Escaping while attending meetings

In popular culture, as well as in our data, workplace meetings are often depicted as boring and meaningless. Nevertheless, people are expected to attend their meetings. Moreover, modern meeting culture requires disciplined behaviour. Participants are expected to be focused and listening attentively, not interrupting but politely asking to make their point. We have discerned different ways of avoiding the imprisonment of dull meetings while attending them. Digital technology has improved such opportunities, such as playing games or looking at social media. A more morally respected tactic is to engage in multitasking by doing work-related emails or documents. When several participants experience the meeting as dull, they not only construct individual ‘aways’, but may also form silent, temporary heckling communities. Our central argument in this book is that organisations, to a large degree, come to being through their meetings. What is described in this chapter does not contradict this argument, but rather confirms it. Members do not quit meetings, they do attend them and even perform double work (attending them while doing other work), although they settle for muttering or exchanging ironic comments.