Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

Standups: Length, Purpose, and Format

• Many commenters like 10–15 minute standups focused on status, blockers, and daily priority, with deeper technical debates spun off into separate meetings.
• Others report “standups” that drift into 45–90-minute design or status marathons, often blamed on undisciplined leaders who won’t say “take this offline.”
• Some teams use standups to reduce Slack back-and-forth; others dislike chat for encouraging “lazy” asking without prior effort.
• Debate over rooms: in open offices, standups in-place are seen as disruptive; for hybrid teams, several insist that if even one person is remote, everyone should join via headset to avoid sidelining them.

Meeting Length, Scheduling Tricks, and Institutional Norms

• Many endorse 50- or 55‑minute meetings or starting at :05/:10 past the hour to create natural bio/transition time.
• Others note these rules rarely work if culture tolerates overruns; meetings continue until someone knocks.
• Some teams/campuses formalize this: “MIT time” (start 5 after, end 5 before), European “academic quarter,” and similar patterns in multiple countries and universities.
• A few want tools (Teams/Zoom) to auto-end meetings at the scheduled time.

Punctuality, Lateness, and Cultural/Personal Factors

• Strong split between those who see habitual lateness as disrespectful and those from “non‑punctual” cultures where starting exactly on time is odd or annoying.
• Several stories: professors locking doors at start time vs. norms like “if teacher is 10–15 minutes late, class is canceled.”
• Thread explores empathy for disabilities or unpredictable commutes vs. fairness to on‑time participants; no consensus.

Is This Really “Malicious Compliance”?

• Many argue the story is mis-labeled: the 10‑minute team simply booked an available slot and enforced an existing policy.
• Some call it “pedantic enforcement” or even beneficial: it forced others either to honor the 50‑minute rule or book the full hour explicitly.
• Others describe “real” malicious compliance as rigidly implementing bad rules to surface pain and get them changed.

Meeting Culture: Problems and Coping Strategies

• Common complaints: agenda‑less meetings, executives who monologue and run long, huge invite lists “just in case.”
• Popular fixes: “no agenda, no attenda,” explicit outcomes, hard stops, empowering people to leave, or blocking “focus time” on calendars.
• Anecdotes include using physical cues (like a loud cuckoo clock) or simply walking out to force meetings to end.