The difference between a snafu, a shitshow, and a clusterfuck
March 19, 2018 7:49 AM   Subscribe

Let’s say the situation at work is not good. The project (or product, or re-org, or whatever) has launched, and the best you can say is that things aren’t going as planned. At all. It’s a disaster, though the best word for it is the one you drop over drinks with your team and when venting at home: it’s a clusterfuck. […] To appreciate what a clusterfuck is—and to understand how to avoid one—it is first helpful to clarify some of the things a clusterfuck is not.
posted by Johnny Wallflower (62 comments total) 50 users marked this as a favorite
 
Perfect for a Monday! Thanks, OP.
posted by cyndigo at 8:04 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Repair)

I always thought it was "Recognition". Either works!
posted by thelonius at 8:06 AM on March 19, 2018 [12 favorites]


In my high school AP English Language class, I wrote an essay expounding on the meaning of the term "second fiddle", contrasting it with similar terms like "foil" and "sidekick" and using Luigi of Mario Bros. fame to illustrate all of the facets of second-fiddleness. This article feels a lot like that essay, so it's too bad the language prevents it from being used in a high school setting.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 8:07 AM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


If you need a polite synonym for "clusterfuck", I'm fond of "clown fiesta". It's a popular term among League of Legends fans and I love its whimsy. The key mark of a clown fiesta is when a group of people collectively does something silly or stupid, moreso than an individual's own fuckup. That's what "clusterfuck" means to me too, albeit not what the fine article linked here says.
posted by Nelson at 8:16 AM on March 19, 2018 [18 favorites]


when my children were younger I was on call a lot for work as a network engineer.

One weekend, while working 18 hours on a particularly nasty fiber cut that had taken down part of the data lines for NYC, my 8 year daughter started yelling to get my help with something in the bathroom while I was on the phone with about 25 people. Being the point person on this call, I couldn't respond to her because I was on the phone with executives and directors and people_wanted_answers.

So my son, at the top of his 5 year old lungs, yells across the house at my daughter:

"DADDY CAN'T HELP YOU RIGHT NOW HE HAS A CLUCKERDUCK!!!"

Everyone on the phone heard that and busted into laughter. They gave me a break and let me go help my daughter.
posted by Annika Cicada at 8:19 AM on March 19, 2018 [104 favorites]


I'm fond of "clown fiesta"

The standard military euphemism is "Charlie Foxtrot."
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:19 AM on March 19, 2018 [11 favorites]


We started using the polite equivalent "duckblur" (taken from the theme song from DuckTales..."Life is like a hurricane! Here in! Duckburg! Race cars, lasers, aeroplanes! It's a duckblur!")
posted by daisystomper at 8:20 AM on March 19, 2018 [20 favorites]


If you need a polite synonym for "clusterfuck", I'm fond of "clown fiesta". It's a popular term among League of Legends fans and I love its whimsy

Oh that is so much better than my wife's "clustermess" which she now uses around the toddler, and which I find so horrifying that on more than one occasion, I have turned to the toddler and said, "mommy's trying to avoid saying fuck around you."

I shall send this to my wife at once. (And Duckblur)

I am a terrible father.
posted by Naberius at 8:22 AM on March 19, 2018 [37 favorites]


The other week at work I said to someone, “We’ll need more gongs to keep this show going.”

The quizzical look I got told me that I would now have to explain The Gong Show.

All of which is to say I use “gong show” as a stand-in for “clusterfuck” where an f-bomb might be a problem.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:34 AM on March 19, 2018 [18 favorites]


Friend of mine worked as a highly paid engineer for a company you've heard of that designs complicated, expensive chips.

He'd frequently regale us with stories of the latest clusterfuck and swear he was going to quit working for these turkeys and start his own design outfit in competition. It was going to be called Fiasco Systems, and the logo was going to be a three-ring circus with four ringmasters.

They always ended up paying him even more to make him stay, and he did, so Fiasco Systems never happened. But it pleases me to reflect that its spirit lives on.
posted by flabdablet at 8:37 AM on March 19, 2018 [25 favorites]


The English word "shitstorm" has become popular among Germans over the past few years to describe a scandal or faux outrage that starts trending, usually via Twitter, and makes its way through the media.

It has a distinct meaning different to the one I am used to as a native English speaker.
posted by chillmost at 8:53 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


I guess I thought a clusterfuck could be a confluence of bad events that no one was necessarily to blame for, like getting stung by a bee, while trying to change a flat tire, under an impending tornado warning.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 8:54 AM on March 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


That oak leaf business really seems like false etymology. In Google Books, there's no listing for the term older than 1970 or so - Vietnam era, sure. But it appears to be sex-related, plain and simple, a term for orgy or group sex. It's cited in the 1972 Playboy's Book of Forbidden Words and in some gay-porny novels.

There are a lot of mentions of a longer phrase, "Mongolian cluster-fuck," which appears to maybe have been coined by Ed Sanders. There are also two citations of a put-down for a "lowly assistant": "third assistant cocksucker at a Mongolian clusterfuck."

Anyway, got curious because I basically don't agree with the interpretation. I have professional occasion to use the term all the time, and to me it essentially means something in which too many people are involved, it's hard to tell who's calling the shots, and the lack of structure and direction creates a total mess.

Here's an NGram vs. SNAFU and FUBAR. Interesting arcs.
posted by Miko at 8:56 AM on March 19, 2018 [15 favorites]


My wife was suddenly let go Friday from her job of 22 years, in what is probably worse than a shitshow but not quite a clusterfuck (yet). A clustershit? Shitfuck?
posted by Thorzdad at 9:00 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Missed opportunity to include "dumpster fire."
posted by monospace at 9:12 AM on March 19, 2018 [9 favorites]




Dumpster Fire is definitely the currently most popular designation for such a mess that does not include words from the George Carlin List. It's also showing up in images all over the web; that certainly has been raising its status.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:23 AM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


From AskMeFi almost ten years ago: "I need a replacement word for the word clusterf#$k"
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:30 AM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


I use clusterfuck primarily to refer to situations that are no one's fault and relied on a series of unrelated events to come about.

I'd really like omnishambles to make the leap over the pond. No f-bombs, but due to the origin of the word, the can be implied.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:31 AM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


I'm fond of "clown fiesta"

For me, it's "goat rodeo."

Though upon reflection, I always thought of the imagery as, like, people chasing reluctant goats, but I suppose it could also mean a rodeo of...monkeys in cowboy shirts & one-gallon hats?...riding goats with little saddles and tiny ropes and maybe the calf-roping would be squirrels and I guess that's way more cute/twee than the "out of control and agonizing and not-stopping" that I had in mind.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:38 AM on March 19, 2018 [11 favorites]


clown fiesta

I grew up saying "clown show" - I think I picked it up from my dad. Seems popular w/boomers.
posted by Miko at 9:50 AM on March 19, 2018


I feel like "dumpster fire" is not quite the same thing. It is often used to describe individuals who are terrible people, for instance; I don't think "clusterfuck" has that usage.
posted by inconstant at 9:56 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


All of which is to say I use “gong show” as a stand-in for “clusterfuck” where an f-bomb might be a problem.

How about "omnishambles"? Doesn't have quite the same implication that "this has been caused by the people in charge being flawed in every way", but it does support the totality of scope of the problem.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:00 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


For me, it's "goat rodeo."

Which sounds like a corruption of Goat Rope. That, to me, differs from a clusterfuck in that a goat rope is a hopeless job that you went into with the best intentions, but which went totally off the rails and ultimately rebounds with consequences on you even though they mostly aren't your fault.

The (entirely apocryphal) story it supposedly comes from is that of a US soldier in Italy soon after the end of World War II who is out walking down a country dirt road one day when he comes around a sharp curve and finds a goat in the middle of the road. It's obvious that the goat was roped up off the road in a nearby field, and has gotten loose. So the soldier decides he'll put the goat back where it's supposed to be before someone comes around the blind corner and runs it down. He figures this will be a good deed on behalf of the peasant farmer who owns the goat, and also high in this thinking is the idea that this will help improve the locals' poor opinion of the American soldiers occupying their country.

So, obviously, things don't go well. The goat has no intention of being returned to his rope. The more the soldier tries, the more aggressive the goat gets until he's rolling around in the middle of the road, covered in dust and his uniform all torn up, fighting with the farmer's goat. And that's when the bus full of locals comes around the corner, barely manages to brake before hitting them both, and all the passengers scowl and shake their heads knowingly at this uncouth and ridiculous American.

So close to a clusterfuck, to be sure, but there are some subtle differences.
posted by Naberius at 10:00 AM on March 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


I use clusterfuck primarily to refer to situations that are no one's fault and relied on a series of unrelated events to come about.

hmmm. I tend to see everyone being at fault in situations such as these.

I feel like "dumpster fire" is not quite the same thing. It is often used to describe individuals who are terrible people, for instance;

up here in Canada, dumpster fire seems to have settled in as the defacto label for Canadian Literature related fumbles and fails and ... yeah, clusterfucks of the past few years. And if any one thing is clear about any of it, it's that no individual could possibly have perpetrated it all.
posted by philip-random at 10:03 AM on March 19, 2018


a goat rope is a hopeless job that you went into with the best intentions, but which went totally off the rails and ultimately rebounds with consequences on you even though they mostly aren't your fault.

In IT circles, that's a "death march project".
posted by flabdablet at 10:04 AM on March 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


Setting aside the terminologies, the article does a good job of ranking screw-ups: Class A; Class B; Class C. I do see the problem with Class A being the result of a fully misguided individual, so where does the "cluster" come in? Cluster of stupid moves by one guy?

The Synonyms are appreciated because I have a business report due to a client where I need to characterize just such a "clusterfuck" caused by one person, as in per article. Italian terms for a one man screw-up especially appreciated.
posted by StickyCarpet at 10:08 AM on March 19, 2018


Before a big decision, teams should undertake what Kahneman calls a “premortem.” Split the group in two. One is assigned to imagine a future in which the project is an unmitigated success. The other is to envision its worst-case scenario. Each group then writes a detailed story of the project’s success or failure, outlining the steps and decisions that led to each outcome. Imagining failure and thinking backwards to its causes helps groups identify the strengths and weaknesses of their current plans, and adjust accordingly.

This is the best idea I've heard all day, but...

People make better decisions when they look into the future and they imagine that they already failed, and they tell a story about what happened.


...the courage required to face a future of possible failure explains why I haven't heard this idea before.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:10 AM on March 19, 2018 [12 favorites]


If nothing else, this thread's offering up some stellar good/bad band names ...

clown fiesta
duckblur
omnishambles
Goat Rodeo
Goat Rope
death march project
posted by philip-random at 10:12 AM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


People make better decisions when they look into the future...

I did some work with a very well known architecture firm. Their first pass at any design problem, from an entire new building down to in one case a lowly dessert cart, is always, "Why am I reading about this dessert cart fifty years from now in a History of Architecture textbook filed in the reference section?"
posted by StickyCarpet at 10:16 AM on March 19, 2018 [8 favorites]


Friend of mine worked as a highly paid engineer for a company you've heard of that designs complicated, expensive chips.

Oh! Oh! I know! I know!

posted by Naberius at 10:18 AM on March 19, 2018 [11 favorites]


Which sounds like a corruption of Goat Rope.

I had a friend from Texas who would occasionally call people "goat roper." I had no idea what he was talking about, but when I read the analysis of "shitgibbon" I realized "goat roper" fits the pattern nicely.
posted by Foosnark at 10:22 AM on March 19, 2018


People make better decisions when they look into the future and they imagine that they already failed, and they tell a story about what happened.

Again, commenting from an architectural standpoint. A good structural engineer will arrange the materials so the building won't fail. A great structural engineer will arrange the materials so when the building does fail, it fails gracefully. Because all buildings will eventually fail.
posted by StickyCarpet at 10:25 AM on March 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


A friend of mine left his job in R&D with a very large UK broadcaster, which has its own very long tradition of clusterfucks indeed from which the R&D arm was by no means exempt, and became a consultant. He was going to call his company Cassandra Consultants, as he said his experiences thoroughly matched the eponymous bearer of unwelcome truth, but wimped out.

Another set of pals left a publisher to set up an ad agency which was called during planning and internally after launch TTM&R, for Take The Money And Run, but they too wimped out, in the same way a name I proposed entirely in jest for an Amiga computing magazine when people were not very happy with the usual choices of Amiga User or Amiga Computing or whatever actually got taken seriously and lasted quite a long time through planning - What Potato? - was dropped.(Well, if Dr Dobbs...)

There must be quite a lot of these almost-got-there jokey names.
posted by Devonian at 10:54 AM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


MetaFilter: the difference between a snafu, a shitshow, and a clusterfuck.
posted by Rumple at 11:04 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


A former coworker's preferred terminology was the vividly picturesque "five monkeys fucking a football" (or just "five monkeys and a football" if tender ears were about).
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:07 AM on March 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


In another life, I worked in tech support. Sometimes we would get stuck on the endless conference calls. The smaller, less-lethal calls were known as "Dog and Pony shows".

The uglier calls were known as "Circular Firing Squads"
posted by dfm500 at 11:17 AM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


I find using the phonetic alphabet for this - Charlie Foxtrot - is a good throwback to the military roots and avoids using profanity in front of sensitive ears. And you can really kind of drawl out the two-word phrase to let people know just how you feel about the situation.

There's also the situation where there's a lot of chaos or bizarre stuff going on but hasn't quite yet reached fucked-up or shitshow stage, which can be described as a real Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
posted by backseatpilot at 11:38 AM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


I was introduced to clusterfuck as a young PFC, back in the days when we were still debating the utility of sliced bread. Clusterfuck was usually the short way to describe a situation where the incompetent ordered the unwilling to do the unnecessary. A more subtle expression of the day was the corruption of Fun, Travel, Adventure, found on the recruiting poster: FTA. Or, if you were an Airborne trooper: FTA, All The Way.

I believed at the time that "cluster" meant any group of soldiers, or else a play on words referring to the "cluster" one puts on his ribbon for the second award of some citation. Unfortunately the short version often got mixed up with FUBAR, a temporary, non systemic situation, or SNAFU, a systemic condition, usually without any apparent remedy.

Ah, but time slips past so quickly. My geezerhood shows. But I like Gong Show (SNAFU), and Dumpster Fire (also SNAFU, but with a bit of spice), as well as Clown Bus (FUBAR, clusterfuck, rendered fit for wee ears): Our Dear Leader is the chief architect of the clusterfuck that created the FUBAR situation leading to the miserable, and possibly irredeemable, SNAFU in which we presently find ourselves.
posted by mule98J at 12:08 PM on March 19, 2018 [11 favorites]


In 437, an army of Huns, commanded by the Roman general Aetius, delivered such a devastating defeat to the Burgundians, that it likely became the basis for the epic poem Nibelungenlied, originally composed in the 12th century.

Given recent events in Washington and elsewhere, I think we might need a term to describe a state-of-affairs so catastrophic that it affects poetry for the next 700 years.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:16 PM on March 19, 2018 [7 favorites]


Greg_Ace: ... the vividly picturesque "five monkeys fucking a football" (or just "five monkeys and a football" if tender ears were about).

Sometimes I have heard the phrase "jug-fuck," but never coming out of my mouth oh noes.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:33 PM on March 19, 2018


"Dog and Pony shows"

I've always used that phrase in the sense of staging a demo of a product/process/progress/etc. for a client, CEO, or similar Someone In Charge, usually hinting at showing $thing in a positive but exaggerated or not necessarily accurate light.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:40 PM on March 19, 2018 [9 favorites]


Corrine Purtill and Bob Sutton may have valuable insight into a specific problem that arises from a confluence of factors in a business setting, but it sounds like they are making a spurious linguistic claim. As far as I can tell, Sutton didn't look at the way people used clusterfuck to determine what made it different problematic situations described using different words. He wanted to write about those debacles and disasters caused by a deadly brew of illusion, impatience, and incompetence and so he claimed that the definition of clusterfuck was more limited than its usage suggests.

Purtill parrots this line and adds a probably-spurious etymology (including, in a bit of a clusterfuck, a link to Wikipedia entry on "oak leaf cluster" that reveals its primary military meaning is not, as she suggests, a kind of officer's insignia).
posted by layceepee at 12:46 PM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


the vividly picturesque "five monkeys fucking a football"


A term I have occasionally used is, "Running around like a bunch of monkeys on fire."
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:48 PM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


During a prolonged work project a while back that had many opportunities for things to go completely and utterly wrong on a multitude of levels, someone in the team came up with the phrase "a clusterfuck of shitstorms" to describe the various and multiple ways we could find ourselves deep in the mire. We didn't quite get there, managing to cling on to something resembling success, but it was a close thing at times. The phrase was deployed reasonably often during periods of sustained pressure. It seemed to help.
posted by Martha My Dear Prudence at 12:50 PM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


If the concern is sparing tender ears, I like fustercluck. In fact, I prefer the way it rolls off the tongue to the original.
posted by BeeDo at 1:22 PM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


I wonder if this article will show up in the break room at work tomorrow.
posted by TedW at 1:39 PM on March 19, 2018


I have always called these bad arrangements "cluster situations," and everyone knows what I am talking about, but no one is offended.
posted by Midnight Skulker at 1:55 PM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


There must be quite a lot of these almost-got-there jokey names.

Mine was Placebo Consulting. Our firm comes in and pretends to work but does nothing. You can then compare our results to those of your other consultants, to get a valid metric of cost v. results.
posted by StickyCarpet at 3:37 PM on March 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


If the concern is sparing tender ears, I like fustercluck. In fact, I prefer the way it rolls off the tongue to the original.

Me as well. It is quite catchy, isn't it?
posted by Quackles at 3:56 PM on March 19, 2018


Couple other friends of mine started an actual IT consulting outfit in the early 80s, before small computers had become completely ubiquitous as a workplace tool.

Their business model involved charging substantial fees to corporate clients to dispense the same kind of advice that anybody could have had for free by turning up to a meeting of the computer club we were all members of, and their value proposition was that they'd do this while wearing a suit instead of the standard computer club uniform of scruffy jeans and a T shirt, just to give their expertise an air of perceived authenticity.

Their internal slogan was "we play dress-ups for money" and they did quite well.
posted by flabdablet at 4:03 PM on March 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


I think the article muffed it. Clearly a defining characteristic of a clusterfuck is the involvement of too many people with similar levels of authority, or no clear chain of authority.

In other words, I don't buy their etymology for "cluster."
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 6:41 PM on March 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


💩⛈️
posted by St. Peepsburg at 7:35 PM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


Instead of selling alcohol in pints, they should come in these sizes.

"How's work today?"
"Give me a shitshow of Racer 5 and don't talk to me until I'm halfway through it."
"That bad, huh?"
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:53 PM on March 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


"I'll have a Shitshow & Soda, please."

"Ooh, I wanna try the Imperial Clusterfuck Stout!"
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:41 PM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


"Would Sir care to sample a flight of Snafu?"
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:44 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


It was a shitshow.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:12 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


In my industry the variant "gong show" is used for clusterfucks in which evidence of the fuckery keeps reintroducing itself into view.

For instance, a mistake that leads to an embarrassing error in front of clients in one meeting would be a single-instance fuck; a mistake in communications materials distributed to multiple parties that results in repeatedly having the same telephone conversation to explain the ur-fuck? That's a gong show. Because it goes on, and on, and on.

Gong show also describes conferences or presentations where presenters look like amateur chumps. Again, one fuck up is not enough -- it's about a train of fuck ups, or a single fuck up having a domino-like effect giving rise to repeated apparent upfuck instances.

I suppose this is like "shitshow" except you can say it around toddlers, Mormons, etc.
posted by Construction Concern at 6:08 AM on March 20, 2018 [4 favorites]


Mine was Placebo Consulting.

I've got Trailing Edge Technology.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 10:04 AM on March 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


So what is the state of the ark in 6502-based designs these days?
posted by flabdablet at 10:38 AM on March 20, 2018


IT'S BEAUTIFUL!
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:17 PM on March 20, 2018


I have been hearing folks describe a situation as "clownshoes" (example: "it's total clownshoes right now"), which, now that I think about it, is kinda like "clownshow" or "clown bus".

My current half-baked hypothesis as I look at the stories people tell about goat rodeos: consultants and military personnel don't actually necessarily experience that many more snafus than other people do, they just have stronger shared narrative templates to understand and discuss them.
posted by brainwane at 8:15 PM on March 21, 2018


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