The blue light of the monitor is vibrating against the back of my retinas, a low-frequency hum that feels like a migraine trying to find its rhythm. On the screen, fourteen rectangles are frozen in various states of performative attention. One guy, Greg from Logistics, is definitely looking at a sandwich just off-camera. In the center, the shared document-a white expanse of digital paper-remains terrifyingly blank. We have been here for 45 minutes. The objective is to decide on a single vendor for the regional rollout, a task that requires roughly 5 minutes of objective comparison. Instead, we are performing a ritual. It is a séance where we try to summon a decision without anyone actually having to touch the planchette.

I’m sitting here, still tasting the bitterness of the coffee I drank two hours ago, and honestly, I’m still thinking about that silver SUV. Twenty minutes before this call, I was pulling into the lot, indicator blinking, perfectly positioned, and this guy just swerves in. He didn’t even look at me. He just took the spot because he could, and now he’s probably sitting in his own meeting somewhere, hiding behind a muted microphone. That’s the modern corporate condition: taking what isn’t yours-time, space, agency-and then refusing to acknowledge the person you’ve displaced.

Chen E., our closed captioning specialist, is the only one who truly sees the carnage. Chen doesn’t just listen; they transcribe. When you see the words ‘indistinct chatter’ or ‘cross-talk’ appear in the captions, what you’re actually seeing is the sound of 15 people trying to avoid being the one who said ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ Chen once told me that during these 90-minute marathons, the word ‘perhaps’ appears 75 times more often than the word ‘action.’ We are paying Chen to document our cowardice in real-time, one character at a time, making sure that every hedging statement is preserved for a posterity that will never read them.

The meeting is the bunker where accountability goes to wait out the war.

The Illusion of Collaboration

We pretend meetings are for collaboration because ‘collaboration’ is a word that smells like fresh cedar and progress. In reality, the meeting has become a witness protection program for the risk-averse. If I make a decision alone in my office and it fails, the failure has my name on it. It’s a clean, sharp target. But if I call a meeting of 25 people and we spend 105 minutes ‘aligning our perspectives’ until a decision emerges from the fog like a ghost, who is to blame when the project sinks? No one. The decision wasn’t made; it happened to us. It was a consensus. And a consensus is just a way of spreading the blame so thin that it becomes invisible to the naked eye of the auditors.

I remember a time, about 15 months ago, when I was so paralyzed by a simple choice regarding a UI color palette that I scheduled a series of three ‘pre-alignment syncs.’ I wasted $875 of the company’s money in billable hours just so I wouldn’t have to be the guy who chose ‘Slate Grey’ over ‘Charcoal.’ I eventually wrote a 45-page memo. Looking back, it was a pathetic display. I wasn’t seeking the best color; I was seeking a shield. I wanted to be able to point to the group and say, ‘We all agreed the blue-ish grey felt more synergistic,’ even though that word is a hollow shell of a concept. I’m admitting this now because the guilt of that wasted time feels like the same weight I felt when that SUV took my parking spot-a quiet, burning realization that I am part of the friction I complain about.

The Jargon Treadmill

In the rectangles on my screen, someone is finally speaking. It’s Sarah. She’s using the phrase ‘directional shift’ for the 15th time this morning. She’s slide 23 deep into a deck that was clearly recycled from a project in 2015. There is a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from watching someone explain something they don’t believe to people who aren’t listening. Chen E.’s captions are struggling to keep up with the jargon. The text at the bottom of my screen reads: [unintelligible corporate jargon]. It’s the most honest thing said all day.

When you work in an environment where decisions are treated as toxic waste to be passed around, the very concept of progress starts to feel like a myth. We build these elaborate structures-the agendas, the minutes, the follow-up emails-to give the impression of a machine in motion. But the machine is just a treadmill. We are burning 575 calories of mental energy to stay exactly where we started. The real work, the actual ‘doing,’ usually happens in the 5 minutes after the call when two people realize they have to actually ship something by Friday and just make a snap judgment in a private chat.

The Cost of Hesitation

This is why we see such a disconnect between the internal culture of a business and the experience of its customers. A user doesn’t care about your alignment. They care about whether the button works. When you look at something like the Push Store, you’re seeing the result of a process that values the direct path over the circular one. It reflects a core principle: that reducing friction for the end-user requires someone, somewhere, to have the guts to make a clear, un-diluted decision. You cannot ‘consensus’ your way to a seamless user experience. You have to own it.

I watch as Greg finally finishes his sandwich. He forgets he isn’t on mute and we all hear him swallow. It’s a wet, heavy sound that punctuates Sarah’s sentence about ‘long-term viability.’ No one acknowledges it. To acknowledge the sandwich-swallowing would be to acknowledge the humanity in the room, and humanity is dangerous. Humans have opinions. Humans take up space. Humans steal parking spots. In a meeting, we prefer to be avatars of our job descriptions, ghosts in the machine that nod in unison to avoid being singled out.

The Cost of Stalling

There is a specific data point I keep in a folder on my desktop: 235. That is the number of hours I spent in meetings last quarter where the primary outcome was ‘scheduling another meeting.’ If you calculate my salary against those hours, it’s a staggering amount of money spent on professional stalling. It’s a witness protection program that costs more than the crimes it’s hiding. We are protecting ourselves from the ‘crime’ of being wrong. But in the modern economy, being wrong quickly is 15 times more valuable than being right after six months of deliberation.

Chen E. pings me on the side. ‘They’ve said ‘touch base’ five times in the last three minutes,’ the message reads. ‘I’m going to start replacing it with ‘avoid responsibility’ in the transcript just to see if anyone notices.’ I smile, but it’s a tired one. Chen is the only one who sees the absurdity because Chen is the only one tasked with actually looking at the words we use. The rest of us just let the sounds wash over us like a grey tide.

The Efficiency of Selfishness

I’ve started to realize that my anger about the parking spot wasn’t really about the spot. It was about the lack of a witness. If that guy had to stand in front of a committee and explain why he deserved that spot more than me, he wouldn’t have done it. He did it because he could do it quickly, individually, and without a meeting. In a twisted way, I respect the efficiency of his selfishness more than the inefficiency of our collective ‘good intentions.’ At least he made a choice. He saw a goal, he took the path, and he achieved the outcome. He owned the spot.

We are currently on minute 75. The facilitator asks if there are any ‘further thoughts.’ This is the most dangerous part of the ritual. This is where someone who hasn’t spoken yet feels the need to justify their presence by asking a question that resets the entire conversation back to slide 5. And right on cue, Mark from Finance clears his throat. Mark is the king of the ‘just to play devil’s advocate’ maneuver. He isn’t actually an advocate for the devil; he’s an advocate for more meetings, because as long as we are playing devil’s advocate, we aren’t launching. And if we aren’t launching, Mark doesn’t have to run the numbers on a potential failure.

The Suffocation of Politeness

I find myself drifting, wondering if the silver SUV is still out there. I wonder if the driver is having a productive day because he didn’t waste 15 minutes looking for a ‘fair’ spot. Meanwhile, I am here, contributing to a 1005-person organization that is slowly suffocating under the weight of its own politeness. We are so afraid of offending the ‘process’ that we’ve forgotten how to move. We’ve turned accountability into a game of hot potato where the potato is made of ice and we’re all wearing gloves.

What would happen if we just stopped? If, at the 35-minute mark, I just typed into the chat: ‘I am deciding right now. We are going with Vendor B. If it fails, fire me.’ The silence would be deafening. Chen E. would probably have a heart attack trying to type it fast enough. The rectangles would freeze. The performative nodding would cease. It would be an act of corporate terrorism because it would force everyone else to either agree or disagree, and disagreement is a form of ownership. It’s much safer to just let the meeting continue until the clock runs out and we can all ‘circle back’ next Tuesday.

I’ve made mistakes before. I once deleted a database entry that cost us 15 hours of downtime. It was the best day of my career because for those 15 hours, I was the only person who mattered. I was the one who broke it, and I was the one who had to fix it. There was no meeting. There was no consensus. There was just a problem and a person. It was terrifying, and it was the most alive I’ve ever felt in this building. Now, I spend my days avoiding that feeling. I spend my days in the protection program, hiding behind the collective ‘we.’

The Empty Space

We are at minute 85. The facilitator is wrapping up. ‘I think we have some great takeaways here,’ she says. We have zero takeaways. We have a list of things to discuss at the next meeting. We have successfully survived another 90 minutes without making a single person responsible for anything. Greg is closing his laptop. Sarah is already looking at her phone. Chen E. stops the transcription. The red ‘Live’ icon disappears.

As the rectangles vanish one by one, I’m left with my own reflection in the black screen. I look tired. I look like someone who has spent the morning being protected from my own potential. I get up, grab my keys, and walk out to the parking lot. The silver SUV is gone. In its place is a small, empty space. It’s just a patch of asphalt, but it feels like an indictment. The driver made his move, did his business, and left. I, on the other hand, spent the same amount of time making sure that if I ever do find a spot, it’s only because 14 other people told me it was okay to park there.