Where's Desmond Morris when you need him?

I mostly try to avoid contact with my work colleagues on the basis that like my relatives, I had no say in choosing them. As Chromatin has pointed out, people who work in the same field tend to share certain unsavoury and antisocial characteristics. From time to time I am forced into meetings where I can observe these chacteristics like a poor man's Desmond Morris. Usually meetings consist of a beleagured chairman, selfish sods (SFS) who make demands and moan, jokers who take the piss and moan, miserable sods who just moan, people who say nothing but take copious notes, and snoozers (me). These meetings are usually dominated by the SFS who tend to get angrier as the meeting progresses. Perhaps these invitations to these meetings should be prefaced with the sentence "No timewasters please". Yesterday I was surprised to find myself awake during a meeting. This was because the meeting had a clear agenda, and was run by people who were professionals. The leader of the group demonstrated amply why he was in charge; he had a strong personality, excellent communication skills, did not patronise his audience and was constructive. Similarly others in his team gave precise and constructive answers.No blame culture here. For once the moaners, rather than running the meeting, were exposed as the people holding back progress. God, I can't believe I am writing this, I am usually such a miserable sod. Sadly the meeting was not a scientific meeting but one set up by the computing department. Sigh......