I’m with xizor in absolutely detesting “ping”. No, I do not want to ping anybody, and I don’t want them to ping me, unless there is a table, net, and paddles involved.
I also hate the expression “on your plate”, as in “What’s on your plate?” or “Your plate is pretty full today,” or, “Can you clear your plate so you’re ready for the next project?” I am NOT EATING DINNER, people! I am working in an office! There is no plate! NO PLATE!
And if I never hear the phrases “action item”, “repurpose”, “what’s the status on that?” or “face time” again, that will be fine with me.
Crusoe, what the h-e-doublehockeysticks is ‘helicopter thinking’? I’ve spent a lot of time in the corporate world and have never heard that particular one. (Which is probably a good thing.)
‘Helicopter thinking’ is one of those semi-mythical ones that everyone recalls hearing somewhere, but can’t quite place it. It’s supposed to mean taking a broad overview (hence ‘helicopter’) of something.
Aaargh. I had a student who started writing that way when he took a part-time job with a local entrepreneur. It drove me nuts and I edited it out of all his writing. (He was doing he senior thesis with me.) We had long “discussions” over what was and was not clear, effective language. It only took him a couple of months to become completely zombified by all the TQM books this guy had given him to read.
He’s probably making twice my salary by now and writing all his memos in fluent bizspeak.
I once saw a white van (I forget the company) with the motto “The Solution Is in the System.”
Yikes! I had no idea something could be so mundane and so ominous at the same time. Kudos to whoever came up with that one. I’m not sure whether I want to do business with them or crawl under a rock!
“Value-added” has to be my least favorite phrase, ever. It makes me grit my teeth and try not to scream. It just seems so fake to me.
I’m lucky enough to work in an environment where we tend to steer around excessive business jargon. However, our clients don’t. I don’t know how many times I’ve been sitting at a meeting and I have to keep from laughing at the complete stupidity of the language being used.
Lately, we’ve been getting a lot of spam-type business proposals to our general information email addresses. The jargon is so thick you couldn’t stir it with a shovel. Here’s an excerpt:
Oh yeah, I get hit with that one a lot.
And another thing boss, until you pay me to play football I am not going to “pick up the ball and run with it.”
I had one boss who constantly referred to people as “resources”. “Let’s add a few more resources to this project.” I am not a resource, I am a human being.
Common among computer geeks is to use “cycles” for time, as in “Can you spare a few cycles to review this?” Makes me want to bring a bunch of bikes to the office.
Back around 1991, I was working for a defense contractor, and the Next Big Thing in management was TQM. It stood for Total Quality Management, but I am conviced it was really Time to Quit and Move on. The worst phrase from that misbegotten system was “Work smarter, not harder.” Guys, if your 8-man rowing shell has only 3 men at the oars, it won’t matter how smart they row…
You’d hate my job. I work at a software vendor, and resellers who also service and implement our products are called “Value-Added Resellers” or VARs for short. First of all, why the fuck call them anything but consultants, which is what they are? Secondly, by extension should we call our other resellers, who don’t provide services, “Zero-Value Resellers”? Are they completely and utterly of no value?
Words and phrases used at work that get my skivvies in a tangle are:
Task (as a verb, of course): like fingernails on a chalkboard
30,000 foot view (aka helicopter thinking, the observation deck, view from the moon, etc): to mean a broad overview
Leverage: Can be used interchangably with the word “use”; as in, “I’m going to leverage/use my strengths.” I see no reason to use a word with three syllables to indicate to meaning of one syllabl
Other than that, my job’s not too bad with the Dilbert-speak. Or maybe I’ve just gotten good at tuning the rest of it out.
Couldn’t agree with most of you on the usage of “ping”.
I have been guilty of using a lot of these cliches myself but all I can say in my defense is that other people understand me better and prevents me from feeliing a like an old fashioned fuddy duddy.
The one expression that I particularly dislike is “heads up” to indicate and advance notice or warning. I get an image of me sitting in my cube and looking quizzically with a open mouthed stupid expression while someone walks by my desk and saying something while I am right in the middle of doing something.
We have “Value-added Resellers” as well. But it sounds a little different. We sell computers to these people who take and completely alter the computers to sell for specialty purposes. So if say… some business needed a computer to monitor and time all the electricity in the business…(I just made that up) they’d remove whatever h/w isn’t necessary and add required h/w and s/w. Not exactly consultants. The phrase kind of makes sense, but I agree that its clunky.
Couldn’t agree with most of you on the usage of “ping”.
I have been guilty of using a lot of these cliches myself but all I can say in my defense is that other people understand me better and prevents me from feeliing a like an old fashioned fuddy duddy.
The one expression that I particularly dislike is “heads up” to indicate and advance notice or warning. I get an image of me sitting in my cube and looking quizzically with a open mouthed stupid expression while someone walks by my desk and saying something while I am right in the middle of doing something.
I had a client who was fond of “net-net” as in “what will be the net-net result?” I never could pin him down on what the difference was between “net” and “net-net.”
I did actually cure my boss from using that “there are no problems, only opportunities” line, though. One day I took a phone call from a lawyer, walked into my boss’ office and said, “we have an opportunity to be subpoenaed!”
This makes me think of a specific example I encountered as temp placement counselor at the very horrible Olsten Staffing Services (now Adecco). Temps were no longer called temps; they were assigment employees. So, one day, I’m trying to reach one of the temps at her job and the receptionist I was speaking to was none too bright. I knew I had to be as clear as possible about whom I was seeking, so I explained that the person was a temp, which is a term I was confident she had heard before… My boss was standing behind me yelling “assignment employee!” Bitch!