‘Guess who's getting billed 16h of work for a 15 minute meeting’: Customer pays their consultant 100x more than expected after requesting a meeting that could have been an email

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Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Nov 5, 2023 1:00 PM EST

Everyone hates attending a meeting that could have been an email… But in corporate, white-collar America, the higher-ups eagerly await every round-robin at the conference table. C-level bosses take pleasure in the firm handshakes, they enjoy flexing their power over their employees's schedule, and they really, REALLY love hearing their own voice. However, for most employees, time is money. So wasting time in a lengthy toxic-positivity meeting achieves far less than actually getting your work done. 

In this story, a consultant actually found a way to combat futile meetings and save his valuable time by speaking the only language in which capitalist America is fluent– Money. We've all heard that 'money talks' but when this company got charged 100x more than they expected for a wasteful meeting, it probably made them think twice about using Zoom for the next one. Scroll onward to enjoy this story where a consultant had an 'I told you so' moment, earning him a hefty sum and saving him tons of time in the future on senseless in-person meetings. 

Afterwards, read on about another work-related story, where a bank teller taught a customer a lesson in kindness, blocking his account as revenge for horrible phone manners and cruel behavior. 

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  • 01
    "It could have been an email"
    via u/canva
  • 02
    r/r/MaliciousCompliance Posted by u/mdlapla 6 hours ago Unnecesary meetings? here's your expensive bill. S OC
    via u/mdlapla
  • 03
    My company works with a customer that has a factory 2.5h away from us. We've been working with them for years now, and we've been at the factory a couple of times at the start of the project.
    via u/mdlapla
  • 04
    Everyone at the customer works at that factory, we're in charge of migrating paper trail to digital documents, for a company that has like 4 warehouses full of paper trail documents. The solution has been working for sometime.
    via u/mdlapla
  • 05
    Last week, they asked us for a meeting. My boss said "ok, online, whenever you want", they said that they wanted an in-person one, that we should go to the factory. My boss didn't want to, so he said "If we go, I'll have to bill you for the time", they said yes.
    via u/mdlapla
  • 06
    So Monday morning, my boss and the tech in charge of the process head down there. The meeting lasts exactly 15 minutes. It could have been solved in exactly 2 paragraphs in one email.
    via u/mdlapla
  • 07
    Since they are there, tech asks the client to show them the paper trail warehouses and a tour of the factory, they happily comply.
    via u/mdlapla
  • 08
    Overall, the meeting that could have been 15 minutes or two emails lasted 5 hours of travel plus 3 hours touring there, plus the food. Guess who's getting billed 16h of work and the food for a 15 minutes meeting.
    via u/mdlapla
  • 09
    TLDR: Customer asks for an in-person meeting that's not neccesary, get's billed 100 times more time that what they expected.
    via u/mdlapla
  • 10
    Calbinan 12 hr. ago Some folks have to learn the hard way that other people's time has value.
    via u/Calbinan
  • 11
    --RedDawg-- 12 hr. ago If you ever wonder if a vendor "should" be billing you for a meeting, consider this: would you be in the meeting if you weren't paid?
    via u/--RedDawg--
  • 12
    Mdayofearth 9 hr. ago How I bill out my time is... If I weren't working for you, would I be doing this... And that's how I explain it to clients.
    via u/Mdayofearth
  • 13
    BrettV795 hr. ago that's my argument for people should be paid to travel to and from work each day.
    via u/BrettV79
  • 14
    thephoton 3 hr. ago Great idea. Now if I just move to a place 4 hours away from work, my shift will be over by the time I drive there and allow for time to drive home.
    via u/thephoton
  • 15
    Luised2094 2 hr. ago I don't think they idea is that you start driving to work at the start of the shift... Vote Reply thephoton 2 hr. ago So I can get 8 hours of overtime every day then?
    via u/Luised2094
  • 16
    oylaura 5 hr. ago Wow. Talk about inefficiency. It reminds me of a job I had back in the early 90s. I lived in Southern California working for a company whose headquarters were in Illinois.
    via u/oylaura
  • 17
    We were on a Macintosh system, and we're generating data in Microsoft Excel. Corporate, in Illinois, used PCs. They actually sent me and a QA manager to Illinois to find out if documents produced on a Macintosh computer would translate to a PC.
    via u/oylaura
  • 18
    Like your situation, this could easily have been done with either a phone call or an email. But no, we had to go. I enjoyed the trip. I had them plan my flight so I stayed over a Saturday, which saved the
    via u/oylaura
  • 19
    company money. So I had my travel partner drop me at my grandmother's outside Chicago on his way to the airport and spent the weekend with her. Then I had another relative take me to the airport on Sunday afternoon.
    via u/oylaura
  • 20
    It was a win for me and I don't think the company cared about the cost. But their inefficiency allowed me to see my grandmother
    via u/oylaura
  • 21
    WoefulKnight. 5 hr. ago This reeks of a manager trying to spend their budget away before the end of the year before it's allocated away from them.
    via u/WoefulKnight
  • 22
    dongkey1001 10 hr. ago It sounds like someone has excess budget that needs to burn off. Vote Reply Share DetritusK 8 hr. ago Or the customer's boss insisted they needed to be on site. This could easily be MC at the customer contact level.
    via u/dongkey1001

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