There\u2019s a hip little game going on in secret, in corporate meeting rooms, according to Marilyn Katzman in a recent New York Times article. It doesn\u2019t have an official name, but you could call it, \u201cCorporate-talk\u201d Bingo.<\/p>\n
Participants have a Bingo-like card hidden in the scramble of official looking paperwork in front of them at the conference table. The bingo cards contain buzzwords instead of numbers and overused acronyms and convoluted sayings, often heard in corporate environments. Stuff that often disguises the real meaning, like \u201cdownsizing\u201d and \u201crightsizing\u201d instead of layoffs and firings, or a \u201cbilateral\u201d meeting with the boss instead of a one-on-one. And, well worn phrases: At the end of the day. \u2013 The bottom line. \u2013 Caught between a rock and a hard place and a new one on me, \u201cbandwidth,\u201d as in, \u201cDo you have enough bandwidth to help me?\u201d Instead of, \u201cDo you have time to give me a hand?\u201d<\/p>\n
When you are in a long boring meeting and hear one of these words or phrases, you mark off the appropriate square on your card. If you mark five squares in a row, side-to-side, up and down, or on a diagonal, you\u2019re supposed to stand up and yell, \u201cBingo!\u201d That\u2019s what the rules call for, but smart workers, who don\u2019t want to be \u201cright-sized,\u201d stay seated, cover their mouth and fake a cough that sounds like, \u201cBingo.\u201d<\/p>\n
I noticed a similar thing the last time I was at the dinner table with some of my grandchildren. Every once in a while, one of them would pop up and yell Bingo. The rest of them would crack up and giggle. It wasn\u2019t until I read Katzman\u2019s article that I figured out what they were up to; they were playing another kind of bingo, Old Coot Bingo.<\/p>\n
Whenever I said, \u201cBack in the day,\u201d or \u201cWhen I was a kid,\u201d their heads went down, a pen came out, and a box was marked on their game cards. Sometimes, I get on a roll and broadcast a slew of \u201cWhat\u2019s his names\u201d \u2013 \u201cWhatch-ya call its\u201d \u2013 \u201cThing-a-ma-jigs\u201d and other crutches, to cover a memory lapse. Old Coot Bingo cards have those words too.<\/p>\n
But, Old Coot Bingo goes beyond memory loss and back in the day stuff. The cards also contain medical words frequently used by old coots: hip replacement, stent, foot neuropathy, leg cramps and the like. So much of our conversations are loaded with these words it makes us fair game at family gatherings. A Thanksgiving dinner looks like a table of jack-in-the-boxes, with a kid jumping up every few minutes to yell, \u201cBingo!\u201d Next year, I\u2019m going to Howard Johnson\u2019s by myself. If I can find one. They used to be all over the place. \u201cBack when I was a kid!\u201d<\/p>\n
Complaints? Comments? Leave them at \u2013 mlessler7@gmail.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s a hip little game going on in secret, in corporate meeting rooms, according to Marilyn Katzman in a recent New York Times article. It…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"\n