Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

One of the mixed blessings of language is that it's very easy to coin and utter phrases which, while completely nonsensical, *sound* as though they ought to mean something. The concept of a hundred and ten per cent is meaningless, but sounds like something one could at least aim for--in practice, nobody can give even a hundred per cent to their jobs, for the very simple reason that they have lives outside their jobs and must give at least some of their effort and energy to them. But these compelling-sounding nonsense phrases, in the mouths of managers and consultants and gurus of all kinds, have plagued ordinary workers for decades, guilting and shaming them into stress-related illnesses, overwork and ultimately unemployment because they didn't "measure up." I suppose the fad for "demotivational" posters could be seen as a kind of pushback against that, but I personally find those just as depressing as the originals they parody.