Many years ago I was working on a large engineering project as a lowly draftsman, and the C.E.O. (or some other high muck-a-muck, can’t exactly remember his title) would call an all hands meeting at the nearby Marriott hotel with a free buffet breakfast every 6 months or so, so it was a pretty nice paid alternative to working. We’re talking a couple of hundred people at these things.

Except this dude loved the sound of his own voice and could waffle on endlessly about anything and nothing, and would do so at these meetings with a captive audience. Annoying, but a reasonable price to pay for a rather nice breakfast.

At the end he’d ask if anyone had any questions, and anyone that knew the guy knew to not fucking do that because we’d be standing there for another 5 minutes listening to the answer, except for the new guy, a very nice and earnest Dutch guy that was standing next to me. I tried to stop him with a subtle shake of the head, but he wasn’t playing attention. Cue another 5 minutes of waffling. I so wanted to give him a swift kick in the shins.