Bulls**t bingo

I was once asked by a boss to provide him with a list of everything I hadn’t thought of.

I queried what he was asking for and he was adamant that this is what he wanted. At the end of the day I gave him a blank sheet of paper, and he got angry with me. To this day I’m not entirely sure what I did wrong.

You gave him a list of things he’d already thought of.

😆 so belters in here! yet another reason why i love the Apprentice!

“Going Forward” really really gets on me!

And when did the name signs and posters become “signage”??????/

A particular curse at the moment is verbing perfectly good nouns. “Well, we need to productise this service.” What? You’ve bollockised the English language, I know that much.

Well to be fair, in most companies, the main aim in meetings is to get out of them having wasted some time and not got any more work handed to you.

Hahaha, and that is the problem!

I’ve worked in a few companies like this, where people would gladly spend hours spouting tripe they didn’t understand or had just made up on the spot, just to prolong things or try to avoid working. Was it just me that actually didn’t mind being given some work to do to stop the tedium, and would actually rather have contributed to physically moving the company forward rather than just bloody talking about it…

Anyway lots of oldies in this thread and a couple of new goodun’s I’d not heard before. “Ringfence the unicorn” eh! I usually manage one of those first thing in the morning, just before I get in the shower, and maybe another in the afternoon if I’ve had a big breakfast/lunch! 😉

It’s funny how different things grate on different individuals too though, I used to have to put up with crap like this being spoken on a daily basis as if it was normal, and you just sit there and grin smugly that the offenders probably didn’t do very well at school and think they’re being clever using big words, it doesn’t bother me that much. But I’ve nearly punched people hard in the face for the use of the phrase “touch base” before. Silly eh, but those two little words said together in a certain context angers me in such a way I can only think about wanting to hurt the person saying it for the immediate future!

You gave him a list of things he’d already thought of.

Surely, he’d already have that? (-:

re: “touch base”,

Whenever I hear that phrase I think of the US system of ‘bases’ for copping off with someone. I keep meaning to be outraged at someone about it.

Cougar, you should have put “this page intentionally left blank” on it

Another;

“Let me revert back to yourself on that”

Revert. Back. AAAAAARGH!

I currently cover the US markets and one i hate allthough not exactly bullshit bingo is.

Thanks for reaching out ! / Im just reaching out / lets reach out..
ad infinitum..

Does my head in !

“Touch base”

They both derive from baseball. The expression touch base comes from a batsman hitting a home run over the boundary wall, he then runs/ambles round and touches the bases to formalise the home run.

I work from home 99% of the time so don’t get to witness this BS first hand. Loving this thread some classic stuff, I’ll have to try it out on the postman or electric meter reader.

“this page intentionally left blank” 😆

Thanks for reaching out ! / Im just reaching out / lets reach out..
ad infinitum..

You should suggest that he reach around and get in touch.

CaptainFlashheart – Member
Another;

“Let me revert back to yourself on that”

Revert. Back. AAAAAARGH!

“Yourself” in place of “you” annoys the hell out of me. Always assumed it was a Glasgow thing (trying to talk all posh and that) but maybe not.

As long as you don’t attempt to “revert back to your fellow countryman”.

Apologies guys, we’re getting dragged off topic here and there’s a clear list of core business objectives the key stakeholders of this thread are seeking clarity on based on the outcome of us discussionizing it. Lets crack on.

LOL
I thought I was being stupid…Where I’m on placement they design harsh environment clothing and kit, so Fire protection, overalls, that sort of thing. Was in a meeting last year with a client who wanted a sort of flame proof thing who spoke like that. “initialize” that and “formulize the parameters” and so on…eye watering after shave as well.

Tried to chat me up at lunch, I waited till he took a big bite of his sandwich before telling him I preffered fanny.

I waited till he took a big bite of his sandwich

fish finger sandwich?

Badly packed kebab, Stoner…

*snoorrrrff*

I was once in a meeting (I know, the shame) when I used the phrase “I’m so not into that” in reference to a particular legal argument.

The response was immediately to take the piss out of me for “speaking street”.

I felt I had, at last, made it to the level of prole-dom for which this thread is so sweetly dedicated.

Thanking you. 😉

EDIT – Emsz..! I’ve just disgraced myself in front of 40 colleagues at that..!

the main aim in meetings is to get out of them having wasted some time and not got any more work handed to you

Well, yeah, obviously. How else am I supposed to get through the day?

On the subject of invented words how about ‘…due to your declinature to remove the tree…’ WTF

I quite like ‘bollockise’ though

And don’t start me on ‘yourself’ instead of ‘you’

Auto Suggesting”

And ‘iconic’ for anything slightly better than ordinary

‘I just want to flag this to colleagues to consider going forward.’

Three of my HoD’s worst.

any sentence that contains “heuristic” or “holistic” = HOUSE !

I’m suddenly grateful for my grumpy but blunt gaffer. The closest he gets to ambiguous is ‘Go and find xxxx and work it up the bastard’

Training courses, that’s a different matter though. ‘Customers’, for example.

When evaluating an idea, concept or opinion at work I try to replace the phrase “that’s shit” with “that’s sub-optimal” whenever I can

It sounds high tech

Don’t forget this next time The Apprentise is on TV

Guys, I need you all to focus, as there’s an elephant in the room here.

“Challenge”

As in: “we are looking for a supplier who sees this as a challenge” = the brief is impossible, but we’re all scared of our boss. Please can it be your fault.

Or on internal emails: “X has an exciting new assignment, in which we have challenged him to…” = we want to get rid of this person, but they know where the bodies are buried. We hope they just get fed up of working here and bugger off.

“Challenge” – workplace equivalent of “dare ya”.

Now hold on to that thought, and once you’ve internalised, we can debrief.

“rightsourcing” popped up on my radar a while back.

Is that like rightshoring?

Equally vomitous!

“ringfence the unicorn”…pure gold…this will go down a treat in the pub tomorrow night…

The non-medical manager of our anaesthetic department is an endless source of this vacuous drivel. I find it hard not to laugh at some of his made-up words and phrases. This week he talked a lot about “orthopaedic additonality” which I think means “doing some extra orthopaedic lists”. He’s also guilty of “going forward” and “pushing back”.

I’m definitely going to try to introduce “ring fence the unicorn” at the next opportunity.

Did this nonsense start with ‘Object Oriented’ ? Object Orientated, surely…

I thought the thread was worth a resurrection as i was invited to a workshop on the following today:

Reorienting a Customer Centred Approach into the Curriculum

I work in a university, we don’t have customers ffs, they are students.

They are customers these days, sounds like you needed that workshop 😉

I think it means how to smile unconvincingly whilst serving a BK Whopper.

I spoke to a bloke in a company that develops event logging software and asked if they used it themselves.

“Oh yeah – we’re eating our own dogfood here” came the reply.

“Leverage” said in the american way. The best was:

“Leverage the opportunity pipeline”

stupid drivel.

I’m surrounded by it….