To Whom It May Concern:

Due to an overwhelmingly full schedule of meetings, I have decided that my participation in them is unnecessary.  Therefore, I would ask that you fill out the following form prior to the scheduled meeting so that I may know when it is appropriate to tune out whatever is being talked about and begin doing real work on my laptop/iPad/iPhone/Etch-a-Sketch.  Please indicate the meeting subject from the list below:

1. This is a weekly scheduled meeting to discuss why things haven’t improved since the last weekly meeting.  About 3/4ths of the way through, we will begin to plan for next week’s meeting where we discuss why things haven’t improved since this meeting.
2. Your attendance in this meeting is to provide an aura of professionalism and reassurance while I spout off randomness to a customer.  You will be required to listen to my ramblings without comment or dissention until the customer asks you if this is correct.  Your required response is to nod and answer in the affirmative while trying to avoid saying anything that might make me look foolish.
3. This meeting is a complaint-based diatribe focused on one or more persons/departments/divisions.  Odds are very good that you are not among the subjects being complained about.  However, an audience is required so that the affected subjects may be shamed into proper behavior/performance.
4. This conference call will begin 5 minutes late and continue with late attendees beeping in and forgetting to mute their speaker phones.  After restarting several times due to interruption, the call will progress to the third slide in the deck before a number of attendees begin asking where to obtain the slide deck so that they may follow along in another application besides watching the slides being shared.  After directing the attendees to a download site, the call will then devolve into endless pointless questions on pedantic subjects until the majority of the attendees disconnect in frustration.  We will then call a meeting the next day to discuss the effectiveness of the conference call.
5. This customer call is a valiant attempt for you to talk them out of doing something terrible to their computer/network/data center.  The customer will explain what they are attempting to do in very generic terms.  After the look of incredulity, you will be required to explain the deep technical details of why this procedure or setting will not work and may in fact cause more harm than good.  After the customer reveals they have made the change already before this call, you may be excused to wander down the hall and mutter quietly to yourself.

Thank you for your assistance in expediting the discovery time of the useless point of this particular meeting.

If you would like to download a PDF of this document for your own use, you may do so from this link.