The Dreaded 8 a.m. Meeting
Office Etiquette rule 1: Never schedule a meeting before 9 a.m.
It’s the Monday after the long Thanksgiving holiday. We here at the office had a 4 day weekend receiving both Thursday, Thanksgiving, and Black Friday off. The generous amount of holidays given off to employees is one of the things I enjoy about working for this company. Well, I had been enjoying it until I logged into my computer at my usual 8:30 a.m. starting time to see that I had been scheduled to be in a meeting at 8:00 a.m.
This leads into the apparently not so common sense rule of office etiquette, which is that you should NEVER schedule a morning meeting on the Monday following a long holiday weekend. For that matter, this is a part of the EVEN MORE common sense rule that states you should never schedule ANY meeting before 9 a.m. Workers have a variety of different schedules of starting and ending times to fit into their life schedules. It is another one of the benefits of working at a white-collar job such as this. Some people like to get a jump on the day and start resolving issues before the official clock has begun, and they work 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Some folks drop their kids off at daycare or school in the morning and it is just not possible for them to be into the office by 8 a.m. Some workers schedule their hours to be from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. so that they can cover late in the day emergency issues that arise.
Scheduling 8 a.m. meetings makes assumptions that everyone is working the same 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. schedule as the upper management guy who is out there expecting people will be able to attend. Mind you, this is the same manager who will drop off emergency requests for data on his way out the door at 4 p.m. Data that management needs from you to have ready for his next 8 a.m. meeting scheduled for the next day. The same manager that doesn’t much care how long you have to work in the evening in order to get him his data.
To combat the early morning scheduler, there are a few actions you may want to take depending on how comfortable you are going against management and how badly you need your job.
1) If you share Outlook calendars, mark your drive time on your calendar as either busy or out of office time.
2) Respond to meeting requests with no or tentative responses.
3) If it is an audio meeting, dial in from the road. State to the meeting organizer when you announce yourself that you are currently in the car driving in.
4) If you are a key player at the meeting, ask the meeting organizer if they can reschedule for a time after your start time.
What other actions have you taken to combat early morning meetings?
