Rats.

Snarky: I know you thought we were caught up on bugs.  But the cheese moves every day.
Title: Rats.

We should market to more patient people because I'm worried that means all our current customers are dead.

We literally continue this week with Great Moments in Recent Metaphor History III.  Perhaps in this case the implication is the customer has time to read a book.

Snarky: Every moment we're down is a literal eternity to our customers.
Title: We should market to more patient people because I'm worried that means all our current customers are dead.

At what point do you decide we need a new roof?

I thought about titling this one something related to how many little holes fit in a great big hole, but I like this better.

Great Moments in Recent Metaphor History II
Snarky: Each of those bugs is a hole in our roof. No matter how big they are.  If we get enough of them then it's not a roof anymore.  We'll get wet.
Title: At what point do you decide we need a new roof?

Can we just decide it's death by two-thousand cuts?

I apologize for bad grammar.  You only hyphenate between 21 and 99, not lesser numbers, and even not when modifying thousand.  I momentarily lapsed when I thought it was a compound adjective modifying cuts, but that's not valid because you can treat two thousand like one word.  That's your English lesson for today.

This will be the first in a short series commemorating some recent metaphors I've been subjected to in meetings and in person.  They have been used.  I hope that makes them all the sweeter.

Great Moments in Recent Metaphor History I
Snarky: We're suffering death by a thousand cuts and we're on cut 999.
Title: Can we just decide it's death by two-thousand cuts?

Can we just go back to giving me a 3 out of 5?

I was in a meeting where someone once said, "We need to fish or cut bait."  Obviously.  But what's the point of stating it?  At the time, it seemed that were in the situation where we were renting the boat, finding the guide, comparing fish finders, and actually learning what a fish was in the first place.  No point in fishing or cutting bait if you don't even know what a fish is, is there?

As for shaking the trees.  I only do that after I drink the kool aid.

My favorite phrase used in a meeting?  Softly softly catchee monkey.  I had to look that one up, and it didn't bother me a bit because it was funny and educational.  Someone in the UK probably has a stick figure comic mocking it the same way I do fish or cut bait, but on this side of the pond hearing it is a rarity.

Snarky: Which feedback would you prefer on your annual review?  That you need to fish or cut bait?  Or that you need to shake the trees?
Title: Can we just go back to giving me a 3 out of 5?

Maybe we should just grow something else...

There are a lot of damn plant metaphors in an office environment.  Which explains why Snarky has commented on the Gardening equiv of Stack Overflow: http://gardening.stackexchange.com/users/523/snrky.  You have to know how to peel a real onion before you peel a metaphorical one.  And you have to know how to pull a real weed before you inappropriately apply that metaphor to an employee and then take a pruning shears to them.  For instance.

Title: Maybe we should just grow something else...
Snarky: When I pointed out where I thought the bug was, he said I needed to unpeel the onion. I considered his metaphor. Then cried.

Technology metaphors do not a technical manager make.