For many employees, the modern workday no longer begins with a task. It now begins with a calendar notification. A meeting, then another, then a recurring check-in that nobody remembers scheduling and nobody seems willing to cancel.
The assumption behind most meetings is straightforward: bring people together, share information, solve problems, make decisions. But what happens when the meeting survives long after its purpose disappears? When attendance becomes more important than outcomes? When the ritual remains, but the work has moved elsewhere?
That question sits at the centre of a workplace frustration shared recently by an employee on Reddit. "My boss is a really nice guy," the employee wrote. The problem was not personality, it was routine. According to the post, managers insisted on holding regular meetings to discuss project updates and questions from staff. The difficulty was that there were rarely any updates to discuss. "There may be a real update every couple of weeks, tops," the employee explained.
The result was a familiar scene: employees sitting through long stretches of silence, waiting for the meeting to end. Conversations drifting towards lunch plans, weekend activities or the weather simply to fill the allotted time. "The meetings are so awkward, with people barely speaking or participating, mostly waiting to leave," the employee wrote.
At first glance, the complaint sounds minor. An inconvenient half-hour on the calendar. A recurring annoyance. But the frustration points to a larger workplace question: why do organisations continue holding meetings that almost everyone agrees are unnecessary?
When meetings become a performance
The common explanation is coordination. Teams need visibility, managers need updates, and employees need alignment. Yet many workplace researchers argue that unnecessary meetings often serve a different function. They create the appearance of management. A leader uncertain about progress may schedule more check-ins. A manager who feels disconnected from daily operations may seek reassurance through status meetings. The calendar becomes evidence that oversight is happening, even when little is actually being achieved.
That is why some meetings continue despite clear signals that they are no longer useful. The Reddit employee appeared puzzled by this contradiction. "There is zero chance the boss and his underling don't realize this," the post stated. According to the employee, managers even joked about the awkwardness of the meetings while continuing to schedule them. The issue was not ignorance. It was persistence.
The cost of interruption
The problem with unnecessary meetings is not limited to the time spent inside them. Every meeting interrupts something else. An employee writing a report, analysing data, coding software or preparing a presentation must stop, switch context and then attempt to regain focus afterward. That transition carries its own cost.
According to figures cited by Forbes, employees attend an average of 62 one-hour meetings every month. Workers report that roughly half of those meetings are unnecessary and could have been replaced with written communication. The publication also notes that meetings cost the US economy an estimated $37 billion annually. The figures become more striking when combined with research on attention. Studies suggest that once concentration is interrupted, it can take close to half an hour to fully return to the previous task. A 30-minute meeting rarely consumes only 30 minutes. It also takes away the work that surrounded it.
The employee who shared the Reddit post described exactly this experience, explaining that the meetings repeatedly interrupted their workflow and cut through the middle of the day. In their case, attendance felt particularly difficult to justify because they were working on an experimental project unrelated to the rest of the team's work. "My attendance is symbolic," they wrote.
What employees actually need
The irony is that most organisations already possess alternatives. Status updates can be shared through email. Progress reports can be documented in project management tools. Questions can be answered asynchronously. Not every piece of information requires a room, a video call or a calendar invitation.
Organisational psychologists often propose a simple test before scheduling a meeting: what specific decision will be made during this discussion? If that question cannot be answered clearly, the meeting may not be necessary. This standard shifts the purpose of meetings away from visibility and towards action. The goal is not to gather people together. The goal is to leave with a decision that could not have been reached another way. When managers mistake one for the other, meetings multiply while outcomes remain unchanged.
The rise of performative management
The Reddit employee never used the phrase "performative manager." Yet the description points to a pattern that many workers recognise. Performative management occurs when managerial activity becomes detached from managerial value. Meetings are held because meetings have always been held. Check-ins occur because visibility feels reassuring. Attendance becomes proof of engagement. The work itself becomes secondary.
That distinction matters because employees are increasingly evaluating managers not by how often they communicate, but by whether communication helps them do their jobs better. Silence inside a meeting often reveals more than conversation. It can indicate that the necessary information has already been shared. It can signal that the discussion has no clear purpose. Or it can reflect a group that understands the meeting is taking place out of habit rather than necessity.
The most expensive meeting on a calendar is rarely the longest one. It is the one that no longer needs to exist. The Reddit employee's frustration ultimately reflects a broader workplace tension: managers often want visibility, while employees want focus. When those priorities collide, the calendar usually wins. The question organisations need to ask is whether that victory is worth the cost. Because people rarely produce their best work in meetings. They produce it in the uninterrupted hours that meetings keep taking away.
