Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
When Ford executive Mike O’Brien emailed colleagues to announce his retirement last month, his thank yous came with a twist: a meticulous log of mixed metaphors and malaprops uttered by his colleagues in meetings over a decade.
Cringe-worthy highlights include: “let’s not reinvent the ocean”; “we need to talk about the elephant in the closet”; “we need to make sure dealers have some skin in the teeth”; “read between the tea leaves”; and the faintly kinky, “it’s a huge task, but we’re trying to get our arms and legs around it.”
One marketing manager made the list a total of 184 times.
Luckily no one was fired for being incontinent.
