It helps with concentration, right?
Even those who are lucky enough to be in a job that they enjoy can agree that by and large, meetings suck. When they're not a necessary evil to keep us in the loop with our managers and colleagues, they are an tedious waste of time seemingly designed to keep us from doing what we need to be. The people with the most ironclad attention spans struggle to make it through an hour and a half of “updates” and “strategy” without drifting off to la-la land for at least a couple of minutes.
As a result, it's no surprise that many of us have certain processes we use to at least look like we're engaged with whatever is happening around the table, or on the screen. Perhaps there's a point of interest in the room that you look at to appear deep in thought, or you spend most of the time on Zoom staring at the panel that has your own face in it.
If you're anything like Annamarie McKee, perhaps you engage in a little harmless doodling to keep your hands occupied while you listen. Unfortunately, though, this method backfired heavily on her after she spent the duration of a meeting creating multicolored swirls on a page, only for her manager to ask that she share her notes with the team afterwards.
After she shared her awkward predicament to TikTok, viewers sympathized with her situation.
They were not impressed by the way in which she had been singled out for her behavior, especially since it could be seen as a method for improving concentration. “Is doodling how you absorb info?”, asked @highladybunny. “Because, same. I got called out by my boss during a meeting for not ”paying attention and doodling"".
Others had plenty of advice.
It seemed that plenty of commenters were well-versed in the art of corporate persuasion-speak, as well as the importance of standing up for personal boundaries. Not everyone was so calm and collected, though. “I would say ”no these are my personal notes" and try not to cry", claimed @pipsqueak_44.
In the end, things didn't turn out so badly.
In a follow up video, Annamarie revealed to viewers that she had come clean with her manager about why she had been so busy with her pen off-camera. It seems like she didn't take it the wrong way — it's hard to be mad against all those pretty colors, after all.