Painting the devil on the wall
Comments
They're a ton of fun, aren't they?
Welcome to my world.
Have you played "Lingo Bingo"?
You match the words in a meeting to a grid and when you get a complete series you shout BULLSHIT!
If you move up in the group you can start short circuiting the "forever meeting". Unfortunately they all depend on who is the 400lb gorilla in the room.
And if the 400lb gorilla want's to go on for 400 hours you're kind of stuck.
Hopefully you don't meet often enough to drive you bonkers (although once may be enough, it it's the RIGHT meeting).
Condolences
other people always say lots - when they do; it is best to saying nothing. Eventually they will run out of words
You've met my old boss, haven't you?
"We're all singing from the same hymn sheet"
"We're all pointing in the same direction"
"We're all catching the same train"
"We're all envisioning the same vision thing" (no, really)
"We're all thinking outside the same box"
"We're all chasing the same goal"
And not forgetting ...
"We're all flogging the same old dead horse"
OK, I made that last one up.
Some years back I had the misfortune to minute a series of meetings attended by an incompetent and vastly overpaid woman who spoke almost entirely in home-made metaphors (confusing everyone she spoke to and thereby managing not to get sacked for wasting enormous sums of tax payers' money).
I took pleasure in decorating the otherwise dull minutes with some of her choicer phrases such as "that's the bus I'm driving" or "that's the cake I'm baking". We were actually talking about an international sporting event, so neither baked goods nor transport were particularly relevant.
I am very fond of management speak though, and award myself points for slipping it into a conversation without smirking. My all-time favourite is "let's run this idea up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes it".
I always try to include "Let's plant a few saplings and see if the nice dog pisses up them."
they never run out of words, never, never, never. When you think they might pause for breath, they don't, just add another ponderous phrase to an already tottering sentence. I occasionally have to attend confernces where seemingly quite nice rational and vaguely intelligent people are compelled to talk for hours about the potential merits of blueberry flavoured ribena (codename 'blubena') and then spend another three hours doing an african drumming workshop as a team building exercise. Where have we all gone wrong?
And don't forget to change the engines 'in flight'.
Sounds like someone's cruisin for a thermonuclear cup of bad airline coffee in the groin.
As an Audio-Visual technican at conferences, one sits through thousands of hours of this sort of stuff. We play 'Buzz Word Bingo'. Similar to 'Lingo Bingo' by the sound of it, except you can make rude remarks about the speakers to the other techs over the cans. Not that anyone ever does. Oh no.
Stabbing forks in to ones own eyes seems painless by comparison.
There is a story on the BBC about a public information film festival they are running. I sent it to the greenfairy address and a got a bounceback mentioning this place.
Curious. I think I fell across that myself in the very same minute as you commented on it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4669540.stm
For anyone else as inexplicably interested as I.
And that's me out at the end of the runway with a nice shoulder-mounted Surface to Air Missile.
From a meeting today (well yesterday...)
"Let's put that one in the carpark"
WTF?
"We're all chasing the same goal". You can only chase a goal if somebody's moving the goalposts.
I'll get me coat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity
I am the bored office worker archetype.
I hate it when they do that. The way I'm feeling today, I would have said, "Where's my effing' parachute man ..."
"Let's put that one in the carpark"
Ran into that one a few years ago.
Translation: It's not unimportant but we'll talk about it later.
Used to be referred to as "Let's table that discussion for now."
Taught (used) at seminars for organizing projects and discussions.
It's supposed to evoke images of a carpark where subjects sit waiting attention.
I've never used it myself.
I was about to ask for a translation of "Let's put that one in the carpark", so thanks Tom, it's a beauty. I feel that it's wasteful though for someone with such understanding not to make full use of the expression. I shall single-handedly try to restore balance to the world by adopting it myself, in your stead.
Got any more I can have?
Yes, and one hopes for a hijacker, engine problems, anything. At least you had the legroom of the emergency exit row.