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Polishing a ????
2

Polishing a ????

Polishing a ????

(OP)

I have a bad habit of using a few ‘slangy’ expressions, especially as it applies to work.  For the benefit of my co-workers who learned English as a second language, I’ve tried to cut back to be clearer.

I’ve had the occasion to use a particular phrase that I don’t have a short replacement for, that is ‘polishing a turd’ , in reference to a project started by a recently terminated employee that my office partner has inherited.  This phase apparently so amused one of our not-from-the US CAD operators, that it is now ALL he says about problem projects.

My boss thinks I should use the term ‘putting lipstick on a pig’.  I don’t really think that phrase captures the meaning, maybe because I think pigs are sort of cute.

Does anyone have any other terms for that dog of a project that no matter what you do, it will never be right, until you scrap it and start over?   

"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"

RE: Polishing a ????

Regarding the bad projects:

"Bag of crap" is the most common I encounter.

A more descriptive version of this one is "steaming pile of monkey crap", but I have heard that only from one special colleague.

As far as how to "improve" the project, I don't recall anything other than your examples.

Regards,

Cory

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RE: Polishing a ????

"Silk purse out of a Sows ear"?  My upset your pig friendly tendancies.

I like the phrase polishing a turd.

Using Words wonderful thesaurus doesn't have any for polishing but for polish:

shine
buff
buff up
rub
clean
dust
sparkle

Nothing for turd but for feces on Rogets I got

Feces
Droppings
dung

And of course

poo  

How about something like:

"Improving the apearance, by slight mechanical material removal, of feces."

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Polishing a ????

KENAT:

Obviously you're working on one of those projects now. noevil

Mike McCann
McCann Engineering

RE: Polishing a ????

Planting a rose in a steaming pile

But in the context that your using it, I think something else would be more appropriate.
Perpetually stuck at 80%
Behind the 8-ball

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

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RE: Polishing a ????

"Steaming pile of failure"

"Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic"

"Operation Footbullet"

RE: Polishing a ????

Oh, if the problem was because of management at the last place I worked, the euphemism was that the project "got managed long and hard".

RE: Polishing a ????

Once, there was also "Project Sisyphus".  For about a year, every time we'd get close to freezing the design and moving on, management, marketing, or sales would shift the the goals or needs of the product and we'd have to back up and start redesigning.  

Mythology is great for pet names for projects.

RE: Polishing a ????

"Lipstick on a pig" sounds about right.  It's about the idiom, not about your personal assessment of pigs.

If you really want dung, though, you could try something like "polishing a cowpie", which even gets you a bit of alliteration.

Hg

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RE: Polishing a ????

My life these days consists of taking the heaping pile of **** that most the engineers around here call a drawing and polishing it till all that's left is a nasty stain.

In the process I'm making a lot of friends.

My motto is "making the workplace grouchier one engineer at a time" or variations there on.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Polishing a ????

To build upon HgTX's comment, how about "frosting the cowpatty"?

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

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RE: Polishing a ????

I worked with a brilliant PE for a while who was from the "old school" south and was chock full of colloquialisms like that.  Polishing a turd was his all time favorite, but I can remember a few others choice ones, repeated here with his accent in my mind (think of Jackie Gleason as the Sherrif in  Smokey and the Bandit), accentuated by his penchant for chewing tobacco:

Quote:

That project would be like putting shiny new hubcaps on a <spit> goll durn garbage truck.

Quote:

What'cha tryin' t'do boy, put a weddin' ring on a hooker? <spit> T'aint gonna change nothin' ya know; it is what it'll always be."

Quote:

All gussied up but aint nobody gonna invite her to the prom. <spit>
He said this when a customer was unloading a beautiful new debarker (a piece of sawmill machinery) with computerized controls. He knew it was overkill and going to be a commissioning nightmare; he was right and the customer eventually sent it back.

Quote:

That crew is like a buncha piss-ants runnin' aroun' tryin' ta steal a cow pie. <spit> They might get it done some day, but <spit> it's still gonna stink and so will they.
This said at a job site where we were watching a crew of riggers trying to unload a rock crusher from a flatbed with 3 forklifts (too cheap to rent a proper crane). When they got it off the flatbed and it drove away, all 3 forklifts sank into the ground 2 feet. They hadn't adequately compacted the soil and he had told them so prior.
He passed away from cancer last year at age 70.

RE: Polishing a ????

I can't find a better expression than "polishing a turd".  "putting lipstick on a pig" is a distant second.

If you can say the word on TV (or free radio), it isn't obscene.

Thanks for the laugh, everyone.  Reminded me of Dennis Miller who once said "two of $hit, is $hit"

RE: Polishing a ????

(OP)

Polishing a turd captures a level of pointless work combined with the right amount of disgust.  It's hard to beat, although I like Operation Sisyphus and Operation Footbullet. (My office partner said nothing short of laying out new base sheets would really fix this problem.)

I thought about the silk purse thing, but while you may not have a silk purse, you have a nifty leather one that, when you are tired of it, you can give to your dog.  I also thought of 'throwing good money after bad.'  Just didn't capture the demoralizing, relentless revulsion of my office partner.

I explained the meaning of the phrase to the not-from-the US CAD guy, as "a task entered into with the full knowledge that all of your work, no matter how diligent or expertly accomplished, would not make one tiny bit of improvement in the original object.  It is simply not made of a material that takes a polish.  No amount of planing, sanding or rubbing with rotten stone will make it pretty.  And, even if you somehow managed to get it to shine with a miracle substance, put it in a Lucite box with a halogen spotlight, it is still a piece of s**t that someone is going to eventually recognize."

But nice selection so far.  I'll pass them along to the CAD guy.  We actually have an agreement for language exchange.  He wants to know more colorful American idioms and I need to learn more Arabic and work on my French which has gotten rusty from disuse.



"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"

RE: Polishing a ????

Now...if it's a fossilized dinosaur tird...that's worth polishing - the whole pile!

Mike McCann
McCann Engineering

RE: Polishing a ????

Let's see if this one gets past the filter...

I totally understand the "polishing a turd" business in that I have been thrown into the polishing crew more than once.

The painful part is that while I and a crew of equally set upon cohorts are engaged in that activity, the kudos and promotions generally go to the one or two individuals who engage in a separate shining venture, that of "polishing the knob"...

old field guy

RE: Polishing a ????

You can't make chicken salad out of chicken ----

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

RE: Polishing a ????

I like that one, but I like "You can't make Ice Cream out of Horse S**t" just as well. If you have ever made Ice Cream, it colors an ugly picture.
There are several derivatives of it around here:
"Cant make Strawberry Shortcake out of Cow Doo."
"Lemmon Meriange out of Pig Poo"
Etc., Etc., Etc.

I'm a country boy. Vocabularies are pretty rich in their own way out in the sticks.

RE: Polishing a ????

That reminds me of one.  A friend of mine works in sales and after he gave the owner of a company his pitch, the owner didn't believe what my buddy was telling him, and his response was, "Son, if you're gonna come in here and try to feed me an omelet, you make sure it's got chicken eggs in it, not chicken ----."

RE: Polishing a ????

And after one memorably slick manager came through the office trying to sell us on yet another brilliant idea, the response was "Don't put a dog turd on my plate and tell me it's a burrito"

old field guy

RE: Polishing a ????

old field guy,

"Don't p*** on my head and try to tell me it's raining."

RE: Polishing a ????

I still think "turd" is questionable office language, depending on who's there.  If I'm on my good behavior (hey, it happens on occasion), I wouldn't use it.

Hg

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RE: Polishing a ????

"Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic"

I think this also captures the futility and senselessness of polishing ...

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."   
Albert Einstein
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RE: Polishing a ????

Peeing against the wind has the same meaning in the UK.

RE: Polishing a ????

being and old US Navy, Viet Nam era vet, I would stay away from the turd references and say "Nothing that a hand grenade or two and a bulldozer wouldn't fix..."

RE: Polishing a ????

The difference between this project and the Titanic is that the Titanic had a band ... ?

RE: Polishing a ????



A twig bent ain´t never be able to straighten himself.

RE: Polishing a ????

Caseopia...

I think "polishing a turd"... is an "elegant and simple" way of saying something "up-front and out-loud" about a truly undesireable situation. Sounds like something our "fathers" said during WW-II or Korea...

NOTE: I always like my dad's useful phrase(s) from WW-II military...

Being forced to do a really distasteful or danerous job was: "[he/I] was a handed a crap sandwich".

And IF "[he] ate a crap sandwich" it ment serious injury or death resulting from doing the job.

Millions of brave Americans have "eaten crap sandwiches" for our country.

Regards, Wil Taylor

RE: Polishing a ????

I think it was I who introduced "Turd Polishing" to the folks in our Chicago office.  Some went wide-eyed, some still use it today.  That was 10+ years ago.  I also used to regularly use the expletive: "Big Dog's ****".  When I later found a shop called "Big Dog's" that sold shirts with their logo, I bought one and proudly wore it to work.

RE: Polishing a ????

(OP)

I like several of these options, but I especially like oldfieldguy’s burrito comment.  That one that will come in handy in the future.

"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"

RE: Polishing a ????

Although not in the sense of "distasteful" but certainly "useless" I recently read a book called "Ploughing sand" which was about Palestine just after WW2, but it is a suitable expression for all ages and sensibilities.

Stephen Argles
Land & Marine
www.landandmarine.com

RE: Polishing a ????

I heard another one over the weekend, though it doesn't coincide with the meaning that the OP was looking for: "You can't unscramble an egg."

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

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RE: Polishing a ????

(OP)

A couple of days ago I was asked to refine some cost estimates.  The original estimates (I use the term very loosely) were random, ballpark guesses.  My client asked for a detailed breakdown of these random guesses into labor costs, material costs, and costs associated with resultant damages caused by other trades.

I described the task as pulling a number out of my a$$ to the 4th decimal place.

"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"

RE: Polishing a ????

Damn, I grew up in Ohio - never heard any of these before - must have had my head in the sand?  Anyway - a project like you are describing - I just refer to it as FUBAR.  That seems to be appropriate.  And the poor lad/lass who inherited it - well, they've been bohica('d).

RE: Polishing a ????

Project from Hell

flame

RE: Polishing a ????

When I'm talking to people who were clearly not involved, I'll use colorful words and phrases as have been demonstrated here.

Often as not however, I'm talking to the people who actually steered the boat into the vortex, and I need to seek their cooperation, _and_ extract whatever useful knowledge they actually do possess, I tend to use less confrontational words.  

One of my favorites is "suboptimal".


Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

RE: Polishing a ????

As in "it's a suboptimal piece of $##*"?


For some reason they still get upset when I say thatwinky smile

casseopeia, I once had spent a lot of time, spread over literally years, compiling a project bid.  I'd based it on the body of their Statement of Work (SOW) going through section by section and estimating time to address each section etc.  This is how the first few 'desk officers' at the customer had previously accepted bids etc, broked out by effort for each section.  Costs were then losely assigned based on the work profile, which was very loosely tied to meaningfull deliverables.

New customer accountant, new rules.

In the back of the SOW was a list of "contract data requirements" or CDRLs which weren't directly linked to the main body of the document and some of which were virtually meaningless as any kind of milestone as they already existed.

He wanted the multimillion program broken out by these CDRLs.

It was almost impossible.  I protested and drug my heals so my boss just arbitarily did it, then I had to try and defend/explain it!

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Polishing a ????

From KENAT's use of Roget's thesaurus, and cherry picking the words, I come up dung dusting as a way to paraphrase polishing a turd.

I like the alliteration. Alliteration is a word I learnt from my father who got into trouble in his school days by saying "the cat crept into the crypt, crapped, and crept out again" when asked for an example of alliteration by his English teacher.

I'm going to use the phrase dung dusting in reply to anything I hear about turd polishing in future, as I find the word turd too vulgar.

RE: Polishing a ????

When I first saw the title, I wondered - does he mean polish as in shine or polish as in someone from Poland.  We use the term Polish it meaning convert to Reverse Polish Notation(RPN).

There are several points of view when inheriting a bad project.  I normally take the advice from story of the non-conforming sparrow in http://homepage.tinet.ie/~nobyrne/happy.html  So far, nobody has ever dug me out.

RE: Polishing a ????

"Dingtwizzled" was a popular one we used... could mean confused or just confused why we bother trying.  

www.eypmcf.com

RE: Polishing a ????

A remotely related variant used by sparkys of my acquaintance, with no bad words:

"Sprinkle it with floobie dust, and it will work."

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

RE: Polishing a ????

When in a situation where turd is politically incorrect  I like the word
 "stercoraceous"  as in "this is the most stercoraceous mess I have stepped in since Moby Dick was a minnow"

Here's the word - don't over use it.
http://www.bartleby.com/61/24/S0742400.html

RE: Polishing a ????

Awesome BJC, that's now my word of the day.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Polishing a ????

How about..."It's like shining skat"

Randall Shelaga C.E.T.

RE: Polishing a ????

We had a warehouse guy a while back who, God bless his soul, was a couple bricks short of a load. He particularly liked using CajunCenturion example.

One day the CEO's wife, who herself is the CFO (small family company they all got titles) and about 65, complained about the job he had done. HE TOLD HER: "You can't make chicken salad out of chicken sh*t!"

Anyway it stuck with the guys in the back. They really got a kick out of it.

RE: Polishing a ????

Operation Footbullet. I will be using that one at the very next opportunity!

Slightly off-topic but one I like to use here in the UK to describe an over enginered item is gold plated bog seat. It works well with my Somerset twang.

RE: Polishing a ????

This project is as practical as a "Football Bat"

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