One of the things that's always annoyed me in my 'professional' life have been the not-infrequent demands on the part of one supervisor or another for me to "sit in" on a presentation "just in case."

"Just in case" of what, I've always wondered?

Bernie pulled that one this morning. He was on-site in a client's office, doing an online presentation to them and another person who was connecting to the meeting remotely. I was required to sit through the 1-1/4 hour tedium "just in case."

I mean, all that could go wrong was for the client's network to go down or for Bernie to be asked a question he didn't know the answer to and I fail to see how having me on the phone could have been useful in either situation. I know nothing about networks and I know nothing about the new product idea Bernie was presenting.

Also, Bernie does lame presentations and while I'm not a salesperson myself, I've been privileged to work with some really good ones in my career and it's painful to me to listen to entirely lame presentations.

Thank goodness for the "mute" button on my digital phone.

While grousing mentally about the gross waste of time (and the death of several brain cells), I fixed and ate my breakfast, took a bathroom break, wandered outdoors to have a cigarette, played at least ten games of Spider Solitaire, and answered a few e-mails.

So, you know, not entirely time lost. Just time lost to doing anything productive.