"Efficiency" at All Costs
Weekend Dispatch #3
My boss Derek and I have a daily. Every morning, ten o’clock, no exceptions.
For six months, we sat two desks apart in the same open space, separated by a plant nobody waters and a printer nobody uses. For six months, we’d spin our chairs around, cover what needed covering, and get back to work. Two minutes. Three if one of us had eaten something interesting the night before.
Then Copilot arrived. Derek called it a game changer. “If it’s not in the minutes, it didn’t happen, Norm.” I nodded. I do a lot of nodding these days.
The new rule was simple: every meeting goes through Teams. Every meeting. Didn’t matter if you were in the same room, the same row, breathing the same recycled air. No Teams call, no Copilot summary. No Copilot summary, no record. No record, no accountability. Derek said the word “accountability” three times in the same sentence. I counted.
Now the daily goes like this: Derek opens Teams on his screen. I join the meeting from my desk, six feet away. I can hear him twice — his real voice on the left, his headset voice on the right, half a second apart. Derek says this isn’t strange. I don’t say anything.
Yesterday we had nothing to report. It happens. We confirmed there were no blockers, that the tickets were where the tickets were, and that the week was going fine. A hundred and twelve seconds. Derek clicked End Meeting.
At 10:07, Copilot sent the summary. Thirty lines.
Among the action items: “Derek and Norm have confirmed alignment on current priorities and a follow-up meeting is scheduled for tomorrow at the same time to ensure continuity.”
At 10:08, Derek pinged me on Teams. We were six feet apart. “Told you. Game changer.”
The plant between our desks has been dead for three weeks. No one has documented it.
— Norm
Norm works in IT. He has opinions. They are allegedly his own.