‘Jesus. This guy looks important. And who is she with the timeless blazer jacket and blonde bob?’ I thought. “Morning Duncan!” the blonde bob shoots up in the direction of yet another attendee to the meeting. Monday morning, not even 10am and I’m in the deep end of meeting brand new people for a pre meeting chit chat. Deciding I could get away with it and desperate to avoid small talk, I entered the meeting room ahead of the others whilst they waited in the hall. As I walked away I mumbled “help yourself to teas and…” – cue trail off with a garbled word, team with eye contact that meets not a single eye, turn whilst still mumbling and walk suddenly fast to make for a pretty awesome “is that girl quite with it?” first impression.
In the meeting room I begin faffing with a laptop that I had set up quite perfectly ten minutes earlier, that required no extra input from me, yet I took solace in it playing along with me. One by one ‘The Important Looking People’ began to enter the room. ‘Do I say something now? It’s pretty rude that I’m just looking at my laptop. But if I start small talk now someone might cut me off mid sentence as the meeting will start and that would look weirder than not speaking, especially after mumbly dawdly girl first impression’ I considered. Deciding to stay quiet, the meeting began and I lightly typed on my keyboard friend noting down what the people were saying. My brain was beginning to fire up, and I think I struck the right balance of hitting the buttons: not so loud as to block out voices, and not so quiet as to make people think “is she even making any notes?”.
Why people have meetings beyond one hour I don’t know, for in my mind after the 60th minute I’m not fully there. Well actually, I am fully there, just perhaps not in the way that I’m meant to be. By 11.30am I was on my fifth character analysis. Looking up from the clunky laptop I continued with my internal discussion about what type of person each meeting attendee was. The longer I looked at them all, the more compassion I felt. I decided that everyone in the room cared a lot about the topics they discussed and about people. They were a mixture of hospital trust staff and it really warmed me to know that this was the case, well according to my mid meeting character analysis that is.
During a break, I joke with The Looks Important guy about the old school laptop I’m using, and as though everyone breaks character for the pause in the meeting, I see each persons lighter side. I wonder if everyone has worries and thoughts like mine, or if they had them before they became more knowledgeable in their subject areas. Looks Important guy sent another joke my way and my response brought in a character from across the room who also suddenly didn’t seem so scary. I wondered if they even thought of me as Random Mumbly Girl or if they thought nothing much of my odd entrance earlier.
After the meeting I spoke a bit more with a few of the attendees and actually laughed at myself for perceiving them as though they were from some alien landscape simply because they had a title and a suit. A week prior I spent some time speaking with some homeless people in a community group. I was lost for words at the story they shared of life on the streets for 8 years, sleeping bag and tiny little bags of belongings in tow. I awkwardly hovered at the table longing for them to give me a neat opening to say “ok I’ll be off now!” But it didn’t seem appropriate to follow “what can I do I’ll sleep anywhere indoors we just need anywhere” with that. When I did at last express that there’s not much I could do but that I would do my best to keep thinking, the three men thanked me not for my help, but for treating them like a human and hearing them. We are all but human, and we are all important – suit or sleeping bag.
Laila Bloggs 