Ford executive records thousands of his colleagues' verbal flubs
Mike O’Brien still laughs at his favourites which include: "Too many cooks in the soup", "Read between the tea leaves", "I'm not trying to beat a dead horse to death" and "We need to talk about the elephant in the closet".
Mike O’Brien retired as a sales executive at Ford Motor Company in Detroit after 32 years, but his unique way of signing off captured attention – not only in the company, but across the world.
For 10 years, O'Brien kept a meticulous log of the way people mangled the English language in meetings, gatherings and side conversations.
Upon his retirement, he shared more than 2000 misused metaphors and phrases in a spreadsheet with his colleagues.
"It kind of went viral within our company and since then, it's gotten legs outside of the company."
"Some of the ones that I think everyone can appreciate is sayings like 'I know it like the back of my head', to me those are the kind that are very close to being right but not quite, in a way that makes it very funny," O'Brien told Sunday Morning.
"Someone once said 'forgive me for my lack of ignorance' which essentially cancels itself out and makes it sound like they're super knowledgeable about the topic. And one more in that kind of realm, they think we dropped the ball on this, but it couldn't be further from the opposite."
We need to talk about the elephant in the closet!
It was all in good jest, he said. In fact, he saw as a "badge of honour" to be on the words board.
"We call them board words because I used to actually write them, physically on whiteboards and there ended up being five full ones and part of a sixth before I retired.
"But everybody loved the board words, people would come by to read them and it was a lot of fun."
When the brain is moving faster than the mouth can handle, a little flub here and there can happen to everyone – even the three chief executives made their way on the words board at one point, he said.
"One of the very top people in the company said 'we've been leaders in the industry for a long time and don't remember to forget that', which again is not something you want to say to rally the troops."
Another executive giving a toast at a dinner gave a rousing speech but his closing line was: "And 'for all of you, may each day be better than the next', which implies that every day from then on out is just going to get worse and worse."
O'Brien's colleagues picked up the mantle and continue to send him messages of the best misused phrases they hear.
