Meetings: How to avoid them

No one likes sitting through boring meetings. If your workday is interrupted with too many pow wows, here are the top ten ways to get out of them:

10. Minimize showering.
9. Coughing fits.
8. Restless shoulder syndrome.
7. Three words: Cell phone carnival.
6. Contradict indiscriminately. E.g. "Third time's a charm." Your response: "Do we have any data? That sounds speculative and undefined to me."
5. Snot rockets.
4. At the end of the meeting, when asked if there are any more questions, emit an audible hum, like you are thinking. Pretend like you're trying to remember what it was you were going to say for a minute. When the delay gets awkward, wait another 30 seconds, then say you forgot.
3. Say everything twice, verbatim. Say everything twice, verbatim.
2. Have good ideas. Good ideas are insults to management.
1. Pretend to care about what's going on. A dab of feigned curiosity will set you free. (Be careful not to have real curiosity. See #2 - not as good.)