There may be no more universally shared workplace experience than sitting in a meeting and wondering why you’re there.
Open Reddit and type in “pointless meetings”.
You’ll find post after post, year after year, from software developers, accountants, healthcare workers, sales teams, office employees, remote workers and managers themselves.
Different jobs, different countries, different industries, but the same complaint — “The meetings are so awkward, with people barely speaking or participating, mostly waiting to leave.”
One employee summed up their role in these sessions with a line that has become internet gold: “My attendance is symbolic.”
Another worker described a familiar corporate reality: “We’ll probably go sit at the cafe across the road and talk shit for 45 minutes, which is productive to no one.”
If Reddit is any indication, employees have spent years trying to solve one mystery: If everyone hates pointless meetings, who keeps scheduling them?
THE MEETING THAT COULD HAVE BEEN AN EMAIL
The phrase appears so often online that it has practically become a workplace slogan.
“The vast majority could be an email.”
“Is it just me or are 90% of work meetings completely pointless?”
“Just read the damn email like me?”
The frustration isn’t simply about losing thirty minutes or an hour. Workers repeatedly describe meetings as productivity wrecking balls.
One Reddit user wrote: “Meetings aren’t often just a waste of the meeting time, they are ruining surrounding time too by pulling you out of your zone.”
Another added: “A well placed meeting can crush the productivity of a whole day if unlucky.”
Many complained about weekly status meetings where there were no actual updates, recurring check-ins with no decisions to make, and discussions that drifted into weather, lunch plans and weekend conversations simply to fill the calendar slot.
One employee described managers extending silent meetings to the full thirty minutes even when there was nothing left to discuss. Others admitted they had started pushing back.
“I’ve gotten way more done,” one worker wrote after skipping or challenging unnecessary meetings.
A PROBLEM OLDER THAN HYBRID WORK
What’s striking is that these complaints are not new. Some posts are recent, but others are years old. Yet the themes barely change.
“Why do we have so many pointless meetings?”
“Corporate people are addicted useless meetings.”
“Can’t stand pointless meetings at every job anymore.”
The wording changes. Yet, the frustration remains remarkably consistent. Many workers argue that meetings often seem disconnected from actual work.
One post captured the contradiction perfectly: managers emphasise efficiency and productivity, then schedule hour-long meetings in the middle of busy periods.
Another complained that teams are expected to complete enormous workloads while simultaneously attending endless discussions.
The common thread is simple — employees feel they are being asked to stop working in order to talk about work.
WHY MANAGERS KEEP CALLING THEM
Before declaring meetings the villain of modern office life, there is another side to the story.
According to Gaurav Sharma, CHRO at True Balance, meetings continue because organisations use them for far more than project updates.
“Meetings nowadays survive because they serve as a way for managers to keep a track of work progress, identify the areas that need focus and improvement, and create professional engagement within the workplace,” Sharma says.
He points out that meetings often help with accountability, alignment, assigning responsibilities and bridging communication gaps.
“Through meetings, leaders get the reassurance that teams are moving forward in the right or same direction and make certain that teams remain updated as well as informed,” he says.
In other words, managers often see meetings as coordination tools, while employees frequently experience them as interruptions.
WHEN A MEETING STOPS BEING WORTH IT
Sharma believes the line is fairly clear.
“A meeting turns out to be more expensive than useful, when the value created through the discussion, does not justify the time invested by every team member in the meeting,” he says.
Sharma says meetings should either provide clarity or help solve problems. If they end with confusion, unanswered questions and no direction, they have failed their purpose.
His suggested test before sending a calendar invite is refreshingly simple: “What is the decision that needs to be made? Who is to be involved here? Can this be resolved through a message, email or shared document instead of a meeting?”
Many Reddit users would probably frame the same idea more bluntly.
THE ETERNAL CORPORATE MYSTERY
The truth is that most employees don’t hate meetings. They hate meetings without outcomes.
They don’t mind discussions that solve problems, unblock projects or help teams make decisions. What drives people mad are meetings where nobody has updates, nobody has questions, nobody has decisions to make, and everyone knows it.
Sharma acknowledges that employees need uninterrupted time too. “Visibility is derived from real progress and outcomes; not from how frequently employees take part or appear in meetings,” he says.
Yet despite decades of complaints, the pointless meeting survives.
Search Reddit in 2026 and you’ll find workers making the same observations people made years earlier. Different offices, different bosses, same calendar invite, and the same sigh before joining.
And somewhere, in a conference room or video call, somebody is still asking a question that probably could have been an email.