Why I hate breakfast meetings

I don’t get this concept at all. Is this a breakfast to celebrate a meeting? Or a meeting where breakfast is an agenda item? Why can’t we keep work out of meals? What is so important that you have to talk with your mouth full of bread and eggs? Talking of bread and eggs, what is the protocol for a breakfast meeting? You can’t really eat what you want to eat, because what if when having your cereal the milk dribbles into the bowl splashing little white droplets on the table. So you say ‘let me stay away from the cereal’. Then you go along to look at the bread section. And there’s a dizzying array of breads. White, brown, mouldy, multigrain, multi cereal, many grain etc etc. If you take white you’ll look like someone who doesn’t care about his health. You hate the taste of brown. Then there’s the matter of how do you eat your toast? Do you cut the toast into 4 squares and eat each as a mouthful? Will your colleague think that was a ‘sissy’ thing to do? But if you bite into a slice of toast you run the risk of being seen as crude not to mention that the toast may not bite away easily and you are doing a little tug of toast with your teeth. You stay away from the muffins and croissants coz heaven knows there’s no ‘clean’ way of eating them. [caption id=“attachment_95660” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“You order just a cup of coffee, to make it seem like you are this cool macho guy who just has coffee in the morning.Dave Fayram/Flickr”]  [/caption] The whole egg thing is a challenge. Boiled or fried or scrambled? And you’ve given the bread a miss. Having an egg on its own is like going for ‘Valentine’s Day’ by yourself. And slowly you come to realise that this breakfast meeting is just a big con. There really is nothing you can eat with any degree of comfort. So you order just a cup of coffee, to make it seem like you are this cool macho guy who just has coffee in the morning. Till of course you spill it on your white shirt. Now do you feel sorry for all those people you see with food stains on their shirts? I can do breakfast. Or I can do meetings. You want to meet me for breakfast? Can we sit with our backs to each other like they do on The Voice? That way I can hear you, but you can’t see me inverting my jam spoon and licking it clean.