I promised to start sending out a Monday morning email this week, and it’s going to have to be pushed back. I wrote a lengthy (more than 1000 words) debut, but have decided not to publish it. At least not now. I think it would bore some of you, piss-off a few people, and generally do more harm than good. So, I’m shelving it.
I polished the piece, and worked on it off and on for most of Sunday. But when I reread it this morning, I realized it sounded like some grouchy old man in a diner, with a fishing hat, and a hunk of egg quivering off his lips. And I don’t want to send it out to you guys.
So, we’ll start next Monday. Sorry about that. These are challenging days, and I need to keep my shit in check.
This morning I downloaded new albums by Tommy Stinson, formerly of the Replacements, and a British guitar band called The Rifles. I got them both from eMusic, which I continue to enjoy. And don’t laugh at me, but I have a few credits remaining and am very seriously considering the new Chickenfoot. I liked their first album; it reminded me of something that would be released in 1978.
Anyway, as I was downloading today, I noticed there is only half a gigabyte of free space left on The Big iPod. The thing has an 80 gig capacity, and is almost completely maxed-out. iTunes says there are 18,000 songs on the thing. Holy crap nodules.
And now I’m going to have to go through it, and weed out the stuff I never play. When I first started with it, I would add entire catalogs of bands — every album — and that was a tactical error. For instance, there’s no reason to have EVERY record ever released by the BoDeans on there. I mean, seriously. Whenever I listen to them, which isn’t often, I play the first album. I also like one of their later records, called Go Slow Down. Other than that… hello DELETE button.
It’s going to be a time-consuming process, but I need to free up some space. There’s just so much more acquisition left to be done…
Over the weekend I slept ten or eleven hours per night, again. I don’t know what’s going on with me. I haven’t had a beer in weeks. I didn’t officially quit (again), I just have no interest. Are these signs of depression? Perhaps. And for the past few days I’ve been considering re-joining the gym near us.
I went there once before, and it didn’t go well. Too many wieners out in the open air, and manscaped areas... There’s only so much a person like me can handle.
But it was a long time ago, so maybe I’m ready to make a serious go of it? Yeah, probably not. I have visions of me stopping on my way home from work, at 2:00 a.m., or whatever. But in reality I’d probably go through the Taco Bell drive-thru more often than hitting the gym at that hour.
“Yes, I’ll have two crunchy tacos.”
“Two hard tacos?”
“OK.”
And the next night:
“Yes, I’ll have two hard tacos.”
“Two crunchy tacos?”
“OK.”
They’re just screwing with people, flip-flopping the hard and the crunchy terminology, right? There’s no way they’re not screwing with people. But I can live with it; it’s not a big enough aggravation to drive me to the treadmill.
I was in a high-level meeting last week, which is unusual since I’m decidedly low-level. But people were using all the corporate phrases like “speak to” and all that crap. “Let’s get Rhonda up here so she can speak to that…” Completely and utterly retarded.
I’ve been out of that world for almost five years now, so I’m not up to date on the new corporate lingo. Somebody said, “He’s doing a stellar job every day, out there knocking down silos…” What the hell does that mean?? Knocking down silos? I have no idea.
Please help bring me up to date… In the comments section tell us about the fresh corporate-speak you’ve noticed over the past five years or so. Also, which phrases make you the craziest? I used to work with a scaly, high blood pressure son of a bitch in California who was a waddling, talking corporate lingo jukebox. Man, he was a classic. He both infuriated and amused me.
Help bring me up to date, won’t you? Use the comments box below.
And I’ll be back tomorrow, my friends.
See ya then.
Now playing in the bunker
Treat yourself to something cool at Amazon
I am not a fan of people who use really fancy ways of saying some plain and simple.
That is different from what you are talking about. I have no experience in the corporate world – just the world of academics (people with no common sense.)
Oh man! You live in the land of buzz words.
How’s that cognitive scaffolding instructional program working out?
Did you know that Bloom’s taxonomy had multiple facets and not just the levels of comprehension?
We are getting new information technology interface devices later. These should increase the training effectiveness and cut down on inefficient learning mechanics all at the same time.
The student faculties must be analyzed along with their learning needs in order to produce a complete critical application of the desired change in behavior. Do you have any opinions on how to best utilize existing informational infrastructure in order to apply the data results collected from the analysis of such needs?
Corporate lingo that drives me crazy: “get my hands around”, as in “Give me some time to look at your proposal so I can get my hands around it.” WTH? It’s in a pdf document, but you go ahead and “get your hands around it”, asshole.
And there’s no way I’m first, is there???
So close, Miss Q!
“Going Forward” makes me hurl, as in “Going forward we will make efforts to stop f*cking over the customers.”
What is wrong with, “From now on” which worked for years and continues to serve me well?
I was at a wine tasting a few months ago and some pretentious cocksucker actually said “This has wonderful fruit forward.”
It took every fiber not to grab a gallon of Gallo and swing it at his left temple.
Whn we go to wine places my standard line is, “It has a floral bouquet and a nice boozey after-finish. “
Light overtones of Hobo Balls
Once, at a winetasting, I heard another winemaker pick up a glass, tilt it, and say to his wife, “Look! Color clear out to the meniscus!” I guess that meant something wonderful.
Oh my gosh, I hate “going forward”, too! Where did that even come from?
Some dickhead drone who thought it sounded progressive. “Going forward” Screw you – I’m aking all the side trips I can get.
I first noticed it after the revelation that there were no big bombs or whatever in Iraq. Then it was all like, “Oh well, going forward we will think about that..”
Seconding that “Going Forward” piece of shit they can shove up their fancy ass.
“syngergy” “ramp up” and as mentioned above, “going forward” arghhh……
In the heathcare industry, the word that makes me quiver is “Kaizen”. Let’s do a Kaizen about that. I guess that is the PC way of saying “Let’s see what the fuck these idiots are doing that is so inefficient”.
Wasn’t Kaizen one of the commentators in the English-dubbed Japanese Iron Chef? The underling commentator would say stuff like “Kaizen – he’s using GARLIC!”
Up the job fence.
.
“vertical launch”
“Drill down”, “provide color an that”, “market space”.
Oh the many hats I wear when I have too much on my plate. It even makes me want create some synergies between our organizations in order to get some of that low-hanging fruit. I mean, some of those items are so far out in left field that I didn’t have them on my radar screen. Instead of talking about it during this webinar, perhaps we should take it off-line. I think what we really need here is a win-win in order to create more shareholder value and really speed up the value cycle within several of our product verticals. But you are right – too often we work in silos so having a great silo buster to help bridge the gap would put us over the top. Just like all of my ridiculous comments
As you can tell I spend way too much time in corporate-speak America…
Your mom gets my low hanging fruit with her synergies.
Yes, yes, I’m tracking on that….
WTF!!?? This phrase makes me so angry I go deaf for a few seconds after I hear it. It’s a nicer way of saying “duely noted” though, and we all know what that means.
BUt why not just say nothing at all. I prefer when people just stare through my head. A tleast then I know they aren’t paying any attention and I can slide away without having to further address them.
“Think outside the box.”
“Energize within.”
“Enlighten.”
“Empower”
I bought a gas grill and had someone from the store carry it out to my car. He couldn’t fit it in the trunk. I told him to think “out of the box”.
He couldn’t fit it in the back set. I told him to think “out of the box”
He couldn’t fit it in the front seat. I freakin’ yelled at him to “TAKE IT OUT OF THE GOD-DAMNED BOX!!!!”
It fit.
LMAO.
I told one manager “If I got any more outside the box, I’d be in the friggin stratosphere.”
Still got a shit “bonus”.
Oh Geeziz “Think outside the box” makes me want to go find a rifle and an overpass!!! Yes, lawd
By my calculations, you’ve got more than 40 days of continuous music. That seems like a lot, but what the fuck do I know?
One I hear all the time from people who owe me money is that they’re “processing the check”. What the fuck does that mean? You cut the check, sign it, and call me. What process are you talking about? It’s just bullshit.
Also, when I call somewhere they always say, “Yes, uh, who are you with, please?” And I say, “Well, I’m by myself right now.” Then I just sit there. And they hang up.
When the time change hit the fan I was ready for it. I woke up and looked at my iPod thing. It said 6:00am. I couldn’t believe how rested I felt. Unreal. An extra hour felt more like 3! But it turns out that my iPod was fucked and what I thought was 6:00am was really 8:00am (formerly 9:00am).
What the fuck does “cut the check” mean? Does it involve scissors or an X-acto knife?
Print it.
Back in the Before Time, some organizations would punch a series of small holes in the check, spelling out the amount. True fact.
.
“Speak to that” means: The person has no respect for you as a human and does not feel they need to address you as such. In fact, you are so insignificant that the question you asked is more important than you are, and it is just the random spinning of the universe that a question requiring an answer fell out of your fat hick face. In such cases, you will not be spoken to, and the question will be directly addressed as though it is an entity of itself; while you are just a leaking, sloppy, peep show mop bucket.
“knocking down silos” means: Since the corporate and “professional” worlds are rife with disdain for blue collar working stiffs, a common note of success is how many grain silos one has destroyed in the given period of evaluation. Using this term indicates that the person is knocking down a significantly greater number of small, family owned, regional distribution farm silos. Thereby destroying the small useless working man and showing greater organization strength. If someone is “Out there knocking down silos.”, then they are really sticking it far and crooked up that fecal exit of the small man.
I actually have a high level meeting to go to in a little bit. I’ll jot down any nuggets of wonder I get and post them here later.
You should get and extra hard drive (ahem) to copy some of your itunes library to so you do not have to delete anything permanently. Contact me offline for details if you wantem.
Regarding emails that should go to everyone in the department: “Please cascade to your team.”
“Going forward”
“Reach out to…”
“Incredible opportunity”
If I had read,”Pleade cascade to your team”, in the real world I would have punched myself in the nuts.
“Please cascade to your team”???? Oh, that would require an ass-whoopin’.
“Circle back and touch base.”
I also dislike the substitution of “opportunities” for “problems…”
Our IT lady calls problems “challenges”.
Whatever, just fix this piece of crap so I can get back to pretending to do real work.
I used to work for a doctor who used to say, “Press on” all the time…”We just have to press on in this situation”.
My boyfriend gets emails from his boss who always says, “Let’s think outside the box and perhaps come up with results outside the norm.” Ooooo-kaaay. I’ll get on that post haste.
Off the subject…. We are now getting requests for bunghole bleaching so it matches the rest of your skin tone. TF??? Who the hell is looking that closely at the ol’ balloon knot to complain of the color??? Jesus H!!! Now THAT’S thinking outside the box.
Outside the snatch is more like it.
I think the old chute needs one of those highway signs “WRONG WAY GO BACK” – and dear God the thought of putting chemicals anywhere near the old blow hole is just wrong on so many levels.
The fad had to come from somewhere. I cannot imagine who would even contemplate such a procedure….other than a stripper who spends much of her time bent over.
Thinking next to the box at least…
Whats up with that anyway? Next time you get a call like that you should tell them, had they properly washed like their mother told them to they wouldn’t be having this conversation…
Or ask them what movies they have performed in, and they should file a complaint with the director if he thinks they need the knot bleeched just so they can do some anal flicks.
=-)
If they’d just shave that fucking sea urchin, it may fix the problem.
Michael Jackson started the trend os asshole bleaching
I think they want it done because the color just shows that they’re past their use-by date.
Nope, now they’ll bleach your box too.
“Cascade to your team”, “we’ll have to solution that”, “we need to double down on that” (the hell?) – the worst is that somehow a presentation has became a “deck” and I clench up every time I hear it
Cascade? Deck? “Solution” used as a verb? We must work for the same company! I get all those all the time.
Thirty-five years in the corporate world in a variety of roles, including senior management: never heard five minutes better used than this — never expect to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEq62iQo0eU&feature=related
.
jtb
I can’t stand it when someone says “reach out” instead of call you.
Did anyone reach out to you? Let me know if I need to reach out to any of our clients.
It just makes me sick. Please tell me I’m not alone on this one.
Not Alone!
Not alone at all….reach out is kind of creepy. It makes me think of how zombies all walk with their arms stretched out in front of them, reaching for your brains.
Companies pay money to a consultant to develpoe and train their employees in the most up to date phrases to stay on the cutting edge of corporate-speak. The leading firm is no more than a small team of writers who come up with the phrases. Their small third floor office in the City of Industry in Ca. is the home of Corporate Rhetoric Awearness Presentations.
+++I should have put “of Los Angeles” so it would have been
C.R.A.P.O.L.A. insted of just CRAP
You aren’t alone, Linda. I always say, “What? Reach-around? This is crazy talk!!!!”
I’ve got a guy that goes on and on about “bottle necks” and everything is “spearheaded” with him.
When someone ask for a lower price they ask me to do some “value engineering”. Look motherfuckers, I’m not trying to boil the ocean on this thing. Look at our profits vis-à-vis our vomiting!
I stipulate that “reach out” is funky. One problem is that “call you” doesn’t include the various ways in which I might reach you (email, text, voicemail, tweet, snailmail, etc.).
I think the motive behind some of these “get ahold of you” phrases is noble: an attempt to avoid the use of “contact” as a verb, which it isn’t in any reputable prescriptive dictionary. Lovers of good language usage are ultimately going to lose on this one, because there remain only one or two reputable prescriptive dictionaries in the world.
But as long as I speak, contact will not be a verb in my vocabulary. So I am willing to put up with a fair number of circuitous constructions in this area.
And get the hell off my lawn.
Love…
jtb
I’m gonna run this up the flagpole and see who salutes or if it manages to gain traction and resonate.
If that doesn’t work; then I’ll be in my basement room with a needle and a spoon and another girl to take my pain away….
A reference to Dead Flowers, one of my favorite songs. Love it.
As for the topic, I can’t stand the term “Mission Statement”.
Here’s the one very turdy gem from my meeting earlier.
“Municipal Dialogue”: Stuff we are going to tell the public community about what we are doing without giving them a chance to respond.
Wow (what’s that in corporate-speak?) Only posting this because the last couple comments were posted in the future according to the times listed. See what happens when they mess with the clocks. Hey, maybe I can time travel now…
“… I realized it sounded like some grouchy old man in a diner, with a fishing hat, and a hunk of egg quivering off his lips.”
Ouch! Now THAT one hurt. I thought you didn’t want to get people pissed off?
One that isn’t as prevalent today but used to make me gag was ‘paradigm shift’. I guess it was similar to ‘thinking outside the box’ but the arseholio’s who thought it up thought it made them sound educated or something.
‘reach out’ is one that makes me puke, especially since i”m recently out of work and contacting a ton of people, some of whom I haven’t talked to me in a long while.
As in: ‘thanks for reaching out to me. I wish you well in your search’.
Oh yeah? blow me.
Not really corporate speak, but it still irritates me. I got this in an email today:
“Work and planning is ongoing to make a change in the SE for the TCC Area networks as well as the Roads networks at the SOC and TCC.
Thank you Kenny for a smooth transition.”
Why send this to everyone at the company? I have no idea what any of that meant, but Kenny must have been on top of it.
my boss uses the phrase “In regards to..” so much, that we all have made it a drinking game.. since our department is a small one 5 plus boss and we can hear each others phone conversations, when she says “in regards to..” everybody sends a drink emoticon on the messenger… we use to actually take a drink but we decided she may figure from everyone clunking down their mugs.. the fricking 2pm call she has everyday has an agenda.. that damn agenda is her “precccioooussss”
fucking golem indeed..
christ.. “figure it out..”
In regards to the edit button, i have put it on my agenda
I used to work with a guy that would make up these pseudo-corporate phrases like “facilitating the benchmark” and “downloading for empowerment.”
This week’s charm:
“I’ll surface that with Bob”
WHAT??? Why can’t the boob just say he’ll discuss with Bob instead??
Feel bad for the Further Evidence guy. He TOTALLY missed his calling by not marketing himself as Yoda at every geek gathering. Life of the party!
“Webbed neck”. That sounds like a symptom of Surfitol!
P.S. If one does a Google search of “vestigial gill”, one will eventually come across gill dirt as an actual medical problem:
http://www.netwellness.org/question.cfm/15360.htm
My company is now starting to use Six Sigma terminology. Meaning that instead of producing 10% defective product, it is now 100,000 part per million. My sphincter clenches every time I hear it.
Everyone is ‘blessed’ at our workplace at this point, ‘blessed’ to have a job, ‘blessed’ to get a paycheck, ‘blessed’ to receive e-mails that say how ‘blessed’ we all are. Retch.
And yeah, ‘moving forward’, ‘reach out’, ‘tip the lamp’ (wtf?) and talking about bullshit ‘offline’. Makes we want to collectively punch our upper management.
my only comment is, what’s with this knob asshole bullshit about saying “Thanks for coming to work today” from my “manager”?
I don’t think I know any corporate-speak, but if my ideation session comes up with something I’ll ping you.
“In the future” we need to address this situation. Just say, when you get back to your desk, start now. In the future sounds like I don’t have to do anything until 2015.
At the weekend grocery store where I work, and they speak to me like I’m a large retarded boy, the poofter flock of seagulls looking manager gets on the speaker and says, “All associates to the front for a “huddle.” A short meeting where we stand up and ignore customers for five minutes. I hate the huddle. But if you got a silent one stored up, it’s fun to play “Guess who farted?” as a side game in the huddle.
Paradigm, up-skilling, opening dialogue…..all such words are used by stupid people who think that using them will make them sound smart. They’re not fooling anyone….
“Let’s practice active listening” is the one that makes me want to cockpunch someone..really, really badly.
Also, the next e-mail I get where someone threatens to “escalate” a situation to upper management….I swear to God, I may hunt them down. How about if I escalate my right foot to your upper rectum.
Somedays, I think my eyes may get stuck from excessive rolling..
My boss and her minions use the term, “Massage the document”, and it makes me want to gouge their eyes out with grapefruit spoons. What fuck? Massage? Who says that??
“deep dive” “get my arms around it” “speak to” and my boss is a colorful countryfied man who tends to mix his corporate speak with weird local sayings like “that’ll blow their skirts up” etc. He also frequently mentions “big rocks that need to be tied down” before such and such can happen. Confusing.
I also hate how much of corporate speak is freaking sports lingo. I started keeping track in one meeting and my head nearly fell off.
Touch base, tag, home run, big score, passing batons, kick off, cheerleading, etc etc. argh!
This conversation is right up my alley.
My employer has two divisions, call it Rolls Royce and Chevy.
I work for Rolls Royce Division.
An inquiry comes in to both divisions within a day or two of each other. Assume this could be a multi – million dollar deal for a nuclear application or a US government contract. Of course, the shitty Chevy division must lick it, smell it, finger it, have fifty conference calls, write an email chain that would take two hours to read while trying to figure out if they can actually produce a size 14 blue widget.
All the while, I know damn well that Chevy Division cannot produce this specification if their life depended on it, but I am instructed to stand aside and let all the “Upper Management” and VP level fuchkeads discuss if/how they can quote the job. They involve technical, lab personnel, management, legal department, production, Chevy sales team, and on it goes for days on end.
After about 2 weeks, they finally decide to let my division take a swing at it because they cannot produce the product. By the time I an allowed to contact the customer, one of our competitors have a contract in hand. Very frustrating, but I don’t get paid on commission any more so I don’t give a fuck if we get an order or not.
All the “Upper Management” want to “get their head around” the project and “run it up the flagpole”. These phrases appear multiple times in these monster email chains that would take 40 pages if someone wanted to print this shit out.
Of course, I could quote most of these projects while driving 75 miles per hour on the Pennsylvania Turnpike while smoking a cigarette, drinking a coffee, adjusting the radio, poking a few buttons on a calculator, steering with my left knee, scratching my nuts, eating a bagel, texting my daughter, and getting a blowjob from a female hitch hiker.
Make me want to puke some days.
Hmmm, do we work for the same company? At the end of the month does the Vice President of Sales email the “Gun to the Head” report? I am not making this up.