BULLSHIT BINGO OR HOW TO SPICE UP BORING BUSINESS MEETINGS

Working as a freelance software developer for a large international organization is a curious thing: Unmotivated permanent employees called managers suck all motivation out of the freelance nonpermanent staff called developers, until the freelancers are fed up and leave. Our small team of freelancers decided to spice up our time here by adding some fun to this dull, draining routine.

Our days as developers here are boring, uneventful, tedious and annoying. An animating exception to our daily rut are our weekly progress meetings with management. This is the time when management - the permanent staff - manages to suck all the motivation out of us, little by little. Slowly, ever so slowly you realize that they have no idea about software development, no clue how projects are managed, and that all they do is confuse everybody around them while at the same time grind all projects to a halt.

Our little team now came up with a particularly cunning way to pass time during those meetings. Our project is managed by Rashid, an extremely fine example of managerial incompetence. He is a big, dorky, 40-year old guy, who leaves the impression that he is a bit slow in his thinking. On top of the apparent lack of capacity, our project manager is of Tunesian descent, and has a bit of a problem with the English language: He does not speak it very well, nor does he understand it - or anything else for that matter - very well. His native language is French, but I have been informed by native French speakers that his French is not very good, either.

His English is so bad that we don't even try to understand what point he is trying to make anymore. Let's face it: It's most certainly some ridiculous idea anyway. So we started collecting original quotes from him as a way to pass time. We write them down, collect them, trade them like kids do with baseball cards. We even started imitating his liguistic disasters during lunchtime to entertain colleagues from less fortunate teams.

To get a feel for the magical mishaps we are lucky to parttake in each day here is a small selection of Rashidisms - named in honor of the perpetrator - and the translation that we have agreed upon (Try pronouncing them with a thick Tunesian accent for laughs):

• Error of message, aka message of error - Error message
• We haven't to waste time - We shouldn't waste time
• Time is really money - And e=mc^2
• Compound - Component (big difference in the world of computers)
• Go down by the button - We still don't know what this means
• SOAP massage - SOAP message
• NilPounter - NullPointer
• future - Feature
• IPI - API (Application Programming Interface)

To round off his speeches our project manager likes to sprinkle them liberally with the phrase in fact at the most inappropriate places, just to make it sound like he made some important discovery.

After collecting enough Rashidisms we started designing games around these words. First game was Bullshit Bingo: Draw three-by-three squares on a piece of paper, fill each square with one of your favorite Rashidism, and then cross them out as they occur in the meeting. The first one to get three in a row jumps up and yells "Bingo!" We even developed a Java application to print out the bingo sheets.

After getting bored with this game we now devised a new one: The aim is to diligently weave as many Rashidisms as possible into our own speeches during a meeting. A tallysheet is kept and the winner is announced after the meeting. Of course each one tries to outdo the others with sentences full of Rashidisms when it is their turn to explain what they are working on.

Imagine seriously explaining to your project manager and your eager colleagues - while keeping a straight face - that you went down by the button to find the NilPounter in the IPI of the compound, but in fact you were not able to reproduce this error of message, because it is not a future of this compound. Finish off with the conclusion that you haven't to waste time on that anymore, because you know time is really money. It is sure to get you a high score on the tally sheet, and the respect of your peers.

I think our project manager knows that something is going on, as we developers constantly mark things on pieces of paper, giggle around, and make incomprehensible statements, but owing to his wit I don't think it elicited more than a "uhh?" in his brain. At least he never questioned people jumping up jelling "Bingo" at inappropriate times.

So if boring meetings and incompetent management sound strangely familiar, try devising games like this for yourself! Trust me: It will make your drab meetings almost thrilling :-)

P.S.: Another beautiful Rashidism for the road: Don't say what I am not saying