Google Meet time wasted fine

One of my favorite parts about leaving the corporate world is the lack of meetings. Between Slack Connect and asynchronous updates via Loom, the number of meetings I attend weekly has dropped significantly.

That said, I do still have client consultation calls. Sometimes, people will book far in advance and then fail to show up even after I send a reminder email. It’s frustrating to have my time wasted (though I understand things to come up sometimes).

This got me thinking about the phrase, “It pays to be on time.” What if, it literally paid to be on time for company meetings? This concept wasn’t unhinged enough, so I flipped it on its head. Instead of rewarding punctual people, what if the most tardy person was punished?

You can imagine a Google Meet feature where you see 1) how many invitees still need to join a meeting and 2) the collective time that’s been wasted based on who has already joined the call. A live ticker would show the fine increasing over time and the people who have yet to join.

This is a concept that I could see getting reverse-engineered into a real feature. I think if you punished tardy people they would revolt. However, rewarding the timely could prove beneficial for a company.

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