Pseudo-Intellectual Business

I’ve just discovered a link between two things I love to rant about. Actually I’m kicking myself for not spotting it before. The more I think about it, the more obvious it is.

The link I have made is this: People who use Business Bullshit are in fact a breed of pseudo-intellectual.

Regular readers will know that I love to bait pseudo-intellectuals and expose them for what they are – bullshit merchants who know several big words and like to quote philosophy in order to make themselves  appear better than everybody else. The truth is, of course, that they blind people with their vocabulary because ultimately they don’t actually say anything that makes any sense.

My favourite pseudo-intellectuals are people who stand in front of vomit stains in contemporary art museums and try to impress upon anybody who is willing to lend an ear that the piece of shit in front of them is something more than the shallow mess it actually is.

Another breed is the hipster who dresses like a nerd just to be different and “writes random poetry to express himself”, poetry that is truly awful and meaningless, I hasten to add.

It’s no real leap of logic to discover that a new breed of pseudo-intellectual lives in the upper echelons of high management and bombards his staff with weird business argon that nobody understands, and that his peers pretend to understand.

I am disappointed with myself because this type of pseudo-intellectual has been with me my entire working life. I have found myself in meetings with people from various companies, all trying to impress upon everybody else how important and intelligent they are,  while speaking utter jibberish to bamboozle us all.

In their eyes, their peers are thinking “Wow! This guy really knows what he is talking about. We must do business with him.”

The truth is rather sad. People actually think “What in the name of all that is Holy is this ballbag talking about? It makes no bloody sense.”

Such verbal diarrhoea is responsible for many a rant from yours truly but, more importantly, inspired Scott Adams, then a disgruntled employee, to create the now massively famous Dilbert cartoon series.

At this point, I have to add that some of my work colleagues have said in the past that I bear a striking resemblance to Dilbert – judge for yourself.

Dilbert

Plastic Mancunian

I have never met Scott Adams so their theory is nonsense.

Anyway, here are a couple of typical Dilbert cartoons that illustrate the point.

The idea of setting up a buzzword bingo card has appealed to me for years but the problem is that business bullshit is an evolving beast with new terms popping out of the bull with alarming frequency.  This means that lowly employees like me would have to keep on top of these new terms and this is a full time job that I don’t have time to pursue.

Here are a few new ones:

“I want to jump on your radar!”

“Thought leaders”

“Idea sherpa”

“Punch a puppy”

“Thought shower”

These are terms that make me want to cringe with embarrassment.

Many years ago, there was a comedy show called Drop the Dead Donkey in the UK that had a character called Gus Hedges who basically used bullshit to communicate with his staff. Some of the terms he used were laughable – and now over 20 years later, the terms he used actually sound more believable.

Here are some of his best lines:

“We've got to downsize our sloppiness overload, Joy. Am I making myself clear?”

“There is just something I'd like to pop into your percolator, see if it comes out brown.”

“I'm setting you free. Free to roam the high seas of enterprise as the buccaneers of our broadcasting future.”

“I'm in major cellular rejuvenation mode, fast-tracking my way to eternal biological viability.”

“I think we have a slight togetherness shortfall here.”

“You see, when it comes to sexual interfacing with the female gender group, I've always been caution-orientated due to ongoing problems of an adaptive nature regarding the gooiness factor on the physical front.”

“Jill, could you come for a brief scuba in my think tank?”

“We're merely running our bulletins through the cappuccino machine of innovation, see if it comes out frothy.”

“Just a thought I wanted to pop into your fishbowl to see if it blows bubbles.”

“Problems are just the pregnant mothers of solutions.”

The good thing about Gus Hedges is that he is totally fictional. Sadly, there thousands upon  thousands of pseudo-intellectual managers who seem to have adopted him as a role model. Some pseudo–intellectuals like to quote philosophers; other like to quote Gus Hedges.

To conclude, I found a business bullshit generator that may act as inspiration for any pseudo-intellectuals desperate to climb the corporate ladder with no talent other than their use of meaningless vocabulary.

Here’s a couple I generated:

Synergistically streamline enterprise-wide collaboration and idea-sharing

Compellingly envisioneer standardized "outside the box" thinking

Uniquely reinvent sticky vortals

Have a go yourself – follow this link.

The Perfect Person

I recently saw a job advert and it made me laugh at its absurdity. The job wasn’t for anything special but reading the list of desirable performance and competency related requirements you would have thought that the position was for President of a major country. These weren’t requirements such as “Has experience of Microsoft Word” or “Has at least three years of experience managing a supermarket”.

I am talking about the personality and competency requirements or “What kind of a person are you?”

I read this list and started to score myself.

There were far more failures that successes and if I had been the interviewee I think I would have failed miserably had I been asked truthfully if I satisfied the competency requirements for the position. Furthermore, I think I would have had a huge cross through my name because I would have laughed my head off when asked the questions.

What these people are looking for is basically an alien/human hybrid – somebody like Mr Spock – although he would certainly fail when asked if he was a people person.

Worse, I don’t know anybody at all who would satisfy these requirements. I know for a fact that just about every person I have ever worked with wouldn’t.

And that’s not me being nasty to these people – they are human beings not machines. The have all the beauty and warmth that humanity has but also the deep failings.  Everybody is the same.

I suspect that the list of requirements was written by my old nemesis, Mr Motivator. Do you remember him?

He is the man who appears on the Apprentice claiming to be the best of the best of the best and who will give 250% to “get the job done".

He is the man who will work until stupid o’clock, fuelled solely by Monster Raving Looney strength coffee that is actually pure caffeine.

He is the man who will claim to be your best buddy and then brush you aside when the next opportunity to climb the corporate ladder appears.

He is the man who will buy a Porsche but never have time to drive it.

He is the man who will go on the most expensive holidays money can buy but spend the entire fortnight working and ignoring his long suffering family.

Yet there is a deep irony here, dear reader – because the truth is that not even Mr Motivator himself will pass all of these competencies. Yet he will almost certainly bullshit his way through the interview, claiming to be the best of the best of the best with excellence running through his bloodstream instead of blood.

The competency list is too long to reproduce here, dear reader, and I would hate to infringe any copyright laws. But I can give you a brief summary.

Basically they are looking for a robot with the interpersonal skills.

The person must actually thrive when the going gets tough and enjoy working every hour God sends without getting upset and, while working into those deep dark lonely hours in the night, will do so with a massive smile on his face, praising their boss at the same time and, when the smelly brown stuff hits the whirling cooling device will instantly be able to cope without making a single mistake.

The person will be your best friend and will make every effort to be your perfect temporary  spouse, because, don’t forget, you will be working so hard that you won’t have time to see your family.

The person will love their boss and the harder working the boss is the better because ultimately the person will strive to become just like their boss. 

The person will have a 200% grasp of all business practices and will be able to foresee any disasters and act before they occur. If, for some reason (perhaps being tired due to overwork) the person fails to see the looming disaster then he will be able to immediately react and fix it with a huge smile – even if it’s three o’clock in the morning and he has been working for eighteen hours fuelled only by a triple strength caffeine bomb.

The person will be so ambitious that his ultimate goal will be to rule the entire world.

The person will be the most benevolent human being in the world, caring for all the people he works with, even if they don’t meet his high standards.

And when it comes to conflict, the person will simply end a difference of opinion decisively, even if he is wrong.

The person will be totally creative and will redefine bullshit business terminology like “thinking outside the box” and “blue sky thinking”, perhaps even inventing a new term like “extra-terrestrial creativity” to be used from now on when trying to impress his so-called superiors.

The quality of the person’s decisions will be consistently brilliant. He will rarely be wrong and when he is, he will end the debate and move on.

The person will be the funniest man in the world. His jokes will be the best and the entire audience will spend most of their time laughing at him. Like this guy:

And that’s just for starters, dear reader. There’s lots more where that came from.

As I said, I would fail to get the job.

I didn’t want to stack shelves in the local supermarket anyway.

Speak English!

Recently I have been struggling with the English language. Certain groups of people have taken it upon themselves to make me look like a fool by speaking a language that sounds like my mother tongue but in fact is far from it.

I have stared at these people, either in the flesh, or on my television set, as they abuse the language I have spoken all my life and, basically, speak meaningless nonsense, masquerading as English, in an attempt to make me look and feel like the dumbest person on the planet.

Don’t get me wrong; these people are using English words and constructing sentences and, strictly speaking, if you analysed their sentences you would find that they were in fact speaking English.

The problem is that their sentences make no sense at all.

They are talking bullshit!

For the past ten years or so, I have been paranoid, thinking that I am devolving and gradually turning into a total cretin. However, thinking about it, I have become aware that the language I speak fluently is being abused by certain groups of people like businessmen, politicians and youngsters who have taken my language and mutated it into a new and sometimes unintelligible load of gobbledygook.

The problem is that other people in the same group actually understand what is being said, so I have often found myself looking blankly at them as if they are speaking Russian. To them, I look like the village idiot and really, what I should be saying is “Speak English! You are making no sense whatsoever.”

I am not the only one. Other clever people have noticed this disturbing trend.

I’ve found myself in meetings and at presentations listening to people who use phrases that make no sense whatsoever.

For example, here is a sample presentation with the thoughts going through my head:

Presenter: Going forward, we have to make sure that we are all on the same page.

PM: Are we supposed to be reading a book?

Presenter: I’m sure you all realise that we have to address the elephant in the room.

PM: How rude! I’m not fat!

Presenter: The helicopter view is that we need to make maximum use of our greatest assets and some of those assets are here today. We need to leverage our potential and grab the low hanging fruit.

PM: What are you saying? Are you asking me to fly into the office in a chopper and pick fruit? I didn’t even know we had any apple trees.

Presenter: Nevertheless, we all need to touch base on this one.

PM: Baseball this afternoon anyone?

Presenter: To maximise our business and climb the strategic staircase, we must look under the bonnet. 

PM: I thought we all worked in retail, not an upstairs garage.

Presenter: And for that reason we need to downsize. We will be looking for some volunteers but from the rest of you, let’s put on a record and see who dances.

PM: Party time.

Presenter: Anyone who wants to discuss this can touch base with me offline.

    LATER

PM: What on earth were you talking about?

Presenter: You fired! Bye!

I’m not saying that such bullshit is spoken in my workplace, but I have noticed an alarming increase in such nonsense.

It’s not just business.  Politicians infuriate me with their bullshit or simply revert to gobbledygook in an attempt to cover their tracks with a string of nonsensical jargon. Either that or they repeat the same drivel ad nauseam. Everybody knows it yet they still do it – and worst of all – they get away with it.

Interviewer: Are you going to admit that you are wrong and that you lied to the House of Commons about the tax increases?

Politician: Let me refer you to my earlier statement. We, as a government, are totally committed to making sure that the working families of the United Kingdom are rewarded.

Interviewer: By paying more taxes?

Politician: The fiscal machinations of the governmental departments are designed, unequivocally and exclusively to promote the advantages of the diligence of our dedicated citizens who reap the rewards of full time employment. 

Interviewer: What does that even mean? You lied to the House, didn’t you? Working families will be much worse off.

Politician: The figures show that our policies have led to the most successful government in years, unlike the last government who were a disaster.

Interviewer: But …

Politician: Will you let me answer the question? My point is that we have increased spending in the NHS by 3% in this term.

Interviewer: What’s that got to do with you lying in the House?

At this point I would love the interviewer to throw down his microphone and slap the politician in the face with a large fish while screaming:

“JUST ANSWER THE PHHHAAAAARRKKKINNGG QUESTION AND STOP TALKING BULLSHIT!!!”

One thing that really annoys me about politicians trying to bamboozle us with inane rhetoric is that they basically think the rest of us are stupid. As they lie to our faces, refuse to answer questions or smile in the most insincere manner possible, they secretly believe that we are stupid enough to buy what they are saying.

Of course, there is the dim possibility that they are sticking to a prewritten script in order to save themselves from being caught out and forced to resign for actually baring their true soul to us.

Finally, we have the youth of today whose “urban” speak is like a foreign language. It comes from rap, I guess, but to me it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Thankfully, here is the very funny Doc Brown to give me a helping hand:

Mind you, I’m a bit of a hypocrite myself. I originally come from Walsall, a town near to Birmingham, in an area known as “The Black Country”, so-called because of the heavy industry there, pumping vast quantities of soot and smog into the atmosphere.

It is the area that gave us Judas Priest and, most famously, Ozzy Osborne and Black Sabbath, as well as Led Zeppelin.

I used to speak in Black Country slang as illustrated by this jolly little video.

Did you understand it?

The Plastic Businessman

Technically speaking, I am a businessman, using the definition of the word in its loosest possible way.

The definition of a businessman is:

A person, esp a man, engaged in commercial or industrial business, esp as an owner or executive.

Let’s look at that a little more closely.

A person – yes, I think I qualify as a person.

Esp a man – especially a man. I thought that you had to be a man to be a businessman and a woman to be businesswoman. Businesswoman has its own definition in the dictionary as does businessperson. So am I a businessman or a businessperson? Or both? I know one thing for certain – I am definitely NOT a businesswoman.

Engaged in commercial or industrial business – I’m not going let slip exactly what I do – apart from spending my entire day swearing at computers and the people who buy and use them. I guess that counts as industrial business.

Esp as an owner or executive – sadly no! I do not own my business nor am I an executive.

Nevertheless, I guess I do count as a businessman – albeit a plastic businessman.

My job involves travel, and when I am fortunate enough to get a trip abroad, I look forward to the prospect of visiting different countries. I don’t look forward to the work when I get there and spend the journey planning ways to escape the business prison and explore strange and exciting lands.

Anybody who has travelled will see businessmen at the airport as they check in, wait for their flight, fly, land, arrive, pick up their bags and depart to set the business world alight with their business stuff.

For fun, I would like to compare myself and my own travel experiences, the Plastic Businessman, with the stereotypical businessman, the Proper Businessman.

Checking In

The Proper Businessman will arrive at the airport in a taxi and march with determination towards the check in desk. He will be wearing a suit, even if he is travelling to the other side of the world, and he will be carrying another in one of those plastic suit carrier things. He will have a top of the range suitcase and a business case, complete with laptop, iPad and Blackberry. He will have checked in online, because his time is so precious that he simply cannot afford to waste his valuable time standing in line with the economy class scutters. He will arrive at the Business Class check in desk, hand over his suitcase and march away triumphantly with his Business Class boarding card.

The Plastic Businessman will arrive at the airport in a taxi – and that is where the similarity ends. He will be wearing a pair of jeans and a T shirt with a scruffy coat and hauling a suitcase full of work documents he doesn’t need but has been asked to take just in case. He will have had the foresight to check in online but will have to drop his bag off at the economy class check in desk with the rest of the scutters because his company will not pay for Business Class. He will ask for an upgrade and be laughed at by the check in assistant – and then he will be laughed at by the rest of the scutters. In his scruffy rucksack he will have a laptop, an iPod and a book. He will have a cheap Nokia mobile phone that belongs in a Science Museum but, being a geek, he will have an Android Smartphone too. When he has finally checked in, he will shuffle away feeling pissed off about being humiliated when asking for an upgrade.

Departure Lounge

The Proper Businessman will aim to do as much work as humanly possible while waiting for his flight. He will be constantly talking into his Blackberry or listening to it pinging as important emails fly into his inbox. The laptop will be out and he will be analysing spreadsheets, studyinging documents so important that they must be reviewed before he flies, or he will be sending emails barking orders to is underlings because he is so high-flying, so important that he doesn’t think they can function without him. If is in the Business lounge he will sip a glass of red wine as he chats, covering his mouth occasionally in case somebody may be lip-reading and keen to steal his entrepreneurial ideas or his company’s secrets.

The Plastic Businessman will make straight for the bar, or if he managed to fluke entry into the Business Lounge, will try to cram as much free beer, wine and food down his neck as he can. He will talk on his personal smartphone to tell his beloved that he is about to fly and that he will miss her. Then he will get his laptop out and, after struggling for a while to get an internet connection, will check his blog, his personal emails and then poke around web sites such as BBC Sport or Amazon. Then he may start to write a blog post. Or just play a game. And he will laugh at the Proper Businessman, knowing that he is a workaholic who isn’t actually that important but cannot actually leave his work alone for five minutes.

Boarding

The Proper Businessman will walk straight onto the aircraft barking orders at his subordinates in his Blackberry – except he can’t carry it – so he has his earpiece in, looking, in his eyes, even cooler.

The Plastic Businessman will queue with the other scutters, listening to rock music on his iPod and embarrassing himself slightly when he inadvertently blurts out profane lyrics to one of his rock songs, like “I’m so HUNGRY for YOUR SEX!!”. The other scutters will laugh.

On Board

The Proper Businessman will open up his laptop as soon as the “Fasten Seat Belts” sign has gone off. His aim will be to work for the entire duration of the trip. After all, that important document won’t write itself and since he is the only man who can possibly produce such a document, it is absolutely imperative that he gets at least the first draft of the document done. One of the most frustrating things about flying is that there are no power points so that he can recharge is laptop when it inevitably runs out of power. Still, never mind; he has an iPad and he can do at least a little constructive work on that. If all else fails, he has a stash of paper documents in his business case – and a BIG RED PEN.

The Plastic Businessman is so tightly crammed into his economy seat that there is no room for him to get his laptop out. Even if he did, all he would do is play silly games on it (although he would never admit to that knowing that it is company policy not to allow any leisure software on a company laptop). Instead he will watch a film that has been sliced to ribbons so that it fits on the tiny screen and has had all of the sex and violence removed in case young eyes in a nearby seat can see it. Instead he reads a book – not a Business Book like “The Audacity of Hope” or “How to Acquire Excellence in an Economy Seat on a Cramped Aircraft Even When Sitting Next to the Fattest Man on Planet Earth”. No – instead he chooses a crappy science fiction novel called “Invasion of the Vampire Fembots From Tharg”. And when he’s fed up of that, he will once again dissolve into his iPod and inadvertently blurt out another embarrassing lyric from a rock song like “Pull my trigger; I’ll get bigger – then I’m lots of fun – I’m YOUR GUN GUN GUN!” The other scutters will laugh again.

Arriving

The Proper Businessman arrives refreshed after a nice sleep because he has been in Business Class and has been able to convert his already comfortable seat into a bed and been tucked in by a beautiful stewardess. He has in his business case, lots of smelly cologne and a razor to make himself look perfect as he steps off the aircraft before all the scutters and picks up his bag immediately because it has been given a priority tag. He has a limousine waiting for him to whisk him off to a hotel to catch up on the remainder of his sleep because he is a Proper Businessman who deserves his rest after an eight hour flight.

The Plastic Businessman leaves the aircraft an hour after the doors opened because he ended up at the back and had to wait for the other scutters to struggle off first. When he gets into the terminal building he looks like a dishevelled version of the scruffy old git that checked in so long ago. Why? Because he has had absolutely no sleep. Faced with the choice of cuddling up to the fat bloke next to him or leaning out into the aisle where he would have been constantly hit by people going to the toilet or trollies full of food, he opted to sleep in the normal sitting position and ended up with a cricked neck. And then he realises with horror that his toothpaste and deodorant were confiscated because both were over 100ml and he forgot to put it in his suitcase. He realises with horror, as he waits for his bag that he has to meet the customer immediately to say hello – and he looks and smells like something that crawled out of a primeval swamp.

Conclusion

I am a Plastic Businessman.

I am not bitter.

Honestly.

The Health and Safety Comedy Show

I wasted just over an hour of my life at work today.

It was called Health and Safety training. And I think, in order to pass it with a mark of 80%, all I needed was the IQ of a cat; and before you say it – yes, I know I can be stupid but even I am not that dumb.

The web-based course consisted of watching a few videos and then taking a quiz. I would have passed even if I hadn’t watched the videos – the questions were so simple.

In fact, as I watched it at my desk, with my earphones, I found myself chuckling. In order to illustrate how to be safe and healthy at work, they showed situations with people who had removed their brains and consequently stumbled about the place, driven by their own idiocy.

For example, in one scene, somebody had spilled a small amount of liquid at the top of a staircase. The video showed four people, whose combined IQ must have been less than that of a slug, sliding all over the place in full view of each other.

Idiot number one slipped over as idiot number two approached. As idiot one lay on the floor, idiot two gawped at idiot one and then slipped in the same place and fell down the stairs. At the same time, idiot three was coming up the stairs and when he reached the top having seen the other two idiots slip and fall, he too slipped spectacularly.

I had to answer questions like this:

It is OK to leave you laptop in your car with the window open while you pop into a shop. True or False?


It is OK to climb onto a chair with wheels at the top of a staircase in order to change a light bulb. True or False?

For a laugh, I have decided to publish my own ten point plan for morons as a primer for tests similar to the one I had to take. If you are so stupid that people wonder how you manage to dress yourself in the morning, this is for you.

(1) When making yourself a cup of coffee, do not under any circumstances plunge your hand into boiling water as this may cause pain and severe burning and may stop you carrying on with your work.

(2) Whenever you need to go to the toilet, do not wait at your desk until it is too late. You will wet yourself. Always go to the toilet when you know that you can get there without an accident. Such action minimises the prospect of people slipping in the trail of urine that you leave as you run in a state of panic to the toilet.

(3) Do not throw yourself down the stairs. First of all there may be somebody else coming up and as well as injuring yourself you may injure that person too.

(4) If you work on the first floor or above, do not leave the office by leaping out of the window. Even though this may seem to be the quickest way to exit the building, you will almost certainly injure yourself and anybody who is unfortunate enough to be walking beneath.

(5) If you see a fire, do not stand there pointing at it or attempt to warm up your lunch in the flames. You must leave the building – preferably not by hurling yourself down the stairs or out of the windows, as described above.

(6) Under no circumstances should you pour water into electrical equipment to clean it.

(7) However tempting it may be, do not hit your manager with a blunt instrument.

(8) Do not use your laptop while driving. You may crash the car.

(9) If there is a fire, do not stop to make a coffee because it may be cold outside.

(10) Hitting your colleagues over the head with a laptop will injure them. It may also damage expensive company equipment.

You may chuckle at that list but the training I received assumed that I had no common sense whatsoever.

The whole world has gone mad when it comes to Health and Safety. Here is an example from work; I’ve mentioned this before but this time I thought that photographic evidence was required to show normal people how absurd Health and Safety can be.

This notice is on the mirror in the gents toilet at work.

It’s a good job they told me – my IQ usually plummets when I’m in the toilet and I wouldn’t want to spread germs.

Actually, I had to be very careful taking that photo. Walking into the gents with a camera, no matter how innocent the reason, could have been taken the wrong way.

I hope nobody saw me.

Who Stole My Excellence?

This was going to be an excellent post – but I’ve mislaid my excellence.

I might have left it at work to be fair; I usually take it with me and leave my “will to live” and “joie de vivre” at home.

I certainly miss my excellence, so this, unfortunately, is going to be useless post.

What do you mean “tell us something we don’t know”?

Every day I am told that I need to be excellent; I need to excel at absolutely everything in my life from the moment my crusty eyes open in the morning until they close again at night. I probably have to be excellent while I’m asleep too.

Job adverts are absolutely full of demands to be excellent:

You will be an excellent leader, excelling at everything you attempt. You will be an excellent people person with excellent motivation skills that will make everybody in the whole wide world love you (even those who have not had the good fortune to meet you).

You excellence will be so tangible that people will want to have sex with you as soon as they lay eyes on you. They want to give you all of their money.

Your excellence will be excellent too.

Bookshops are full of self help guides that promote excellence:

In Search of Excellence


Racing Towards Excellence


In Pursuit of Excellence


The Excellence of Sweeping the Street


The Essence of Excellence


Excellence II: The Joy of Excellence


Recruiting Excellence


Eating Excellence


Finding Excellence in Pets


Optimising Your Excellence


What to Do If You Lose Your Excellence


Unleashing Excellence


The Excellence System


The Excellence of Excellence


How to be Excellent Even When You Are Not Being Excellent


Excellence for Idiots


Take Your Excellence Out For a Meal, Wine It, Dine It, Marry it and Have Baby Excellence.


Actually, I made some of those up but hopefully you get my drift. Business these days seems obsessed with the pursuit of excellence and successful bosses love to talk themselves up. Interviews for some of these lofty positions must be an absolute hoot to watch, with these people stepping into a weird realm where they are the master of all they survey. A game of buzzword bingo is very interesting on such occasions.

If you have seen the Apprentice you will know exactly what I mean.

In the US, Donald Trump sits there in complete silence as the candidates argue amongst themselves, stabbing each other in the back and telling lies about each other and themselves in order to convince him that they are excellent and their competitors are useless – even though their combined effort was a total disaster.

MR TRUMP: Why shouldn’t I fire you?

VICTIM 1: I did an excellent job because I am excellent. I am an excellent salesman and, Mr Trump, I will be an excellent apprentice and I will excel at excellence in every aspect of my job. You need me, Mr Trump, because I am excellent.

MR TRUMP: And why shouldn’t I fire you?

VICTIM 2: Because my so-called colleague is a lying snivelling wreck who did a BAD job. It was entirely his fault that we lost you $10,000. It was his idea to dress the elephant in a tutu. He is not excellent; he is mediocre at best. I am excellence personified; I live and breath excellence; I dream excellence; I think excellence; I even piss excellence. I pray to the God of excellence and he answers me saying “You are so excellent that I will give you an excellent position at my right hand.” Mr Trump, sack this low life mediocre muppet. I am so driven that I break the speed of light with every move. You want 21st century Mr Trump? I will give you 22nd, 23rd and 24th centuries. You want one hundred percent? I will give you one million percent and I will still be cruising. I will hyperdrive YOUR productivity into the next decade using my excellence. You will become EVEN RICHER – so RICH that New York will be renamed NEW TRUMP! And it will ALL be down to my excellence.

MR TRUMP: You both did a BAD job. You’re both fired.

This is one of my favourite ever moments from the Apprentice USA:



See what happens when you lose your excellence?

In the UK, we have Sir Alan Sugar (or should I say Lord Sugar) who is different from Donald Trump but much funnier and much more abrasive in my opinion at least.

Call me cruel but I simply love to watch the faces of these egotistical muppets crumble when they realise that they, too, have lost their excellence at a crucial moment. Not that I could do any better myself of course.

One woman on the show claimed to be "the best salesperson in Europe". She was fired - for not selling anything.

Here is Sir Alan Sugar in action:



Anyway, my point is that in business, the word “excellence” has become one of the most prodigious business buzzwords in the history of business bullshit. The word “excellence” and its derivatives crop up fairly regularly in newspapers and on the TV and are usually surrounded by other similar buzzwords that are properties of a super human being but hardly the kind of thing that every single person can call upon to assist themselves in their everyday life and career.

Job adverts are full of this kind of horseshit whether you are after the top job as chairman of a multimillion dollar company or the manager of a small retail outlet. We are expected to strive for excellence even if we work as a petrol pump attendant.

You are expected to take your excellence to the interview and allow it to answer difficult questions on your behalf; take your buzzword bingo card, your bullshit generator and your excellence to a job interview and you should prevail.

INTERVIEWER: Tell me about yourself.

CANDIDATE: I am the best of the best of the best. I have my excellence with me on a leash at all times and it casts aside all doubts and makes me the perfect person for this job. My mind is a centre of excellence. I am the greatest. You will never, ever employ a better car park attendant in your life.

Personally I seek excellence in everything I do; it is my constant companion in life.

In the morning I wake up, leap out of bed and throw myself into the shower washing my aging, bloated body and mad hair with pure brilliance.

My crazy hair is tamed with excellence and I actually look slightly human as I eat my excellent breakfast.

At work, colleagues tell me how wonderful I am and how I am the best at my job – that’s excellence for you.

I arrive home after work and eat an excellent evening meal, while watching excellent TV programmes before going to bed to read an excellent book.

I even have excellent dreams full of monsters, interstellar battles, tales of love and adventure with beguiling women falling at my excellent feet.

Of course I am lying through my keyboard. I struggle through the day fighting fires and struggling to extricate myself from the bureaucratic red tape that throttles business and technology today. It is the same everywhere.

Even with all the technology we have in the world it is sometimes difficult to find your excellence in paperwork.

Furthermore, with everybody striving for and supposedly achieving excellence, I often wonder why the world seems to have problems.

You only have to read the news to see that excellence appears to have taken a leaf out of Superman’s book and gone for a sabbatical to Krypton. Perhaps my excellence has gone there too.

Anyway, if I find my excellence I will let you know. Perhaps I will make an excellent choice when I visit the newsagent to buy my lottery ticket this weekend.

That would be excellent.

Baseball Business

A while ago, I wrote a post about how irritating the language of business can be (read it here). I cringe when I hear people using choice buzzwords to try to impress in the world of business, particularly at my own workplace. I feel like a volcano waiting to erupt and have to exercise monumental control not to yell:

“Speak English to me.”

Equally irritating is the use of idioms from the world of American sport in British business, particularly from baseball. I understand that in America two businessmen, who almost certainly watch baseball all the time, would use choice phrases from that sport because they would both understand the meaning perfectly.

In Britain, however, we do not watch baseball and the vast majority of businessmen have absolutely no idea what the terminology means.

I remember the first time I watched a baseball game. I was in Trinidad and there was a curfew, so I had little choice but to watch TV. There was nothing on at all, apart from a baseball game on an American sports channel. So I watched the entire game.

I have to admit that I actually enjoyed it and, more surprisingly, I understood it. I wouldn’t say that I was an expert by any means, but I found it entertaining enough to watch it on a couple of subsequent trips to the US. As I watched, I was pleasantly surprised to hear some of the idioms. As a teenager, I loved the song “Paradise By Dashboard Light” by Meat Loaf from the album “Bat Out Of Hell” but I thought that radio announcer section of that song was just gibberish and couldn’t fathom the meaning in the context of the song. Watching that first baseball game in Trinidad was an epiphany; I knew exactly what was happening in the song because I understood what was meant by:

Bottom of the ninth

Batter steps up to the plate

Here’s the play at the plate

Bunted down the third base line

I listened to the song again and pictured in my head what was going on in the car and at the baseball game – and it all made sense.

Unfortunately I am in a minority because, although baseball is played in Britain, it is an amateur sport with a very small audience. The likelihood that it is watched regularly by British businessmen is slim at best.

So why do people use baseball idioms in the UK?

I want to know why they simply cannot speak to me in terms that I can relate to. Here are the most irritating, with my interpretation of what they mean:

Will you play ball?

Will you go along with my insane plan?

They threw a curveball.

They came up with something totally unexpected (as customers sometimes do).

That job you were assigned. Have you completed a home run?

That job you were supposed to do. Was it a complete success?

Can you field these questions?

Somebody is going to ask a bunch of difficult questions that I can’t answer, so will you make yourself look like a fool instead of me by answering them?

They are going to strike out on the deal.

They are not going to sign the contract (probably because it is full of baseball idioms that they don’t understand).

I want you to play hardball.

I want you to be tough with them (because I'm trying to give the impression that I'm nice).

Can you give me a ballpark figure?

Can you guess for me? I am incapable of doing so and I want somebody to blame when your estimates are way out.

Three strikes and you’re out.

If you make three mistakes you are sacked. So please don’t punch me again for using baseball idioms.

I want you to cover all bases.

I want you to prepare for all possible outcomes, even the most ridiculous unplanned ones.

Can you touch base with Bill?

Can you make sure that Bill has all of the information even the stuff you and I haven’t thought of yet?

Dave, step up to the plate.

Dave, can you take responsibility (and ergo the blame) for this?

It’s a whole new ball game.

Everything’s changed, probably because I've changed my mind.

I’ve had enough of these idioms and I am going to fight back. I propose that we start using football phrases. How about these for starters?

"Shall we kick off?" to replace "Will you play ball?"

"They bent it like Beckham." to replace "They threw a curveball."

"Did you score the goal?" to replace "Have you completed a home run?"

"Can you tackle these question?" to replace "Can you field these questions?"

"Can you guess the score?" to replace "Can you give me a ballpark figure?"

"Two bookings and you are sent off" to replace "Three strikes and you’re out."

"I want you to play it safe." to replace "I want you to cover all bases."

I don’t think that it would be difficult really as there are some football idioms already in use:

"Score an own goal" - to give yourself a problem.

"Kick it around" - to talk about an idea with co-workers.

"Let the side down" – to cause trouble and annoy co-workers.

"Move the goalposts" – to make an unexpected change at the last minute.

We could even extend this to cricket:

"Take a swing" - Have a go (although this could also be a baseball phrase).

"We’re batting on a sticky wicket" – We have an awkward situation.

"This just isn’t cricket" – the situation is unfair.

"You’ve had a good innings" – you've had a positive experience and the outcome was excellent - but you are still sacked.

Actually, to be honest, I don’t really like the English idioms above either. I am going to start a campaign to ban their use in British business completely. When I take over the world, I will make sure that use of sports phrases in business is severely dealt with. The punishment for using a phrase from a sport that you know about will be severe but woe betide the person who uses an idiom from a sport he knows nothing about.

It will be one strike and out.

Things My Cats Have Taught Me

I came across a blog post that inspired me. I have to say, that I laughed out loud when I read it because the author had written a serious article about what he has learnt from his cat. It really was deadly serious and, of course, business related. This person gave the world several lessons that he had picked up from his moggy that he could apply to his business life. Laugh? I nearly had an accident.

To counter that, I’ve decided to tell you all what I have learnt from my three crazy black cats.

First, I have learnt how to use a litter tray. Unsurprisingly, the one used by my cats was a little too small for me, so I adapted a baker’s bread tray for the purpose. Moreover, it cost me a small fortune in cat litter and Mrs PM started complaining (and not just about the cost of kitty litter).

Moving on: at first, purring and excessive affection caused Mrs PM some alarm; she thought I had gone mad. However, sitting on her knee and rubbing my face against her hair actually had some effect before she experienced the litter tray fiasco. I had the advantage of being bigger than Mrs PM so it was difficult for her to throw me off her lap. I also tried this tactic at work to win favour; unfortunately my work colleagues reported me to the HR department.

My cats also taught me that I can get Mrs PM to cook my dinner all the time by constantly and relentlessly howling in anguish whenever I am hungry. Initally, she was reluctant but, after weeks of indefatigable perseverance I got a result: she started beating me with a rolling pin. I almost reported her to the RSPCA.

Cats can climb very easily. I have tried this. I taped some nails to my fingers and toes and tried to climb the tall tree at the bottom of our neighbour’s garden. Sadly, my neighbour caught me and set her dog on me. And that’s the next lesson – dogs don’t like cats! I barely escaped with my leg intact. But persistence is my middle name, so I tried climbing the tree in our garden. Unfortunately, it couldn’t take my weight and I almost pole-axed myself on the fence.

Cats are also great hunters and I have tried this with a little tuition from the three cats. The big advantage that cats have over their human slaves is that they can see in the dark and are extremely fit and fast, whereas I can barely see past the end of my nose and am totally unfit and so slow that I struggle to outrun old people. But I am nothing if not determined and resourceful. I can tell you that crawling around in the garden on all fours in the middle of the night with a torch attached to your head armed with cheese and bird seed can actually allow you to catch mice and birds – or so I’ve been told. I was out there for four hours and caught nothing but a cold.

Cats like to give gifts to their loved ones. My three moggies bring us decapitated mice and half-eaten birds all the time. Mrs PM never scolds them. Sadly, she didn’t take too kindly to me depositing a half-eaten haggis on the bed at three o’clock in the morning.

Another dubious cat trait is the disgusting habit of eating grass, usually enough to make them throw up. I have to tell you, grass tastes disgusting and I’m not surprised they vomit all over the carpet. It had the same effect on me and Mrs PM was not best pleased. She thought I’d been drinking.

Finally, struggling to cope, I decided to try my hand at singing like a cat. My three usually do this at four in morning. I have to say, serenading the neighbours with screeching howls just before dawn is therapeutic. It also helps with your fitness as you flee from the neighbours’ dogs.

So what have I learned? Well Mrs PM has thrown me out of the house. At first I thought it was because of my litter tray, but the haggis and vomit were apparently the final straw. My neighbour reported me to the police and, in my haste to escape by climbing a tree, I ended up falling down and breaking both my legs. When lying there on the ground, I was set upon by a nasty police dog who presumably mistook me for a moggy.

Of course, the contents of the above post are totally and utterly untrue. Mrs PM hasn’t thrown me out and I am not currently sitting in a hospital bed under police supervision, with the men in white coats waiting with a straitjacket to cart me off to the vet. Nor am I meowing and purring and chasing small wild creatures around the garden.

As absurd as it sounds, this post makes more sense than the original “what I have learned from my cat” post that I read. I would provide a link but I wouldn’t want the author to think I was ridiculing his efforts to equate the world of business with the workings of the feline mind.

After all, I’ll bet he never took his litter tray into an important meeting; he probably left it outside.