Come table with me.

Got a memo yesterday—

Please, do not forget we need you to stop by the Office of Personnel, on the 8th floor, Thursday, October 30,2003. We need you to briefly table with a representative from [blahblahblah—name of person, reason, etc.] The representative will be here from 11:00 a.m. until 12:00 noon and promises not to table more than 10 minutes of your time. [blabberblabber, etc.]

::sigh:: What is this world coming to?

Let’s see—I am a semi-educated, yet functionally illiterate middle manager, and I hear someone misuse a term in conversation, but I really like the way it sounds… “Table, table. Hmm, and here I just thought that was what they put the food on!” So I therefore decide to, in order to look real smart and all, load my memos with this little jewel. First time, I’ll make it a synonym for “meet”, and then just to show how even smarterer I am, I will use it one sentence later to mean “waste”.

It’s the flippin’ UNIVERSAL WORD!

‘I need to table with all of you this afternoon to table some ideas for tabling a table on the table about tables, but not tabling over five tables, with an emphasis on proper tablation and good tablosity.’

Perfect.

Remember, as Calvin said, “Verbing weirds language.”
posted by Terry at 1:19:00 PM