Does this sound familiar? 

You report to a mandatory  inservice at 8 A.M.  If you're lucky there's a coffee pot, and junk food-- doughnuts that were stale two hours earlier.  You sit around listening to everyone say who they are and play some asinine game that's supposed to make you feel more comfortable with the other zombies around you.  You listen to a speaker tell about how great his or her program is, and why it's so great at their school.  Then you break in groups and write things about why this program is so good on chart paper. 

Then we all go hang our chart paper on the walls and lie about how much this has influenced us so far.    The hanging of the chart paper is a psychological thing-- it's supposed to make us all feel like we've been productive.

You get back from lunch, and soon after you feel the Zs coming on.  However, you're screwed, because nobody EVER thinks to make afternoon coffee.  This makes everything mostly a blur for the next 3 hours.  In that time you were making another chart with your group.  Those get hung up, Everyone oohs and ahhs and then the speaker "grants mercy" on you for being such a good group and agrees to let you leave at 3:30, instead of making you stay until 4. 

Is it any wonder that most inservices are pure crap?