The Mandatory "Optional" Meeting

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I was young at the time. My manager had called an optional meeting for later that morning. Since it was optional, I had planned to stay in my cubicle and bang away on the keyboard; I had bugs to solve and code to write. Later, a colleague came by to fetch me. "Didn't you know we had a meeting?"

"Yes," I replied. "It was optional."

She had an exasperated look on her face, as if I should have known better. Off I went; I wasn't rebellious, just naive.

The good news was that the manager never called a mandatory "optional" meeting again. The bad news was that I would continue to encounter similar goofiness throughout my ongoing career in software.

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