An old and very rich friend of mine told me he had an unpleasant experience. He went to a famous jewellery shop and asked to be shown some gold necklaces. After examining several minutes, he decided to buy a gold necklace with a precious diamond, and asked if he could pay by cheque(支票). The assistant said that was quite in order, but the moment my friend signed his name, he was invited into the manager's office. The manager was very polite, but he explained that someone with exactly the same name had given them a worthless cheque not long ago. My friend got very angry when he heard this and said that he would buy a diamond necklace somewhere else. When he got up to go, the manager told him that the police would arrive at any moment and he had better stay unless he wanted to get into serious trouble. Sure enough, the police arrived soon afterwards. They were polite, too, but explained that a person who had used the same name as his was responsible for a number of recent robberies. Then the police asked my friend to copy out a note which had been used by the thief in a number of stores. The note read，“I have a gun in my pocket. Ask no question and give me all the money in the drawer.”

Luckily, my friend's handwriting was quite unlike the thief's. He was not only allowed to go without further delay, but also to take the diamond necklace with him.

Nothing energizes office workers more than complaining about meetings. And it seems some of the world's greatest tech successes agree. Here's some of their advice.

Mark Zuckerberg: A decision or a discussion?

The Facebook CEO reportedly improved the effectiveness of meetings by asking managers to explain the point of a meeting: to make a decision or to have a discussion.

"If there's no point, then there are no decisions," Microsoft founder Bill Gates might agree. He is supposed to have said, "You have a meeting to make a decision, not to decide on the question."

Elon Musk: It is not rude to leave.

Elon Musk once sent out an email to staff in which he made some "recommendations".

"Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren't adding value," he went on. "It is not rude to leave; it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time."

Jeff Bezos: The "two--pizza rule".

The Amazon founder meets investors for just six hours a year, and tries to avoid early morning meetings.

Business Insider reports that Mr. Bezos also has a strict policy: Never have a meeting in which you couldn't feed the whole group with two pizzas. The businessman believes small groups are far more efficient than large ones, and the "two-pizza rule" helps him prevent large meetings.

Steve Jobs: No need for PowerPoint.

Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs shows the creative genius behind the iPhone making an attack on slideshow users. "People who know what they are talking about don't need PowerPoint," he said.

"Generally PowerPoint presentations are a great distraction(使人分心的事物), unless it's data or a graph," said Professor Andre Spicer. "Long slides mean no information being conveyed."

Cole Doss, 31, used his time on the microphone to make an announcement (广播) before the flight to honor his mom, a flight attendant for over 40 years.

“She’s been one of my biggest supporters in my life and in my career (职业) becoming a pilot, ever since my very first flight lesson,” Doss told passengers, later adding, “To my mom, I love you, and without you, I wouldn’t have chosen such a great job.”

Doss said the flight last month from Washington, D. C. to Madrid was not only the first time he and his mom had worked on a flight together, but also the first time his mom had been on a flight that he piloted.

“That was the first time I had been able to fly my mom ever,” he said. “In flight school, she was a little nervous about the small planes, so I was never able to fly with her there.” Doss said his mom typically works on Asia-bound flights, but when she learned he was piloting a flight to Spain, she switched (调班) schedules with a fellow flight attendant so she could be on the same flight.

On the day of the flight, Doss, having been a United Airlines pilot since February 2022, and his mom also worked on the return flight back to Washington, D. C. together. “I wanted to do something special to pay back my mom and let everyone know that this was a really cool event for both of us,” he said.

“She was really proud of me so I’m sure she probably told most of the passengers that her son was flying up front,” Doss said. In addition to his mom’s role as a flight attendant for the United Airlines, Doss’ dad and sister are flight attendants for the American Airlines.