Better Off Ted Episode 2.08 The Impertence of Communicationizing

A memo that reads "Employees must NOW use offensive or insulting language in the workplace" is distributed throughout Veridian. Of course, the "now" was supposed to be "not." The typo is causing chaos, so Ted wants Human Resources to retract the memo. But that would suggest the company made a mistake. And the company doesn't make mistakes. Even that memo urging all employees to "carpoop" was deemed legit. Thankfully, it wasn't mandatory.

The memo reminds Veronica of another memo that was sent when she was promoted to her current position. A man named Walter, who also has the last name of Palmer, was also up for the job. A memo was sent awarding the position to a V. Palmer with congratulations to "him." Veronica has always felt uneasy about the fact that her job may have actually gone to Walter. Linda suggests that this emotion she's feeling is something called guilt. That's a new one.

Veronica visits Walter down in the basement where she discovers he has always felt guilty about the way he handled her promotion. So when Walter offers to buy her a drink, Veronica reluctantly accepts. As it turns out, Walter has had a string of unfortunate events plague him since he lost that promotion. The next day, Veronica reveals to Ted and Linda that she was feeling so guilty that she let Walter kiss her and feel her up. She offers to buy Walter a boat to alleviate her guilt, but he just wants a second date.

Linda suggests putting three powerful little words into heavy rotation to scare off Walter. Those words are "future," "babies" and "commitment." The plan backfires when Walter gets totally jazzed about all those things. Fortunately, Ted digs up a memo that confirms Veronica was, indeed, the person Veridian promoted. She promptly dumps Walter, but cushions the blow by giving him an above-ground office. Gotta love windows!

Phil and Lem never read their memos, so they are a little shocked by all the name-calling. But they opt to jump onto the insult bandwagon. The problem is that Phil isn't very good at it. Lem offers to help. He even has a name associated with his put-down prowess. Whenever he insults someone, he says they've been Lem-basted.

Lem channels his inner-Cyrano to feed Phil put-downs aplenty. But Phil longs to branch out on his own, so he develops a mathematical formula to help with the zingers. When a fellow lab boy enters, Phil goes to the big board to test the formula. He says, "Excuse me, Roger. Your head looks like a lizard butt-flap, you snot-wipe." A shattered Roger flees the lab immediately. Eureka! It works! Too bad they use the formula on a hulking water delivery guy who obviously did NOT get the memo.

Linda thinks Ted is bent out of shape by the whole insult extravaganza because he has control issues. People were intimidated by him before and now...not so much. So Ted decides to make himself appear more approachable by ditching the suit and tie for some slightly more casual wear. But Linda says, "You look like you're on your way to mix cocktails at a swim-up bar."

Undaunted, Ted tries to take a casual approach at the next meeting by encouraging a no holds barred discussion. He's taking any and all ideas for the "Meals Ready To Eat" project, even the lame ones. And there are plenty of those. Ted combines all the concepts into a box lunch the size of a handball court. Military personnel were supposed to be able to carry these meals in their backpack. Hey, it'll still work for 14-foot soldiers.

Since the company won't admit it made a mistake, Ted devices a plan to spin things to its advantage. They say the company decided to make a new policy based on a "groundswell of employee opinion." Even Human Resources agrees that using a word like "groundswell" is always a good thing. Of course, the memo has a typo and it's listed as a "groundsmell." Gotta love typoos!