The Ford Executive Who Kept Score of Colleagues' Verbal Flubs. i needed this laugh [View all]

Mike O’Brien emailed a few hundred colleagues last month to announce his retirement after 32 years at Ford Motor. The sales executive’s note included the obligatory career reflections and thank yous—but came with a twist. Attached to the email was a spreadsheet detailing a few thousand violations committed by his co-workers over the years.

During a 2019 sales meeting to discuss a new vehicle launch, a colleague blurted out: “Let’s not reinvent the ocean.”

At another meeting, in 2016, someone started a sentence with: “I don’t want to sound like a broken drum here, but…”

After one colleague declared: “It’s a huge task, but we’re trying to get our arms and legs around it,” O’Brien quipped: “Adding ‘legs’ into the mix makes it sound kinda kinky.”

(snip)

The spreadsheet is the more-detailed repository of the data (not “suppository” of the data, a particularly unfortunate case of word-misuse that made the board. Twice). It breaks out the examples into categories that include:

Sports/Exercise-related: “We’re really low on money right now…we’re dancing on thin ice,” and, “We need to keep running in our swim lanes.” Also, this mixed metaphor: “I know these are swing-for-the-moon opportunities, but I think we should pursue them.”
Body parts: “We need to make sure dealers have some skin in the teeth;” and “It’s no skin on our back,” to which O’Brien appended that it sounded like “a horrible medical condition.”
Food-related: “Too many cooks in the soup.” And: “Read between the tea leaves.”
Animals (the largest category, with 80 entries): “I’m not trying to beat a dead horse to death.” Another: “We need to talk about the elephant in the closet,” one person said.

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