Bullshit Bingo

First of all, I’m already done reading Harry Potter and sadly, Hermione dies in the book. SOMEONE put a spell on Harry that made him turn evil and caused him to ‘off’ poor Hermione. Sorry, no seventh book to follow.

Okay, so yet again I sat through a painfully uninspiring meeting at work. I should have known that was coming since they offered ‘free lunch’. I appreciate the gesture; I was born in the early morning, but not today. ‘FREE LUNCH’ denotes a far more surreptitious motive (there goes my virginity). There are only two possibilities (getting pretty good at this):

1) The meeting is to shorten a major company-wide deadline (say what?), therefore (already crossed out), you can forget about taking your vacation anytime soon.

2) The meeting is going to be long, uninteresting and well… kinda long.

I’ve already mentioned the high-tech teleconference system (the mother of all words) we have at work. To recap, it picks up EVERYTHING, every little smirk, fart or burp. The senior director who usually runs these meetings even encourages (not a bad one) note passing as opposed to whispers. Passing notes is so passé (for the fortune 50 folk) in a second grade sort of way … and most of the time it’s “EVIDENCE” as you can’t really get up and snatch the paper back when your intended recipient gives you that evil, blackmail smile as they neatly fold the paper and put it in their pocket.

Fine, I’m not passing any more notes; instead I’ve reconnected (yup, cross this one out) with an old love of mine. For those of us who think outside of the box (MY GOD, this is the lottery) meeting entertainment is a serious issue. Luckily, I have harnessed (oops, I did it again) plenty of experience from my previous job and have re-discovered (yeah baby) the sweetness that is BULLSHIT BINGO!

Many of you might be familiar with bullshit bingo. The premise (got it!) is simple; you go into the meeting with a ‘game card’ consisting of a grid of words. They can be words specific to your industry (a sure bet) or a much more generic (has crept up occasionally) set of words that is still applicable (100% guaranteed) throughout corporate America. The aim is to check off each block when you hear these words during the meeting. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout BULLSHIT!!

Of course every self-respecting, employed and materialistic asshole would not crudely stand up and shout BULLSHIT. No sir, I much prefer looking at every individual in the room and smiling like I just found cheap rent in hell. The bonus (a bullshit bingo MUST) is that everyone would have noticed your immersion (this is a good one too) in ‘something’, feverishly taking that pen to a piece of paper. When you look up at them and smile, they are left wondering WHAT THE HELL you wrote about them, or how you drew them.

It’s imperative (10, 9, 8…) that you don’t share the secret of bullshit bingo to anyone other than your close circle of co-workers. It’s actually a pretty fun collaborative (ooooh) endeavor (aaaaah) when you have a group where each person has a variation on the words in the bingo grid. Perhaps even go as far as putting lunch on the line as a prize for the first person that successfully gets a word Bingo.

Give it a shot, this website has a good word randomizer, some nice variations (BULLSHIT!)

Note: I was ONE word away from blocking out my entire grid. No one said ‘synergy’. By now you know that I am highly competitive, and don’t really like losing … so I did what any self-respecting, competitive asshole would do: “Paul, I’m worried that due to distance and time differences and such, some of the groups you assigned might be at a slight disadvantage as far as synergy and cohesiveness.” – I then quickly checked off synergy and smiled at Paul like he’s just told me the greatest thing I had ever heard (I don’t remember what he said). Today: Glass