Demagogue

I just endured a week of staff meetings by my employer. These meetings included small-group discussions during which we were instructed to "engage the issues" and "develop solution-based answers" to the questions a management official had raised.

There are other examples I could give of how some senior staffer of my employer tortured the English language, but I'll spare you the agony.

Then there was the goal-setting session. We were asked to respond to the goal of increasing our organization's membership by X percent. Several of us asked how this proposed membership gain was calculated — what it was based on. At least one of our directors was honest enough to say that goal was "essentially pulled out of a hat."

I don't know what this week of work will produce, but it has to be better than last week because Dilbert seems to have left the building and everyone here is breathing a lot easier.