French Meetings

I had a meeting today that was scheduled from 1:30 - 4:30. At 5:00, when I realized that I wasn't understanding enough context in French, my legs were falling asleep, and I had plenty of other work to do, I left. When I left the building at 6:15, it was still ongoing.

I've found this to be very normal in France. For example, every Monday my group has a team meeting. It is scheduled for 30 minutes, but every week it lasts no less than 1 hour and a half. I don't have a problem with the length, but if it's going to take that long every week, why can't we schedule it for an hour and half? Even when I start the meeting by saying "I have another meeting in an hour, will we be done by then?", they shush me and say that the meeting is only 30 minutes long. And then it takes 1h45, I'm late for my other meeting, and I'm forced to skip lunch.

The thing is, when Americans have meetings, we set an agenda, we check things off lists, and we move on. Because we all hate meetings. But when the French get together, someone presents something, and everyone argues over every single Powerpoint slide. And they're not just arguing about little issues, but major procedural stuff as well. The kind of things that can't be resolved without a management steering committee and a budget adjustment, but we're going to argue about it anyway. And in the end, after everyone is exhausted and absolutely nothing has been resolved, we decide that we still have to finish the other 75% of the presentation, so we have to meet again next week.

At first I thought it was just my screwed up group, but almost every week David is telling me about another "marathon meeting" that took half or sometimes all day. So the problem is clear: the French. End of discussion!