What’s the stupidest question you have ever asked? Or the most ridiculous thing you have ever said in adult company? You can probably remember quite clearly, and no doubt you’d definitely rather forget. Everyone at some stage in their life, usually more than once, has uttered something so ludicrous that they wish that the ground would open up like an underground NCP and take them forever.
Take the cut and thrust of a high-powered, fast moving executive sales environment, for example, and the gaff factor is intensified on an almost gargantuan scale. So much so, in fact, that it is sometimes hard to keep track of the continual flow of incomprehensible gibberish which pours out on almost a minute-by-minute basis.
I work in just such an environment, and we write the best ones down in a book. This serves to amuse us during the dark days when the revenue board looks bereft of Cadillac winning deals, but mainly it is a way to humiliate the individuals responsible in a childlike, playground bullying manner. Hey, if you can’t take the heat, get your ass off the sales floor. Or something.
Allow me to enlighten you.
3rd June - On The Subject of Vegetarianism
Jason: "Nipon, you can have my sandwich today as my missus made me a ham sandwich and I don't eat meat on a Tuesday."
Scanty: "Why's that?"
Jason: "It's to do with my religion."
Scanty: "Any meat?"
Jason: "Yes, any meat."
Scanty: "Fish?"
Jason: "No, I don't eat fish either."
Marty: "What about cheese?"
Or perhaps…
11th June - Marty makes a cup of coffee for Richard
Marty, after making black coffee for himself and Richard.
Richard: "Marty, where's the milk?"
Marty: "Do you take milk?"
Richard: "Yes."
Marty: "So do I."
Marty goes and gets the milk.
17th June - Andy, on the phone to a client
Andy: Who would be the best person to speak to, is it yourself, yourself?
2nd July - Richard on the phone to a client
Client: "Good Morning, Mulberry Recruitment."
Richard: "Good Mulberry."
20th May - Pete in conversation with a candidate.
Pete: "The wage on this is very good - let's not be realistic about it."
9th July - Complexities of the Australian language
Nipon: "Marty, do they have BMX's in Australia?"
Marty: "Yes."
Nipon: "What do you call them?"
Marty: "BMX's."
Lying in bed yesterday, I was recalling some of these spectacular gaffs to my wife, who commented that she did not find it in the least bit unusual that grown men could make such complete asses of themselves on a regular basis. Women, she said, never do such things.
After a moment of contemplation, she said. “You know, I’m sick of this MDMF wardrobe."
