The Diary Room

[Spanner]

can anyone help with what word I'm thinking of? what is it called when someone uses a scenario or image to describe a situation???

I was on a training course today and the bloke said that managers take on too many tasks that aren't theirs to deal with and in doing so we accept a monkey and we end up with all these monkeys on our backs and we had to be tougher in saying no, that's not my task to do and in effect we need to put the monkey back in the jungle.
so he was using the monkey thing to illustrate his point, buit what do you call it when someone does that? it's been driving me mad all day (and so are them damn monkeys!)

[steve9872]

Sounds like a parable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable

[Ms Thrifty]

Or an analogy? A sore point with me as whenever I use one to illustrate my point, OH tells me it's an inappropriate analogy!

[AYBG]

An analogy?

[Ms Thrifty]

Right, that's 2 votes for an analogy - shall we have a poll?

[steve9872]

Analogies don't use complete stories, but compares one situation with another you're more familiar with. Its parables that go down the complete story route.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy

[Spanner]

hurrah you are a clever lot. rightly or wrongly the word i was trying to think of was analogy, I knew it began with an A but kept coming up with allegro or alliteration. thanks for your help, please feel free to keep debating tho. i like it.

[Ms Thrifty]

These management courses certainly make you think, though perhaps not in the way they're intended to. I went on one last week and we were told that it had been tailor-made for our organisation so I was intrigued to note that "dealing with conflict" was on the agenda. Not only that but when the trainer asked what we actually wanted to learn about, just about everyone cited that as their top priority. How scary is that?

[Diane65]

can anyone help with what word I'm thinking of? what is it called when someone uses a scenario or image to describe a situation???

I was on a training course today and the bloke said that managers take on too many tasks that aren't theirs to deal with and in doing so we accept a monkey and we end up with all these monkeys on our backs and we had to be tougher in saying no, that's not my task to do and in effect we need to put the monkey back in the jungle.
so he was using the monkey thing to illustrate his point, buit what do you call it when someone does that? it's been driving me mad all day (and so are them damn monkeys!)

I too have had the misfortune to have attended this course and I also wanted to stick the monkeys somewhere!!
I agree with Ms Thrifty they do make you think but not in the way they are intended, I was adding up how much resources were wasted on a day course which could have been done in 2 hours.

[Beate]

Bit of a damp squib, that season finale of Desperate Housewives. Only the baddies ever die, thingimee is back and we will probably see a story involving "switched kids in hospital" next season. My guess is on MJ, they are going to be pa*d a lot of compensation and will move right back to Wisteria Lane. Or something like that. And the only one with a brain, Angie, has, unsurprisingly, upped sticks. Meh.