Sit down, SHUT UP!

I recently sat in two long days of endless meetings. I have been in one room for nine hours a day except for a very few bathroom breaks. I am beyond bored. I am beyond stir crazy. I am near tears.

Here’s something that I’ve learned from these two days in living hell; you’re all boring. It doesn’t matter whether someone loves to take center stage or they’re the person always demurring from doing a presentation, once they hit the floor armed with a flash drive packed full of useless powerpoint slides there is just NO shutting them up. Really every person should have to sit and watch themselves on video after they present (me included). They should have to watch themselves over and over again on a large screen TV to get the full impact of their performance.

My personal favorites are the people who preface their talk with how brief they will be and then proceed to ramble on for nearly an hour. My, my how time flies, no? Don’t these people have the internet yet? As you can see if you’re stopping by here, anyone can indulge themselves on the internet. I indulge my need to write and rant. If you want to take center stage and present slide after slide of useless nonsense then feel free to post yourself on YouTube or Facebook. It’s like that old joke, “if a tree falls in the woods does it make any noise?” You’ll just never know will you? Same thing with posting your moment in the glare of the conference room lights, you’ll never know (well maybe you will if you check hits to your post and read any comments) who is watching or listening or caring but at least you can get it out of your system without holding a conference room full of innocent victims hostage.

People who phone into radio shows sprang to mind as my hostage situation dragged on. Those people seem to really believe they’re adding to the lively show banter and they just aren’t. I love when Howard Stern just cuts them off and says, “I’m sorry, they were boring”; most of the time he’s right about that. I’m not necessarily a huge Howard fan but he certainly does have his shining moments and cutting off boring callers is high on that list.

One of my absolute favorite tricks is when the presenter reads each of their powerpoint slides. They’re presenting to a room full of college grads and there they are reading to us. Sweet. Look if you’re gonna read to me at least make it something good that I can’t read for myself. It’s a pretty safe bet that I can read slides projected onto giant screens around the room.

Try something new. Shake up the system. Distribute your powerpoint slides as a reference then speak about your subject naturally. If you KNOW what you’re talking about then you probably don’t need those damn slides anyway. And then for GOD’S SAKE SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!