WAT

As I’m sure you know, WAT is the new WTF. It’s the hot meme right now.

Wait, you mean I’m late to this party, it’s played and now lame?

WAT

Anyway, I just spent two days with the Bobs. They weren’t actually named Bob, but they might as well have been. Two days in a Motivating Change seminar. In a conference room. Two days. About Motivating Change. With the Bobs.

WAT

Several hours in, I started amusing myself by capturing WAT moments on the notepad they provided me. I used to call these Hedgehog moments. Now I call them WAT moments. Whatever.

Here’s the annotated list.

1. The speaker referred to a study, and gave us the numbers, something like “3 out of 4 dentists recommend Trident.” But then he said “I mean, whatever, that’s not empirical data, but . . . ”

WAT? Of course it’s empirical data. It is a study conducted by studiers, on the studied. It resulted in data. That data is empirical.

2. Passerbys. Bob, in an offhand way, said something like “He ignored all the passerbys and stayed focused.”

WAT? It’s passersby. You speak in front of people for a living. You’re welcome.

3. Foyer. He said Foe Yay. Which I know some people do when they are pretentious or funny. This guy was neither. I mean, if you know how to say “passersby” you can go ahead and say Foe Yay to be funny, but anybody who says Foe Yay straight up is a @#!*% . Just stop it.

4. Bob loves quotes, some more than others. Bob had a quote from Machiavelli on a slide. Except he didn’t say Machiavelli. He said Mack uh velli. If you’re going to go to all the trouble of calling out a quote by putting it on a slide that you use as part of your job, in front of lots of paying customers, maybe look up how to say his name. I’m not Italian. But I know how to say Machiavelli.

5. How do we help people through change? We need to be humble. We need to avoid hubrisnous.”

WAT? Hubrisnous? Is that like Hubricity? Hubristitude? Hubriscosity? Or perhaps just Hubris. As in, this entry is the height of Hubris.

6. We watched quite a few clips from movies to illustrate the stages of change. Many clips came from Remember the Titans. Which is a good movie. No complaints. Until he said, as he queued up a clip, “By the way, best soundtrack to a movie, all time, hands down, no question.”

WAT? Now, I know, lists are subjective. But no list I can find lists Remember the Titans’ soundtrack as even exceptional, much less best EVER. In fact, it’s not on most top one HUNDRED soundtracks. It’s a soundtrack full of standard oldies like “I heard it through the grapevine” and Ain’t no mountain high enough.” The TWILIGHT movies have better soundtracks for crying out loud. Has this guy never seen Pulp Fiction? Or The Godfather? Or a Hard Day’s Night? Or even Amadeus. WAT!

Okay, I have a notepad full of this. But I’m sure you’ve seen enough.

Here’s a final sample. On a key slide, a bullet point said “Employees will have allot of questions.” Really? At $1500 a head, you couldn’t have an editor or your mom go over the slides?

Thanks Bob.

Bonus WAT moment–“The change went by super fast, like a light year.” WAT? I’m not sure that word means what you think it means.