#650 Verbose

I wrote recently about people who use meaningless phrases to describe things.
A corollary to that are people who use unconscious redundancies to fill space. I’m pretty sure the people have no idea they are doing what they’re doing. It’s as if they have a mental meter that tells them what they are about to say isn’t long enough and they have to throw in some filler to make the sentence look impressive.
Kind of like the produce section manager does with fruit—puts a box underneath to make the bin look full.
Or like when there’s not enough lips and sphincters for a sausage and they add sawdust.
Anyhow, I was at a meeting yesterday and three different people stood up and filled out their sentences with meaningless verbose sawdust.
One person stood up and was announcing her company and she said that they offered services to all commercial businesses.
Pardon me, but what other kinds of businesses are there?
Do not all business engage in commerce of some sort? Are not business and commerce virtually the same thing?
Or, as this lady might have put it, identically the same thing?
The next sawdust saying was from an individual who was praising another individual before he introduced him. The first individual went on for a while about the other guy’s good qualities and then said he would like to introduce his “fellow colleague.”
Okay.
His fellow businessman perhaps, or his colleague in business. But not his fellow colleague.
Yes, I’d like to introduce a co-worker associate. He’s a real male man.
And the last one was less a redundancy than an over-the-top exaggerated hyperbole. This guy was describing how hard some group had worked and he said they put in “many countless hours.”
Oh yeah.
Many countless hours. Not just many. Not just countless. Many countless. Cause if they’re already countless why they’re that much more, right?
Like, um, double infinity.
Dude, we spent some time on this job, it was like eternity and half.
America, ya gotta love it