors, through our chosen vendors and in-house… [SNOOOOORE].

Oh yeah, there’s sometimes a reason for you to be somewhere that you really don’t want to be that doesn’t involve meetings or board games. Like if you’re trapped in an elevator or you have to go to church with your Grandmother because she wants to show you off and you have to do it because she’s dying soon even though you don’t want to because the pastor always talks about stuff you don’t believe in, like how gay people are going to rot in hell forever, even for, like, just kissing one dude one time, and mentioning how only through Jesus is there salvation and you can’t kiss one dude one time and have a heart pure enough for Jesus, even though when you read the bible, Jesus is Johnny Forgivesalot. He’d even forgive me for writing that, I believe. Crazy Faghating Church with Grandmother is exactly like being trapped in an elevator because there’s nothing you can do. You just have to sit there until it’s over, and try your best to entertain yourself with thought experiments like, “Could a person eat an entire ant hill, or would they die or something?” This works just as well in church or in an elevator. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and think about eating an anthill for 20 solid minutes.

Coming soon if I have to keep going to these fucking meetings: Guide to Eating an Entire Anthill. Oh god. I want to jump out of my skin and tapdance across the conference room table and out the door to a very abrupt 8 seconds of “Billy Jean.”