L-I-N-G-O

I live in the Midwest…which generally means that the people around me murder the English language on a daily basis. One person in particular does it so much that we, her caring and sensitive co-workers, devised a game to play behind her back. We call it LINGO.

Originally, it began like BINGO. We created individual gameboards with phrases and words that have been uttered by our esteemed collegue. When the key phrase is spoken or typed in an email…the player would mark it off. Five in a row and the player would email the subject: LINGO.

Today, it’s much more simplified.

Anytime one of the magic words is spoken, one of the players must be the first to say: “LINGO.” This can and does happen at anytime during the day…like during manager meetings. We’ve attached a scoring system that is tallied at the end of the year.
-1 point for each instance
-Add a point for each email (spell check is on)
-Add 5 points for internal meetings
-Add 10 points for client meetings
Points double if two occurrences happen in the same sentence.

The number one misused word is “IDEAL”.

“I had no ideal she was gonna call me.”

“My ideal was to add a page to the report.”

“On the way here, I had an ideal about that meet’n.”

You get the point.

My personal favorite is “DISPURDUTION”. Go ahead, sound that out. She means, “distribution”…but she just can’t get it to come out of her mouth. I’ve corrected her hundreds of times and she still can’t do it. We work for a transportation and warehousing company…you almost have to say “distribution” a dozen times a day…she can’t.

I’ll be updating you on future transgressions and where my score is. Currently, I’m in the lead with 881 points.