Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Pet Peeve - Redux

It took exactly 24 hours to find a phrase to add to my list, and I don't add them lightly (although I thank Shawn for his recommendations). Long pole. As in, what's the long pole? There are a bunch of small issues, but what's the long pole? The long pole is the hardware as there's a six month wait. The long pole is the power consumption, as we might never make it to the floor. The long pole is Scooter. He's going to hold everything up. He always does. I'm not sure why, all I asked him was what he felt was the long pole. The long pole is we keep using the phrase long pole and it's pissing people off to the point they're leaving the project.

Amended phrases I will never use:
1.) The Perfect Storm
2.) Special Sauce
3.) Long Pole

1 comment:

Kyle said...

These are all stupid phrases, but "long pole" really is in a class by itself. I think people exposed to its use should be allowed to throw things at the issuer of the phrase. Since I'm guessing it's likely to be used in a meeting context, getting up to slap the issuer just wouldn't be practical. If throwing things just isn't practical/acceptable, maybe pointing while loudly exclaiming "You're a douche!!!" could be allowed in its stead?

If this sort of punishment were more widely adopted on a corporate level, I'm quite confident it would have a strong deterrent effect.