Ever have one of those days where you think a couple of what seem to be innocuous meetings turn out to be anything but? The first one involved someone (not originally invited) taking over the meeting with an unexpected powerpoint presentation outlining all the ways that they had been impacted by and speaking in a tone that was clearly looking for a fight that I wasn’t willing to provide. I DID provide a number of counterpoints and suggested that, although not entirely out of line, I have very little control over the things she was looking for and the topics would require some conversations take place between her and someone she probably doesn’t want to talk to about the things she wants done, and also between people far above both of our steps on the food chain. I was left thinking, that did really not go well, and I am sure the other two original people who were looking to talk to me were also a bit caught off guard at where that meeting went, and where it did not go, because I do not think that they, at all, got what they were after from me.
So I let her go and eventually the meeting ran out of time and I had to excuse myself for another meeting that I’d thought I needed a half hour for, had optimistically scheduled and hour for, and went almost two hours until I finally called it quits on the grounds that my lunch was now over without me eating and I really needed to pee. That person had totally overthought my meeting invite and thought they were on trial for something and that they were being brought before another team (not mine) to answer for…something? They were confused when it was just me and a conversational chat about a topic…. I went back and looked at my message and nope….I really am not sure how they got where they did, but I feel a little badly that they spent too many hours prepping for conflict where there was none.
Never a dull moment.
Oh well, the rest of the day went well enough and though I carried my camera along the trail home, I didn’t see anything that caught my eye until I got home and saw my annually ever larger globe thistle and it seemed like a metaphor for the morning.
