Anecdotal and not related to state work but definitely meetings:

my fiancé works as an engineer at a factory company. Desk job, he could work from home but the management severely frowns upon it (tells him he can only do it if he’s sick but ok enough to work at home or bad weather or something). Absolutely HATES working there. The work itself is fine but the people are awful. Everyone’s pushing their work onto someone else so nothing gets done, and there are constant overlapping meetings. Then there’s some people who only have to ok something for it to move on but don’t bother for three weeks. No one emails for some godforsaken reason, instead hunting the other person down or scheduling unnecessary meetings, especially outside of hours. Don’t get me started on the environment (office chatter is downright depressing).

We had plans one Friday, and if he left on time it would have been fine. He had to cancel one meeting to go to this other meeting deemed “more important” an hour before he left work. The questions could have been solved with emails and maybe a 15 minute meeting. Scheduled for 30 minutes, supposed to include between 6-10 people. Only 3 people showed up, including my fiancé. The rest were doing mandatory training that their WHOLE department was doing. The thirty minutes go by and as they wrapped up, another person showed up. So the meeting happened AGAIN, and it was time for my fiancé to leave work. Then the freaking supervisor walks in and also asks for the meeting to go again. Sits right in front of the door and it would have been “disrespectful” for my fiancé to leave so he left late. My fiancé made it clear he needed to leave before the meeting started. Then some guy asked for his help after the meeting as he was about to leave. And he had the gall to say “weren’t you supposed to be gone an hour ago?” NO SHIT JIM. And he still had to drive home (mind you the traffic gets worse the later it gets). Absolutely ridiculous.

What the actual hell is wrong with office culture people? There’s no respect for anyone’s time, working in the least efficient manner. It’s no wonder work from home works better, they’d actually have to use the tools given to them to communicate and (GASP) do their job!!! God lord what a concept.

Edit: he did a review recently with management. The mkfs told him he’s “not working enough hours” and treating it like a “punch in/out job”. So you’re telling me he’s supposed to work through lunch (they said that) AND unpaid overtime for a company that already treats him like shit? Yeah no. Fuck that.