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Subject:Overused words and phrases - Humor From:Marguerite Krupp <Marguerite_Krupp -at- BAYNETWORKS -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 12 Oct 1998 08:39:30 -0400
For those of you collecting overused words, phrases, and corporate
buzzwords, I'd like to suggest a good use for them. CAUTION: when you open
the closet in which you keep all those words, stand back so you don't drown
in the deluge!
Our company holds quarterly all-hands offsite meetings, featuring
presentations by a variety of corporate biggies. Some presentations are
quite interesting, some are duds. I got the following idea from a Wall
Street Journal article about a meeting at MIT where VP Gore was addressing
the university community.
Before one of our corporate meetings, I got the writers in my Cubicleville
neighborhood to compile a list of buzzwords that we'd heard around the
company. Then I talked a programmer into generating BINGO cards (in
programmerspeak "a 5x5 matrix") using these words. Each card had our
equivalent of BINGO across the top. (We used the CEO's name, since it had
five unique letters.) They also had space for the player's name, and a
space for the time of completion of five-in-a-row.
Players paid $1 for each card, which went into the kitty. Whenever a
presenter "emitted" one of the buzzwords on his or her card, the player
would mark that square on the sheet. Whoever got five in a row vertically,
horizontally, or diagonally first, as indicated by the time at the top of
the sheet, won the kitty (less the price of lunch for the programmmer). It
was strictly honor system, and we allowed variants of the buzzwords (e.g.,
participial forms, plurals, etc.). I kept a list of buzzwords that I heard,
just as a cross-check.
As it turned out, nobody got five in a row, so we put all the bingo cards
into a hat (literally) and drew out a winner.
Turned out to be a very popular activity. Managers liked it, too, because
it kept everyone paying attention. We are now working on a new list. We
found single words work better than phrases, and we plan on including some
"gotta-have" terms on every card.
