Sutherland's "knife" gesture at council meeting

[lilmira]

http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/coun-sutherland-after-he-mimed-pushing-a-knife-into-colleagues-back


City hall’s integrity commissioner has been asked to review Coun. Ward Sutherland’s behaviour after a live-stream recording appeared to show him making a “twisting a knife” gesture into the back of a female colleague during a recent public council meeting.

I don't know which is more childish. The one who did the gesture or the one who made a big deal out of it. Should we talk to his parents?

[vengie]

Call me crazy, but I don't see a knife gesture? Looks to me like it was more of a key or opening a door? :dunno:

Regardless, awesome to see our city council continue to be useless.

[Star1995]

Could be a key turning but the head flop simulating death afterwards say knife to me.

[Brent.ff]

could careless about the knife thing, but man what's with these paid dudes just sitting on their phones and just about having their feet up on the desk... Pokemon Go-ing?

[J-hop]

Originally posted by lilmira http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/coun-sutherland-after-he-mimed-pushing-a-knife-into-colleagues-back



I don't know which is more childish. The one who did the gesture or the people who are making a big deal out of it. Should we talk to his parents?

Fixed.

I follow Ward fairly closely. He seems to be one of the more useful and informed councillors. :whocares:

[dirtsniffer]

I wouldn't stab her in the back. you'd miss getting to see her reaction.

[Hallowed_point]

Originally posted by Brent.ff
could careless about the knife thing, but man what's with these paid dudes just sitting on their phones and just about having their feet up on the desk... Pokemon Go-ing? Yeah it looks extremely professional that's for sure :rofl:

[Sugarphreak]

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[Nufy]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak
I saw the video and frankly I laughed, which I am pretty sure was the intended result

He looked extremely bored listening to her drone on about something mundane. The gesture looked like he was stabbing himself in boredom, similar to when people gesture to blown their brains out with a finger gun


I agree...but I am also waiting for farrels passionate emotional response calling for him to step down as a result.

[speedog]

I have been out of the corporate world for almost ten years now but when I was in that world it was considered very inappropriate to be using any sort of device to do whatever on the Internet while in a meeting. This included email, surfing or whatever.

It does seem that times have changed as both Nenshi and Chabot have been seen on their smart phones during council meetings. Feet up on the desk, like wtf. Part of their job as being in city council is to attend meeting and I should expect that attendance should be done with some semblance of proper meeting etiquette - feet up on the desk or almost is not proper meeting etiquette to me.

These council members need to rethink their commitment to the job they've been elected to - if it bores them so much so that they can not show an active interest in what's going on in the meetings they're attending then maybe they just shouldn't be there.

[FraserB]

But Nenshi NEEDS to be able to get into Twitter wars at any time of the day. Even letting someone call him out for the length of a council meeting is unacceptable.

[revelations]

2 term limits - get these clowns out. SO many city councils suffer from years of personell conflicts and get nothing done as a result. Shit like this makes the news rather than what the council ACTUALLY got accomplished.

Both parties are clowns. One needs to grow up one needs to shut up.

[Sugarphreak]

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[rage2]

Druh's so hot. :love:

[ExtraSlow]

https://www.blogmutt.com/hubfs/blog-files/zoolander-blogmutt-so-hot-right-now.jpg

[FraserB]

Originally posted by revelations
2 term limits - get these clowns out. SO many city councils suffer from years of personell conflicts and get nothing done as a result. Shit like this makes the news rather than what the council ACTUALLY got accomplished.

Both parties are clowns. One needs to grow up one needs to shut up.

For the media to report on what city council has gotten accomplished, they would need to first need to accomplish something meaningful.

From the last little while, all I can recall is the story about Nenshi funneling his fundraising through the city for tax receipts, the next tax hike being higher than we were told (not a shock), council saying that the Green Line would be phased (not news, they have known since last year), Nenshi shooting down a proposal that would force he and his colleagues to pay attention and now this.


Originally posted by Sugarphreak


I'd say that has changed quite a bit over the last decade. When I first started, it was consider inappropriate. However, not really anymore, most meeting I go into have people surfing on phones unless the discussion specifically involves them. Usually the upper management guys are doing it the most. [QUOTE]

On the job I just finished, this was cracked down on a lot. Mind you, we were in the construction/commissioning/start-up phase, so there was nearly 100% chance someone else was going something that impacted you in some way.

[TheCheff]

Originally posted by revelations
2 term limits - get these clowns out. SO many city councils suffer from years of personell conflicts and get nothing done as a result. Shit like this makes the news rather than what the council ACTUALLY got accomplished.

Both parties are clowns. One needs to grow up one needs to shut up.

FWIW, I believe Ward Sutherland has campaigned in the past on initiating term limits. I can't remember if it was 2 or 3.

[acedia]

Never occurred to me it was a knife thing. Looks to me like he's winding up an old talking toy doll. Like she won't bloody shut up.

Kind of related: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles - Chatty Kathy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvXNGMwXksM)

:D

[legendboy]

Originally posted by acedia
Never occurred to me it was a knife thing. Looks to me like he's winding up an old talking toy doll. Like she won't bloody shut up.

Kind of related: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles - Chatty Kathy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvXNGMwXksM)

:D

regardless sill funny :D

[J-hop]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak


I'd say that has changed quite a bit over the last decade. When I first started, it was consider inappropriate. However, not really anymore, most meeting I go into have people surfing on phones unless the discussion specifically involves them. Usually the upper management guys are doing it the most.

I have noticed in just the last 5 years with an increased focus by a lot of companies on introducing standardized practices/sign off procedures the number of meetings where many of the attendees really don't need to be there is increasing. Cell phone usage in meetings seems to be increasing at the same rate.

[Sugarphreak]

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[speedog]

What's the point of having meetings then if everyone is just tuning out on their phones?

[revelations]

^ for that 30 minute meeting, there might be 2-5 minutes of relevant stuff that you need to pay attention to.

Brainstorming sessions though - thats a whole other matter. Ideas (both good and bad) have to come out freely. No distractions.

[speedog]

So if you're the one chairing the meeting then why schedule it for 30 minutes if there's 2-5 minutes of relevant information? If it's a number of relevant 2-5 minute pieces that are importance to different people then why have everyone in the meeting when they could be more productive elsewhere?

[Sugarphreak]

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[J-hop]

Originally posted by speedog
So if you're the one chairing the meeting then why schedule it for 30 minutes if there's 2-5 minutes of relevant information? If it's a number of relevant 2-5 minute pieces that are importance to different people then why have everyone in the meeting when they could be more productive elsewhere?

Because management

[heavyD]

Originally posted by rage2
Druh's so hot. :love:

Hot as in "Hot Garbage"? Come on Ward 7! Get this cancer out of city hall. You enablers owe it to the rest of the city as we have endured a 15+ year jail sentence of city hall silliness and it's time to remove the cancer and move on.

[HiTempguy1]

Originally posted by speedog
So if you're the one chairing the meeting then why schedule it for 30 minutes if there's 2-5 minutes of relevant information? If it's a number of relevant 2-5 minute pieces that are importance to different people then why have everyone in the meeting when they could be more productive elsewhere?

Management justifies their jobs by meetings :dunno:

We've never been so slow at work, but management has never been so busy with meetings. No idea what they are talking about though, because it certainly isn't getting us any more work :banghead:

[Sugarphreak]

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[HiTempguy1]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak


Said every underling ever.... haha

You know it :bigpimp:

I've been in some of those meetings. I now actively try to get out of them at all costs. Horrible waste of time. Hell, even the immediate bossman hates them. He goes to them constantly and nothing moves forward/gets figured out.

We're a bit different than most companies I will admit, but still. With my own business, whenever I schedule meetings/sitdowns/conference calls, they are straight to the point and kept as short as possible, because I don't have time to deal with that crap. :dunno:

[Sugarphreak]

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[J-hop]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak


Said every underling ever.... haha

There is a lot of truth to it though.

I work a very technical job but I spend around 10 hrs a week doing EPW (excel, PowerPoint, word) crap or going into meetings where about 5% of the material is relevant to me.

In a 40 hr work week this severely detracts from my ability to get technical work done resulting in usually a 50 hr work week to make up for the time wasted in meetings.

You can say that meetings are what you make of them which is true to a point. But if you work a very technical job outside of 1on1 sit down meetings you can never get into enough detail to draw much useful information. You basically need to know only a couple things (1) who worked on what so you know who to talk to (2) primary tools used (3) problems to watch out for (4) results. Beyond that for a technical worker the rest is pretty much useless. But management loves tacking on a bunch of fluff

[speedog]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak


I used to be the same way about a decade ago, hated meetings like that.... in fact, I used to excuse myself to take a fake call and just never come back, haha.

Later on though I started finding them a lot more useful. I am almost always missing information I needed to do my job, so I use the meetings as soap box to assign tasks with dates to everybody else. Then if they ignore me, I can send the project engineer after them instead of chasing them down myself. It is an excellent way to get management working for you.

I also use them as a way to repel office busy bodies... when somebody starts getting on my case because I didn't do something that they just thought of 10 seconds ago, I return to my meeting minutes and can basically point out that I never received formal instructions on it in the first place. They move on, and go bother somebody else after that.

In addition it has saved my ass countless times because I bring something up, people ignore me or don't follow up... but I get it recorded. Then a few weeks later when shit hits the fan and the client is screaming at everybody, I can point out that I raised the concern and was ignored/overruled.

I was attending close to 10 meetings each week in Calgary for various things. I found most of them fairly useful to me.

They are what you make of them in the end

I will say my new job involves no meetings, and I am at the mercy of the "he says - she says" crap. I constantly hear things like "You did this wrong, I told you this person to tell you that 3 weeks ago" or my favorite of "Why are you doing it this way, this is totally wrong, why would you do this without asking?" (meanwhile they forgot it was their instruction, but with no record of it, I get stuck with the blame). I miss my meetings :(

Were you one of the 'surfing on the phone' people in the meetings you attended?

[Sugarphreak]

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