I for one hate meetings. Unless they’re donuts and cookies meetings, where the topic is to eat donuts and cookies. But for those of us who work in an office, meetings are an unavoidable thing. You might be able to ninja your way out of a few, but the house always wins. My way of getting through them have been to zone out but keep alert for key words (such as ‘action item’ or ‘make 600 copies’). I know that probably isn’t the best way, but it gets me by usually. I’ve been lucky that there’s usually meeting minutes to give me a recap on all that I dazed on.

For a more tactical approach, go grab this month’s GQ (the one with Stephen Colbert on the front holding an oddly frightening Colbert baby) and flip to page 128 for a great article. The writer Cecil Donahue lists the typical meeting participants and how you should handle them. For me it was amazing; it seems all meetings are made up of the same bunch of jokers! I’ll try to give a quick job of the article, but you should read the whole thing and be quite entertained.

Bloviator: Guy that thinks he’s the expert on everything but isn’t. This is the bullshitter, the guy that doesn’t know his ass from a rainbow painted donkey.

Quipster: The funny guy that makes cracks, but never does anything useful. He’ll waste your time at the meeting if you don’t cut him short.

Brownnoser: We’ve all had our share of these. Hell, some of you might even be the brownnose king. See the flip side of the situation and see it as entertainment for a boring meeting.

Smarty-Pants: Similar to Bloviator, but actually knows his shit. Stare this annoying book worm mofo down.

Jargon-Meister: This guy uses all the ‘trendy’ new industry speak. I had a huge share of this being in the consulting industry. I still don’t get what most of these people are saying. Can’t they just talk normal?

There are a few I left out for sake of keeping this semi short. But go grab a copy and read it; if you hate the article, there’s some pictures of Ivanka Trump on page 200. Leave some notes here of any personal adventures in meeting land that you’ve had.

Kill Me Now from GQ magazine