The Meeting That Could Have Been an Email

The invitation arrived on a Tuesday, promising a "quick sync" that would last, according to the calendar, a full ninety minutes.

Marcus stared at it the way one stares at bad weather one cannot avoid.

Ninety minutes, for a topic that could have been settled in a single sentence.

Had the organiser simply written "the deadline moved to Friday," the entire meeting would have been unnecessary.

But necessity, Marcus had learned, was rarely the point of meetings.

The point was to be seen thinking, which is far easier than actually thinking.

He arrived two minutes late, on purpose, and found eleven people already waiting.

"Just waiting on a couple more," said the host, which meant they could be there a while.

They began, as always, with a summary of what the meeting would cover, a meeting about the meeting.

Somebody suggested they "circle back," a phrase Marcus had grown to despise.

If words could be arrested, "circle back" would have been serving a life sentence.

A man named Trevor shared his screen, then spent four minutes finding the right window.

"Can everyone see this?" No one could. "How about now?" Still nothing.

Marcus, half-listening, quietly drafted the email he wished someone had sent instead.

It was two lines long, and it was beautiful.

Had he sent it, forty-five collective hours would have been saved that week.

Instead, the group debated the colour of a single button for what felt like a geological age.

"I could take this offline," offered Trevor, offering nothing of the sort.

Around minute sixty, a strange peace settled over the room, the calm of people who have quietly given up.

Priya passed Marcus a note. "Is it always like this?" it read.

"No," he wrote back. "Sometimes it runs long."

When the host finally said "let's wrap up," the whole room exhaled as one.

They had accomplished, by Marcus's count, absolutely nothing that an email could not have.

As everyone stood, the host smiled brightly. "Great. Shall we schedule a follow-up?"

And Marcus understood, at last, that the meeting would never truly end.