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High Brow Insults for the Workplace

By Lynne DeVenny

Let's be honest. Working in the legal field is stressful. Highly. Stressful. And sometimes people aren't nice to you each other. So occasionally you'll want to vent and let loose with a really good insult about those inconsiderate clods people, including your boss, the bonehead on the other end of the phone line, that guy who designed the new postage meter, and whoever stole those colored Post-It flags you were saving for a special occasion.

But you don't want to get fired.

Try couching your grand slam jab in literary terms. If someone overhears you, say that reciting literature is the mark of keen intelligence, and you once won a literary prize in the seventh grade. (Lie if you have to.)

Here are a few high brow suggestions appropriate for a legal setting, courtesy of "When Insults Had Class":

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." ~ William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

 "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." ~ Abraham Lincoln.

 "He is a self-made man and worships his creator." ~ John Bright.

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." ~ Jack E. Leonard

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" ~ Mark Twain

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts for support rather than illumination." ~ Andrew Lang

Rough Monday, but now I feel much better.

Source:  Maryannaville.com

Full post as published by Practical Paralegalism on March 14, 2011 (boomark / email).