Does Using A Pasty Vegan Sausage Roll Analogy Inspire Others?: The Rise of the Slightly Unhinged LinkedIn Segue
If you’ve spent more than four minutes on LinkedIn recently, you’ve likely witnessed a masterpiece of brain gymnastics - or tenuous bullshit, as I prefer to call it. It's where someone drops a deeply personal story or a mundane daily occurrence, and within two sentences, seamlessly links to a lesson about how their experience became a Eureka moment that could triple your sales in snow to an Eskimo.
Welcome to the era of the Cheesy LinkedIn Segue.
The Anatomy of the Pivot
The premise is simple: hook the reader with a high-stakes emotion or a relatable micro-tragedy, then pull the handbrake and drift into corporate thought leadership.
You know the kind of posts I mean. Something along the lines of these fictitious, but highly-plausible examples;
1. The Domestic Disaster
"This morning, my 4-year-old dropped his ice cream on the pavement and wept. As I watched the it melt into the pavement, I realised something profound about churn rate in Q3 SaaS subscriptions..."
Nothing says customer retention quite like a toddler’s sticky heartbreak.
2. The Unsolicited Hero's Journey
"I got stuck in a lift for 12 minutes today. Panic set in. But as I took a deep breath, I realised: agile product management is all about thriving in tight spaces with limited resources."
It takes true genius, or a complete lack of self-awareness, to bridge claustrophobia and Scrum methodology before the lift doors even open.
Want more?
4. The Greggs Queue Masterclass
"I watched a man quietly queue for 12 minutes at Greggs for a single vegan sausage roll, only to be told they were out of stock. He simply nodded, said 'no worries at all,' and walked out. That right there? That’s churn resilience. How well does your customer success team handle a stockout moment?"
or how about...
5. The Train Delay
"My Avanti West Coast train was delayed by 47 minutes today due to 'leaves on the track.' As I sat on Platform 4 sipping lukewarm tea, I asked myself: is your team's sprint velocity being derailed by metaphorical leaves, or do you have the operational track-clearing equipment needed to hit Q4 targets?"
and my personal favourite....
The Unprovoked Sniff
"I was out walking my Golden Retriever, Buster, when he marched straight up to an executive in a bespoke suit, sniffed his trousers for four uninterrupted seconds, and walked away without making eye contact. As the man stood there frozen in shock, it hit me: Buster just conducted a 4-second audit of that man’s personal brand. In B2B sales, your prospect is doing the exact same thing to your profile. Does your value proposition pass the sniff test, or are you just wearing corporate trousers?"
Why It Happens
The platform's algorithm rewards engagement, and engagement requires a "scroll-stopping hook". Somewhere along the line, a growth consultant convinced millions of professionals that no personal sentence can exist without a corporate takeaway. If you ate a sandwich, that sandwich must teach you about pipeline velocity. If your dog barked at a squirrel, that squirrel is your target demographic.
The Serious Conclusion: Authenticity Over Gymnastics
While these unhinged transitions are easy to poke fun at, they point to a real issue in modern professional networking: forced relevance.
When every personal interaction is aggressively monetised for professional clout, content loses its actual human value. Audience members can smell a forced connection from a mile away. You don’t need to turn every trip to Aldi into a masterclass on supply chain management (as good as an example that is).
Great professional insights don't need acrobatic leaps to be compelling. Sometimes, a solid business strategy can stand on its own, and a dropped ice cream cone is really just a ball ache.
Thoughts?
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