This bloke at work
at team meetings drones on for hours describing his daily work. Incident by incident:

"So, then I called him back, and he wasn't there. So he eventually called me and I explained that it was a problem with the HTML. So... once we had that sorted out I logged an incident. So... that incident then went into the queue..." ... blah blah blah

You get the point. "So..." is the punctuation mark between sentences.

The game, which I wasn't party to at the moment of this incident, was to count how many times he said "So..." during one of his diatribes.

My colleague mentioned this game to me two minutes before the meeting commenced. Every time matey said "So..." I could see these two people making a mark on their notepads. I wasn't playing, but the tediousness of his banal monologue, along with the "What's the worst thing that I could possibly do right now?" factor caused me to burst into a fit of the giggles. In the middle of a meeting. With the project manager present.

I had to leave, claiming futilely that I had a sudden onset of sneezing.

(Apologies for length of post)

six months later, similar meeting. Excpet Neil (colleage, not "So..."-er) has pointed out that "So..." is sometimes, but not always, pre-fixed with "Erm". So now, there is more competition with the "So..." loggers. Result?

He's only completed one sentence "Erm, so... then I (etc)" before I descend into giggle-dom, and have to leave the room.

Damn my mind! It's not my game, I don't actually join in, but watching others take such delight in his verbal tics causes me to revert to childhood.

Footnote: I resigned today, and with my resignation delivered a nasty and damning critique of this fella, who is a fat sychophantic social-climber with an overstated sense of his own authority. He (at 22) thought he had power to assign me work (I'm 30).

Such joy!
(weedom, Wed 31 Mar 2004, 0:24, Reply)