What the heck is a Straw Dog?

Gonz

Gonz

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My wife was in a meeting yesterday with a bunch of administrators, whose only apparant job is to have endless meetings where they talk in circles and accomplish nothing. She's convinced they take classes on how to have these pointless meetings where nothing is resolved. As a physician she has absolutely no time to waste at these things, and it drives her crazy when she is supposed to attend.

So throughout the meeting, a couple of these professional time killers kept mentioning the need for a "straw dog", and folks kept asking about this fabled straw dog.

I told her I'd make it my mission today to find out what kind of crazy secret code they were talking in.

Do you know that these people actually have meetings to decide what to discuss and who should attend the future meetings?
 
When Googled:


In business, something (an idea, or plan, usually) set up to be knocked down. It's the dangerous philosophy of presenting one mediocre idea, so that the listener will make the choice of the better idea which follows.

Sounds like they need ideas to be submitted at these meetings so they can be shot down and look important and like they are accomplishing something instead of wasting time. And you know I attend those same type of meetings....
 
Thanks! As soon as I posted this I turned to google and found the same thing. So it sounds like they're just finding ways to justify their time-wasting. You would think saleried (none of these folks are hourly) employees would not want to waste time at meetings (this one was from 5-7pm) when they could be home with their families.
 
Gonz said:
Thanks! As soon as I posted this I turned to google and found the same thing. So it sounds like they're just finding ways to justify their time-wasting. You would think saleried (none of these folks are hourly) employees would not want to waste time at meetings (this one was from 5-7pm) when they could be home with their families.
Click to expand...



???
 
There can be many reasons why a straw _____ is created.

To discredit an idea or person.
To make another idea or person look good by comparison.
Revenge

But usually it is a PR device so why they need a doctor for that, I don't know.
 
Gonz said:
Thanks! As soon as I posted this I turned to google and found the same thing. So it sounds like they're just finding ways to justify their time-wasting. You would think saleried (none of these folks are hourly) employees would not want to waste time at meetings (this one was from 5-7pm) when they could be home with their families.
Click to expand...

If you want to see the straw dog pound, serve on the board of a self perpetuating money pit, oh, like United Cerebral Palsy or The ARC.
 
I have never heard of that in any context but a "Straw man."
It is a favortie tool of underachieving undergrad philosophy majors and early-year or low level law students. The real problem to be solved is too sticky or difficult, so you change it a touch based on some little assumption that you do a poor job of justifying. The seemingly small logical and drafting imperfection of not justifying that one assumption only results in a smallish hit to the grading. Then, the rest of the paper or exam answer can be spent arguing aginst the easier construct made by your "little" assumption.
 
Straw Dogs is a great movie but unfortunatly has nothing to do with what you are looking for.
 
Having a meeting to discuss the need to produce B.S., that’s balls. (No offense to Mrs. Gonz as she was not the facilitator.)
 
Well, specifically in this situation they are trying to work out Surgical Block Time. What that means is that my wife, for example, spends X hours a week in surgery, so for scheduling purposes they are trying to figure a way to say, "You get OR #1 on Tuesdays, your partner gets OR #1 on Wednesday, ENT docs will get it on Monday etc...". Right now there's some other screwy way of doing it, and the docs are getting very frustrated when they can't get into the OR to do their jobs. But there's lots of politics involved unfortunately, plus seniority issues, plus certain surgeons think they're more important than others and so on. For example, right now my wife operates mostly on Tuesday. Which is really good because the patient will almost certainly be home by Friday which means my wife does not have to go to the hospital over the weekend to round on those people. But if her surgery day was Thursday or Friday, then she has to go in Saturday and Sunday morning to see these patients, check wounds etc.

But what is a drag is that these meetings are so unproductive, and only about 15 minutes worth of real work gets accomplished over a two hour period. And these people running the meetings have taken classes and trained for that sole purpose, to facilitate discussion!
 
These are the types of pointless meetings where a guy/ gal stands at the head of the table with a lazer pointer and talks with his or her hands. Using phrases like "thinking out side the box" "FYI" "touching base" doing the Bill Clinton fist with the thumb point at you thing he does, and everbody just nods thier heads in unison like a rock concert. What a bunch of crap, I wouldn't mind having a job like that though everyone in that rooms usually makes the big bucks. ???

Edit: For punctuation
 
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