Bigman80
Grandmaster
AA Founding Member & Bigbottle Audio Creator
Posts: 16,105
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 17, 2018 19:33:30 GMT
I was a public servant and some of the goddledygook there was mind blowing too. They bought into all manner of management consultancy nonsense too. Anyone familiar with AGILE, Scrum Masters and Sprints would be right at home.
Loads more nonsense too. At one point they decided to standardise desk layout and placed hazard tape around phones and keyboards to show exactly where they should sit. Staff were told not to move them, despite their being clear Display Screen Equipment requirements that necessitated adjustment for comfort.
As if that wasn’t daft enough, nothing else was allowed to stay on any desk unless it was “active” (currently in use). There was one famous case which was escalated to the Trade Unions because a member of staff was challenged forcefully by a senior manager for having an “inactive” banana on his desk!
I think one answer to your question is that the world of work is so full of marketing BS, it tends to bleed into other areas of life.
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Post by macca on Jul 17, 2018 19:39:44 GMT
'We'll park that one for now' or 'We'll put that in the car park'.
Trans. 'Although you've highlighted a really big problem with our entire plan we have no answer to it so let's pretend it doesn't exist and just plough on regardless.'
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Bigman80
Grandmaster
AA Founding Member & Bigbottle Audio Creator
Posts: 16,105
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 17, 2018 19:42:07 GMT
'We'll park that one for now' or 'We'll put that in the car park'. Trans. 'Although you've highlighted a really big problem with our entire plan we have no answer to it so let's pretend it doesn't exist and just plough on regardless.' “We’ll put a pin in that” always cracks me up too. |
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Post by macca on Jul 17, 2018 19:57:33 GMT
If you go too high up the food chain you end up sat in meetings all day and it gets too much. In my current job I'm not important enough to attend meetings that often so it's quite rare I have to listen to it. I get the odd e-mail advising me to 'Please cascade this information to your teams' when I'm sure that what they actually meant to type was 'Please tell the other employees' but otherwise it isn't too bad. You just need to get a crappier job, Snowdog  Actually I did have one job where I was only one level below the Director and she was saying yes to me before I'd walked in the door. So I could ruthlessly hold very quick, no-bullshit meetings. No-one complained except I.T who hated me  |
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Post by macca on Jul 17, 2018 21:54:49 GMT
One of my brothers is quite high up the food chain at a faceless corporate entity and he reckons that to advance quickly in any organization you just need to be 'Tall, well-groomed, and able to stand up in front of a room of people and talk for ten minutes whilst saying absolutely nothing.'
For women substitute 'Attractive' for 'Tall'.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2018 22:46:07 GMT
What's worse is when you find yourself mouthing meaningless stuff like that, and in a non-ironic way, too.
But, yeah, meetings. I was around, but not actually participating in, a meeting at our offices once. An urgent call came in for one of the attendees, and as I went in to tell her, someone was trying to explain the internet by analogy with a vacuum cleaner, and someone else said 'So, in this scenario, are we the plug, or the socket?' The person to whom I gave the message told me that this discussion had been going on for half an hour, to most peoples' bemusement, and no-one had the nerve to say, 'Sorry, this is bullshit. Can we stop, please?'
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Post by savvypaul on Jul 17, 2018 22:58:21 GMT
A few colleagues and I used to play 'buzzword bingo' which involved each 'player' being given a number of words or phrases that they had to use during a meeting. I was particularly proud of once managing to 'tick off' both 'reinforcing the gusset' and 'weapons of mass destruction' in the space of just a couple of sentences...
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Post by savvypaul on Jul 19, 2018 10:05:48 GMT
A few colleagues and I used to play 'buzzword bingo' which involved each 'player' being given a number of words or phrases that they had to use during a meeting. I was particularly proud of once managing to 'tick off' both 'reinforcing the gusset' and 'weapons of mass destruction' in the space of just a couple of sentences... lol.
Which kind of business is that? Bowel control perhaps? Er sorry, strategic personal incident management perhaps?
Selling train tickets, or... Permanent Way Documentation Control Systems |
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