THERE is never a good time for a business meeting as they achieve nothing and never have, but these times are worse than others:  

9am 

Straight in and straight into a meeting, having half-skimmed what it’s about in the two minutes before finding out it’s happening, expected to give an update on your work? Meetings scheduled at this time are nothing more than a clever management tactic to ensure you aren’t late. They cannot be productive. 

Straight after your last meeting 

‘Finally,’ you think, as your two-hour 9am ends at 11pm, ready to begin your day’s work. No. Because another meeting is just beginning, your regular catch-up where you’re asked what you’ve been doing that morning and ‘I was in a meeting,’ isn’t an acceptable excuse. Improvise well or another meeting could be scheduled. 

Lunchtime 

Few enough things are sacred in this secular world, and lunch is one. As stipulated in your contract these hallowed hours are yours to drift through town, eat a Greggs sausage roll and browse the DVDs in CEX. You would go to war to defend this privilege. So what if it’s the only time the client’s free? They can f**king wait. 

2.30pm 

The post-lunch slump has kicked in. You’re so drowsy you keep greying out inbetween mindlessly clicking tabs, and planning to keep this up until EOP. Except some knob-end’s scheduled a brainstorming meeting for you and six other braindead carb-crashers that results in two pages of dreamy squiggles on a flip-chart. 

5pm 

You finish at 5pm. You only stay longer to avoid traffic. You sit in this atrocity of a meeting watching your free time dwindle, aware that someone somewhere is watching Pointless. You didn’t have any plans for the evening but that’s not the point; your boss has stolen a small chunk of your life. You’re doing f**k all tomorrow as revenge.