Efficiencies Lost

Thanks to the wonders of technology scheduling a meeting is as easy as creating an email.  Decide who to invite, the date and time along with a title for the meeting and hit "send."  In an instant, the appointment is set on each invitee's calendar.  It seems to simple.  Maybe even too simple.

I am a mid-level government bureaucratic.  In an attempt to be responsive and accountable, I have set my work calendar  to forward appointments to my Google calendar, which I can  access through my phone.  If someone schedules a 1:00 pm meeting while I am out to lunch, I will know that I need to be back.  I consider this the act of a conscientious employee.  However,  my experience of the last few weeks is causing me to rethink this practice.

I am involved in several regularly scheduled meetings that include senior and executive managers, people who have assistants to schedule meetings and answer the phone.  One would think that with professional assistance, scheduling meetings would be a breeze.  Apparently, some of these people were in the restroom when Appointment Scheduling 101 was covered.  Either that or these assistants have committed the remainder of their careers to their manager.

Why would I draw that conclusion?  Well, here's what happens.  The assistant is directed to schedule a weekly meeting with several individuals including me.  The assistant sends out an email to the invitees indicated that he/she  has been directed to schedule said meeting and that the appointments will  follow. While I consider this an unnecessary step, I don't take issue with it.  My issue is with the appointments that follow.  For the next hour, my phone pings as five years of weekly appointments hit my Gmail account.  That's over 250 appointment messages.  An identical number are in my work email waiting for my acceptance.  Really?  Does anyone really think that I am so responsible and conscientious as to commit to attend meetings in November 2016?  

I have been a government employee for over twenty years.  In that time, I have come to accept that the one constant is change.  Change will occur such that the weekly meeting won't be weekly.  The invitees will no longer hold the positions or have the responsibilities that mandated their attendance.  Most importantly, I will be eligible to retire long before those appointments run out.  With this knowledge, I systematically accept all the appointments through 2012.  I tentatively accept appointments for 2013 and I respectfully decline any appointment beyond that.  I am too optimistic to think that I will still be available every Wednesday morning for a thirty minute meeting on this topic in 2014.