When topless meetings are business appropriate

Topless meetings? Before you get your knickers in a twist, be advised this G-rated concept–barring laptops, BlackBerries etc. from business meetings –is starting to take off.  So to speak. 

Even tech heavyweights such as Google, Apple and Yahoo are going topless in an effort to cut down on distractions. The problem? Meeting attendees in this increasingly wireless-connected world, spend group time texting or shopping when they should be paying attention. (Gulp…guilty.)

ABCNews.com also reports that laptops are verboten in some classrooms at the USC law school.

Note: Controversial American Apparel CEO Dov Charney never got the memo that toplessness was a metaphorical notion. In a wrongful termination suit, a former IT staffer charged that Charney held staff meetings while “completely naked” and “paraded in the workplace in his underwear.”

Nonetheless, the term “topless meeting” was a finalist in  the New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2008 competition. For the record, it lost out to “hypermiler.”

 Thanks to eagle-eyed Elisa Gabbert for spotting this very important trend!