Let Off Steam In Here !!!!

[vanessan]

I see I am not alone in bemoaning the deterioration of our lovely language then! Speaking of ‘Americanisation’ of things, it always bemuses me to read that ‘someone went out the door’ rather than ‘out of the door’. And talking of anecdotes, I think it was George Bush who said ‘ hell, the French don’t even have a word for entrepreneur’. 

I have just thought of something else that gets to me too - about to be served in a shop and the assistant says to me ‘y’allrite?’ What happened to ‘can I help you?’ 

[Vaughan]

24 minutes ago, vanessan said:

I have just thought of something else that gets to me too - about to be served in a shop and the assistant says to me ‘y’allrite?’ What happened to ‘can I help you?

Sitting in the sort of awful chain restaurant that tends to be attached to Travelodge hotels, the waitress arrives with our order, places it on the table and then says "Enjoy!"

What is that supposed to mean? The parsing of an entire sentence, stripped down to one solitary verb. She might as well have served me a plain hunk of meat with no vegetables, no potatoes, no gravy and no mustard.

[High6]

"Cross the roundabout, take the first exit" (grinds teeth)

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[BoF]

Management Speak!

I hated ‘Management Speak’ and always took the p*** whenever I could. Apart from playing the standard ‘Management Speak Bingo’ as we listened to the latest muppet with an ology down from HQ to gain ‘operational experience’, I had a ‘Management Speak Matrix’ that consisted of 3 columns of 9 random words, such as “holistically’, “horizon”, “cloud”, integrated”, “operational”, “forward”, “command”, “relief” etc.

Once a file or report was completed and checked, I would ask a colleague for a three digit number, and using that number would pick three words, one from each column. For example, 258 might pull out “holistically”, the second word from column 1, “integrated”, the fifth word from column 2 and “operations”, the eighth word from column 3. My challenge was to then get the meaningless phrase “holistically integrated operations” into the report somewhere. Over the years only one senior manager ever asked what I was talking about. Great fun!

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, TheBof said:

Management Speak!

I hated ‘Management Speak’ and always took the p*** whenever I could. Apart from playing the standard ‘Management Speak Bingo’ as we listened to the latest muppet with an ology down from HQ to gain ‘operational experience’, I had a ‘Management Speak Matrix’ that consisted of 3 columns of 9 random words, such as “holistically’, “horizon”, “cloud”, integrated”, “operational”, “forward”, “command”, “relief” etc.

Once a file or report was completed and checked, I would ask a colleague for a three digit number, and using that number would pick three words, one from each column. For example, 258 might pull out “holistically”, the second word from column 1, “integrated”, the fifth word from column 2 and “operations”, the eighth word from column 3. My challenge was to then get the meaningless phrase “holistically integrated operations” into the report somewhere. Over the years only one senior manager ever asked what I was talking about. Great fun!

When you got bored having fun with "the latest muppet from HQ" in the office, did you you ever have have even more more fun by taking them out into the "field" with real customers and real problems?.

[Cockatoo]

On 04/11/2017 at 11:23, Jayfire said:

If we are getting down to semantics then should that not be 'is it not' instead of 'innit' 

Is not it

 

Izzerntit

 

[JohnK]

Management Speak!

I hated ‘Management Speak’ and always took the p*** whenever I could. Apart from playing the standard ‘Management Speak Bingo’ as we listened to the latest muppet with an ology down from HQ to gain ‘operational experience’, I had a ‘Management Speak Matrix’ that consisted of 3 columns of 9 random words, such as “holistically’, “horizon”, “cloud”, integrated”, “operational”, “forward”, “command”, “relief” etc.

Once a file or report was completed and checked, I would ask a colleague for a three digit number, and using that number would pick three words, one from each column. For example, 258 might pull out “holistically”, the second word from column 1, “integrated”, the fifth word from column 2 and “operations”, the eighth word from column 3. My challenge was to then get the meaningless phrase “holistically integrated operations” into the report somewhere. Over the years only one senior manager ever asked what I was talking about. Great fun!

I think you’re being a bit unfair there.
If you took a helicopter overview of the situation and did a bit of blue sky thinking you’d see the synergy that could be leveraged at this time.


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[Guest]

Just now, JohnK said:

 

I think you’re being a bit unfair there.
If you took a helicopter overview of the situation and did a bit of blue sky thinking you’d see the synergy that could be leveraged at this time.


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But you missed the baby step of shaking the bag to see what fell out. 

[JohnK]

But you missed the baby step of shaking the bag to see what fell out. 

I’ve been lucky enough to avoid that one.
I always think it’s funny that person A thinks person B must be clever because person A doesn’t understand what person B is saying.
I just think person B is a c**p communicator.


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[Guest]

Just now, JohnK said:

 

I’ve been lucky enough to avoid that one.
I always think it’s funny that person A thinks person B must be clever because person A doesn’t understand what person B is saying.
I just think person B is a c**p communicator.


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If I don't understand, I would always challenge 

[JohnK]

If I don't understand, I would always challenge 

Hours of fun .....
I was once told we needed a paradigm shift. I asked in what context. I was told we needed to shift the paradigm as an explanation.


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[Guest]

Just now, JohnK said:

 

Hours of fun .....
I was once told we needed a paradigm shift. I asked in what context. I was told we needed to shift the paradigm as an explanation.


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How about this one:

"The forecast is right, the actual's  are wrong"

[BoF]

1 hour ago, Philosophical said:

When you got bored having fun with "the latest muppet from HQ" in the office, did you you ever have have even more more fun by taking them out into the "field" with real customers and real problems?.

Oh yes we did!

To be fair, some did quite well, but the majority could not cope with dealing with real people who hadn’t read the ‘script’ that the muppet was on and could be difficult and at times aggressive.

[Polly]

I was doing a management course and bumped into an article on the politics of management that had me stumped entirely, so I analysed the grammar.. A whole page that was one paragraph and only two apparent sentences. I say apparent, because when I looked, there were in fact no verbs.

My favourite meeting game was working in the names of Shakespeare plays.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Polly said:

I was doing a management course and bumped into an article on the politics of management that had me stumped entirely, so I analysed the grammar.. A whole page that was one paragraph and only two apparent sentences. I say apparent, because when I looked, there were in fact no verbs.

My favourite meeting game was working in the names of Shakespeare plays.

I went on one of those "team building courses" you know 3 oil drums, 2 planks and some rope etc....and you were set a task, well not sure how or why, but I had a really good bottle of scotch in my rucksack. After a few abortive attempts at the task we sat under a tree to watch the other teams and somehow the bottle got opened and we lost sight of the task and in the eyes of the adjudicator failed miserably.

But back at the hotel for the awards we were the only team that despite being disqualified, bonded, even the winning team were still arguing "I told you to put the plank first etc. etc."  

 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, TheBof said:

Oh yes we did!

To be fair, some did quite well, but the majority could not cope with dealing with real people who hadn’t read the ‘script’ that the muppet was on and could be difficult and at times aggressive.

And that was the instruction from HQ, only take him to customers are friendly and happy with the product; except I somehow never got those emails?

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Vaughan said:

Sitting in the sort of awful chain restaurant that tends to be attached to Travelodge hotels, the waitress arrives with our order, places it on the table and then says "Enjoy!"

What is that supposed to mean? The parsing of an entire sentence, stripped down to one solitary verb. She might as well have served me a plain hunk of meat with no vegetables, no potatoes, no gravy and no mustard.

I've often thought that "Enjoy" was an instruction rather than a request, irrespective of the quality of food.

[BoF]

1 hour ago, Philosophical said:

And that was the instruction from HQ, only take him to customers are friendly and happy with the product; except I somehow never got those emails?

If this were America, I would take/plead (?) the 5th Amendment for that question! 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, TheBof said:

If this were America, I would take/plead (?) the 5th Amendment for that question! 

It was an American company

 

[Maxwellian]

Oh dear me, having a bad day everyone. Those magical words carefully blended together earn some people an awful lot of money. :)

[JamesLV]

The management speak game you mention is known as ‘bulls*** bingo’ in my circle of friends

[TheQ]

Working for an American company it is easy to play such bingo, this morning I've deleted 3 emails without bothering to read them, two are self congratulatory emails from sales about new appointments, the other is also from sales about a business"win" as they put it.

The Dibert cartoons have a new meaning and importance once you have worked for a yank company.

We also get emails fom the head office telling everyone in the company that we have a "must attend" briefing in the USA somewhere. the head offices just don't think when they send such carp out to all.

We are now coming up to annual assessment Season, now mostly computerised of course, it has sections where you fill in what you feel about your year, complete with drop down texts to copy and paste....

When they introduced it, they had to have training courses on how to answers the questions because they are written in American HR speak using invented words by an obsure American professor in the 1960s.

As some one near the bottom of the pile, I have to answer on My "leadership anchors" and "personal anchors"  such carp expressions are stupid since if you at anchor you are not moving ... and they want you to advance. with only 6 year left to retirement I'm going nowhere and 99% of the company isn't moving anywhere either.

They then have vidoes / power point poisoning on how to do the assessments. But the examples they give are for people with $20,000 000 budgets, so that rules out everyone in this factory...

 

 I could go on but that would be as boring as the carp they put out...

 

[Timbo]

Long list today because I'm that way out.
 

• Blokes that don't wear socks with formal wear.
• Customers who treat shop assistants like scum.
• American English...It has been my delight for many years to discard to the refuse any thesis written in this abomination.
• White, middle class, English kids speaking in a fake West Indian accent. 'I is arksin you a question'  get's a thump in the 'lug'.
• Shoppers who think my other half should do overtime because they turn up five seconds before a shop closes.
• Bank Holidays. Because.
• People who incorrectly use an honorary doctorate or emeritus professorship from a polytechnic as a title.
• Amateur archaeologists.
• American archaeologists.
• GP's receptionists...sorry, you are not medically qualified just find an available appointment in the diary.
• Cars parked on pavements.
• Fireworks. Now there is a group of purchasers with money to burn and obviously able to shoulder a higher burden of taxation.
• Lumber that is not in imperial measurements or of stated dimension.
• Funeral directors.

And as the anger ebbs away I'm off to make a coffee and start taking my morning medication...lots of medication!

Ooh! I forgot. Gracie my little chicken? There are no grammatical rules regarding the use of the full stop you can make a sentence as long as you please without having to add punctuation by adding concatenating clauses within the framework of your sentence which means that your posts can become Hrabelesque in their length and complexity and in evidence I offer that Hrabel wrote an entire novel consisting of one long sentence each idea linked with grammatical conjunction as I have done in this rather long but grammatically correct sentence to make my point. Period! 

[Bound2Please]

1 minute ago, Timbo said:

GP's receptionists...sorry, you are not medically qualified just find an available appointment in the diary.

So so true Tim

Charlie

[Guest]

Just now, Bound2Please said:

So so true Tim

Charlie

I tried to get past a receptionist by saying that my complaint could be life threatening, she asked me to explain and I replied that I wanted a cure for snoring. She asked how snoring could be life threatening and I replied it was because every time I fell asleep on an airplane at least 10 people wanted to kill me.