The Bitch speaks nonsense

When I first arrived in this great country I was working for a reasonably large size company with offices in Virginia and Texas. Every week we would have a teleconference and spend an interminable two hours spewing out (and failing to listen to the other person’s) pointless rhetoric. This was my first experience of corporate babble taken to such a pervasive level. It so blew me away that I printed out some bullshit bingo cards and anonymously (ever the coward) left them in the meeting room. If you have never played bullshit bingo check this out. These days, of course, I no longer have to tolerate this nonsense apart from the odd customer who sadly feels the need to bolster their ego with a spot of “blue sky thinking in the workplace”.

It goes without saying that I don’t try this on with the boss these days. That would simply be an invitation to introduce my boys to her knee. It is not just because these phrases are just examples of meaningless office twaddle but the fact that they simply mask the ineptitude of worthless employees that irritates me beyond belief. The next time someone drops this nonsense into a conversation at the Coffee House I will hit back with my own Bitch speak. For example, achieving success is dependent on a bit of horizoning - not quite the same as predicting the company's future performance, more like staring out of the window. This may also be commonly known as workspace-specific perceptual abstraction (daydreaming.) You may also try to get away with non-specific interfacing (needless chat) or possibly some activity deficit substitution (looking busy).

Other office babble that you might like to use (but not on me) might be

Sprouting: Generating ideas on a greener workplace
Raise the bar on this: Leave for the pub
Expectation management: What the boss wants to hear
Metime: Out of office time
Going tarso-mandibular: Putting your foot in your mouth

Better perhaps to stick to inter-departmental liaison facilitation or asking your friends out to the Coffee House for lunch. Serious facetime is essential, that peculiar part of the day when you have completed all of your work but have to stay around to show your face. Some of that can be successfully filled with a company core dump, which is the five minutes just before the end of the day when you can take a paid comfort break.

So how to spot these idiots? Well, they will be the ones testiculating - waving their arms around while talking bollocks (you need to be English to understand that, sorry). They will often be supported by a backing singer, that familiar person in a meeting who doesn't contribute their own ideas but just nods along with the boss.

Well it looks like it is time for some red sky thinking, the signal, in these darkening autumn days that it is nearly time to go home. Before I do I just need to herd the dinosaurs to the right end of the cricket green, whatever that might mean.