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 ????
"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 ????
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...
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Obviously you're working on one of those projects now.
Mike McCann
McCann Engineering
RE: Polishing a ????
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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"Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic"
"Operation Footbullet"
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Mythology is great for pet names for projects.
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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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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 ????
"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."
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RE: Polishing a ????
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.
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.
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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 ????
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 ????
Mike McCann
McCann Engineering
RE: Polishing a ????
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
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Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: Polishing a ????
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.
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old field guy
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"Don't p*** on my head and try to tell me it's raining."
RE: Polishing a ????
Hg
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RE: Polishing a ????
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polishing
Turd directs to feces so I can't really link it here so:
"Creating a smooth and shiny surface by using rubbing or a chemical action on feces."
Would be an option. It's similar to my previous effort.
KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...
RE: Polishing a ????
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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A twig bent ain´t never be able to straighten himself.
RE: Polishing a ????
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
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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 ????
Stephen Argles
Land & Marine
www.landandmarine.com
RE: Polishing a ????
"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."
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RE: Polishing a ????
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!"
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h
I always liked the term "Crapfest".
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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 ????
For some reason they still get upset when I say that
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 ????
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.
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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.
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www.eypmcf.com
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"Sprinkle it with floobie dust, and it will work."
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
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"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
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KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...
RE: Polishing a ????
Randall Shelaga C.E.T.
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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.
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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 ????