A worker’s ‘winning secret’ to avoid office meetings that won’t land you in hot water

Remote working has introduced a host of problems and hacks in the UK work force (Picture: Shutterstock/ PerfectWave) Is there anything worse than clocking in to work and seeing your calendar jammed full of random, and seemingly pointless, meetings? If we’re honest, most of them could’ve been an email, and it feels like actually being able to get your head down and get any task done is near to impossible. But one senior leader at a UK sports organisation shared her simple workplace hack that has freed her up plow through her to-do list. The Financial Times reported that the woman was fed up with being dragged from one meeting to the next, so instead she blocked out the last Tuesday of every month in her calendar with the label ‘FAMT’. Many assumed she had a standing meeting with a client, so they were all shocked when she revealed what the abbreviation stood for: ‘F**k all meetings Tuesday.’ Ask Metro Use AI to go deeper into the stories you care about – powered by Metro and trusted publications. Others in the corporate environment have also confessed to doing this, with Bobby (@bobbyyy_ok) saying it was her ‘winning secret’, sharing: ‘You start scheduling fake meetings just to get a few minutes of peace. Who know “busy” could be such a great excuse.’ It’s brilliant really, but isn’t it also a little depressing that we’re having to resort to a fake meeting, just to get our job done? Jim Moore, employee relations expert at HR consultants Hamilton Nash, tells Metro this trick is an old habit in a new form. ‘One of the great hopes of the post-Covid hybrid working world was that it might kill off the curse of presenteeism, and the need to “perform” by working long hours to impress the boss,’ Jim says. ‘But just like a horror movie villain, presenteeism was never really dead – and now it’s back in a new but strangely familiar form.’ Remote working in a post-Covid world has had a big knock-on effect on productivity, according to the expert. ‘Remote working created the freedom employees need to get their work done, but it also made managers more anxious about checking that work is getting done,’ Jim explains. “Meetings have also proliferated because informal conversation has died, and managers now schedule meetings to get updates instead of walking over to someone’s desk.’ This constant stream of meetings makes it near to impossible to defeat the mountain of work that’s piling up. ‘By blocking time with a fake meeting, employees are just defending themselves against being booked into endless real meetings,’ Jim says. ‘It’s a sane solution to an insane problem, and it’s a cry for help for diligent employees.’ But there’s also the ones who are scheduling meetings, not for work purposes, but for a good juicy gossip. One TikToker posted: ‘When you schedule a fake teams meeting to gossip.’ Many replied saying ‘I love to gossip on company time’ and ‘y’all couldn’t wait until lunch? A whole fake meeting? I do the same thing’. But for HR expert Jim, this is obviously much harder to justify when you simply want a chinwag. More like this... ‘Technically, deliberately deceiving your manager about your calendar could be considered misconduct, but in reality it’s management that has a problem, not you,’ he says. ‘Managers who are obsessed with monitoring staff create a breeding ground for dishonesty. Leaders need to trust their employees to manage their own time, and incentivise productivity, not looking busy.’ So, if you see a suspicious meeting in a colleagues calendar, it might be best to look the other way. Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@metro.co.uk Arrow MORE: This is officially Brits’ dream job — and no, it’s not YouTuber or influencer Arrow MORE: Woman ‘sacked two days before giving birth after AI was used in Meta layoffs’ Arrow MORE: I found London’s best hotel lounge for remote workers — it’s stunning