At the coffee shop, reading Crackanthorpe and drinking my horrid decaf tea, a phrase from the conversation of the important-looking business guys at the next table wafted my way. "We don't have to re-invent the wheel." Wow, I thought to myself, does anyone still perpetrate that old cliche -- and do so without a shred of irony or self-awareness? I listened more closely to them and in less than five minutes plucked the following flowers of wilted rhetoric:
"From the get-go" -- "chicken-and-egg problem" -- "here's the pressure point" -- "low-hanging fruit" -- "where the rubber meets the road" -- "that's the genie coming out of the bottle" -- "it's fifty-fifty" -- "here's my quick pitch."
All useful phrases, I suppose. Shorthand. But, nevertheless, kind of embarrassingly banal.
If these guys sensed my disapproval, why, they'd probably laugh all the way to the bank.
My advice to them, and to others similarly situated: when you use cliches, try to think outside the box and turn it into a win-win situation. You don't have to knock the ball out of the park, language-wise, but you don't need to throw anyone under the bus either. It's all water under the bridge that we'll cross when we get there. Can we agree to disagree? When you look at this problem from the 30,000 foot level, then, and only then, can you eat the elephant one bite at a time. So, let's give it 110%. And, you know, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Are we all on the same page?
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