Warning - Rant ahead...

You would think that people who work for a company as large as mine, that is responsible for million dollar budgets and thousands of jobs, could at least show up for a meeting on time. I have 12+ meetings throughout the week and have to rely on the short amount of time in between each one to get any actual work done, yet I am still the first person to just about every meeting. At this very moment I am waiting for a meeting to start and it is now 8 minutes past the start time. This wouldn’t be that big of a deal if we used remote tools like audio and/or web conferencing tools so that I can stay at my desk and continue working (read tramping through dungeon levels) while waiting for these yahoos to show up but apparently they find some kind of amusement in doing the last dash to find a conference room and oh by the way we need a projector too. In my complex we have 5 buildings, 12 conference rooms (that I know of) and about 250 people. The rooms are almost always booked every day, back to back, leading to a queue of people waiting for the previous meeting to end so that theirs can start. More than once I have had to leave one conference room and rush over to the next building and search for the next one. The funny thing is, my meetings are usually all with the same participants so we are constantly shuffling from one building to another like a pack of baby mice following mamma. Strangely, these people seem to be oblivious to the inefficiency of this method. Even when holding up outside companies, our vendors, they find it perfectly reasonable to let everyone wait while they try and get the conference line running or search for that last hidden room in some obscure back office. More than once I muttered my apologies to the vendors and more than once I have received a response of
“It’s ok, this is fairly normal for %company%.” Now that I have been here a while I start my meetings 5 minutes after the start time, forcing any stragglers to play catch up or actually announce that they were late and could you please repeat what we already talked about. Although my favorite is the manager that shows up 15 minutes late, doesn’t announce himself and then starts to make comments completely contradictory to the first part of the meeting, then leaves 15 minutes early. If we use the remote tools I could at least ‘work’ on other things instead of working to keep my eyes open sitting in an uncomfortable chair listening to someone drone on about a topic that has already been resolved before we started but they are too daft to understand and need it explained by a speak and spell.
Sorry for the rant but I tired of sitting in an empty room waiting for others to meander on over and start this damn thing…especially when that elusive Amulet of Yendor is waiting to be found.