I just out of an all day meeting at work, and it’s amazing the way certain phrases catch on and become part of the language of the company. I’m not talking about the “at the end of the day…” crap you hear all over. Stuff that’s specific to your company/school/location.
So what are your buzzwords and catchphrases?
I’m in a tech company, so here are mine:
“synch up” - means to talk, meet, update, de-brief
“take it off line” - to table the subject for a later time, talk about it later
I hear you about the “take it off line”.
I am also told to “ping so&so on this topic”, meaning to bug somebody about something they haven’t responded to yet.
Also we have “pull a Kenny”, which has a story behind it that I will post if I ever find a “dumb things that have happened in the lab” thread.
We always call plastic soda bottles tube cokes.
As in “I’m going to the cafeteria - anyone want me to bring back tube cokes?”
The “take it offline” actually makes sense when there are phone participants in the meeting (or more often now, someone accessing the meeting over the web) but it really bugs me when it is used in a meeting where all the participants are actually in the room (though how often does that happen anymore?).
I’m sure this isn’t local to my office but I am really coming to hate the word “leverage”.
In a meeting last week one of my co-workers said “how can we leverage this knowledge piece into the project architecture.” She actually stopped, got a strained look on her face and asked “Did I actually just say that?”
Another one that is specific to my workplace (I’d assume) is “its a channel, not a product.” It doesn’t help, even repeating this 100 times a day our customers still think it is a product.
The Annuals of Improbable Research (great stuff, BTW) have been trying to introduce a buzzword:
They’ve had some limited success so far, so feel free to help them along.