Yeah! When corporate statements first came out they tended to all sound the same. Whatever the version was that we used at NASA Glenn it sounded like some company that makes soap. There wasn’t anything in it like, “To boldly go…”
I liked the CIA statement. It was really bland. It has changed over the years and is now:
“Preempt threats and further US national security objectives by collecting intelligence that matters, producing objective all-source analysis, conducting effective covert action as directed by the President, and safeguarding the secrets that help keep our Nation safe.”
At least now they mention 'covert" although they blame it on the President. And their FAQ was hilarious. To paraphrase:
“Does the CIA spy on Americans?”
“No. We are only authorized to investigate foreign issues. Spying on Americans is the job of the FBI.”
I’m in education but it seems that college administrators have adopted this type of language as well.
This has become commonplace, and for some reason yes, it bugs the shit out of me. Tell me you’ll get back to me with the answer to my question or that, if you’re going to address something later that you’ll, well, address something later. Not “circle back to [whatever] later and unpack it [another one that bugs me] more thoroughly.”
I work at a boarding school, but I’m employed by a community college. So all my business cards say “Prof. Lancia, M.Sc, Associate Professor of English” but all my students call me (and the rest of the faculty) by my first name, which is something we encourage them to do as way of creating a more equal social atmosphere – basically, we are trying to create an environment that is as little like the high schools that they dropped out of as possible. We’re mentors and guides as much as we are teachers. Some new profs who come to work at the boarding school campus seem to have a real problem with that.
Personally I have no problem using first names.
One that gets me is ask as in “my ask of you is to blah blah blah…” I don’t know why that bugs me so much, maybe because I had an admin that overused that phrase and now its just… I dunno. Insincere. Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.
I agree on that. The myth of the “internal customer” is one of the more harmful corporate trends out there. It creates a transactional mentality but without the vital informative function of pricing. For example, I have no way to say “customer A isn’t a good return on investment, so we’ll keep doubling their rate until they either yield revenue or go away.” They’ll never pay off, they’ll never go away, so we’re stuck with them.
It leads to laziness, inefficiency, local optima and all sorts of bad outcomes, but the tactic will never go away. It gives useless middle management a good way to get pats on the back by abusing their own employees in service of some other lazy department.
I agree about using the right address for the right situation. A different form of the problem is this: I used to take my Army uniform to a civilian dry-cleaners that serviced 99.9% Army uniforms. The lady there always called us by our last names, i.e “Smith” or whatever. No introduction, no honorific, just reading the name off the name tape.
I always wanted to say… listen lady… if you’re trying to use military courtesy, my rank is on my uniform, you can call me “sir” or “Captain Smith”. Or if you want to be civilian, then it’s “Mr. Smith”. Or if you want to be friends, let’s introduce ourselves and use first names. But you’re not senior enough to just call me “Smith”.
I can think of one: “productivity”. A term that means how much profit the company can squeeze out of its workers for the least amount of compensation. And look, for the holidays, we will give you a gift bag with some fancy-looking cheap-ass candy and a little flashlight with the corporate logo on it!
That one really gets under my skin. First, used this way, it just means ‘contact.’ So just say ‘contact,’ dammit.
Second, until it started to get used this way, “reach out” had an emotional resonance to it, like reaching out to someone going through a rough patch to give them some support.
Here’s a couple of mine: I work for a government statistical agency. A couple years ago, I got a new boss from the private sector, and he’ll jump on a call, or ask you to do so. Dude, it’s a phone call, not a fumbled football. (Which is the imagery I had in my head for the longest time.)
It might make some sense if it meant that you were abruptly asked to drop what you were doing and join a call, but he uses it for joining a phone meeting at the beginning of its scheduled time slot.
The other one came about because we’re being asked to give up a good chunk of our office space to another government agency. You’ll be glad to know that our space is being reimagined. Oh, go fuck yourselves, wouldja?
So you are saying that if I am out of town on business but my employer is paying then I am a guest of the hotel? Again, the hotel is not hosting me at no charge, so I still am not their guest. That would be like saying if my wife bought something for me at the grocery store that the store gave it to me for free. It didn’t; just a third party paid for it. The same with a convention or a party. Someone paid for the hotel conference room. I might be considered their guest at the party, but not the hotel’s.
That my point: I am not a hotel “guest.” They aren’t inviting me there is a social capacity. I am engaging in a simple, usual contractual relationship where I (or a third party) is paying for them to provide goods and services. There is nothing skeevy or improper about them taking my money. But they are taking my money (or they are taking money from a third party which permits me to be there). As such, I am not their guest.
A guest is someone like my mother in law today. She comes to the house, eats my food, watches my TV, uses my restroom, etc. all without charge. If I had charged her, then the very meaning of the word “guest” no longer applies (as well as me probably needing representation in a divorce action) as it would then become a business relationship. The word guest demands that there be no charge or no business relationship. The fact that hotels and restaurants have used it improperly for so long doesn’t change this.
ISTM there are 3 categories of corporate speak. I can’t quite say which one I hate the most.
Euphemistic BS. Using fancy words hoping to fool whoever hears them into thinking something nicer that reality. And since the audience are not fools and are not fooled, instead it just serves to tell us that the overlords think we’re stupid in addition to powerless. See “rightsize” as euphemism for “mass layoff”, “personal day” as euphemism for “you don’t get sick leave and vacation; you just get one or the other. And not nearly enough”, “buyout” as euphemism for “dismemberment”. Etc.
Trendy all but meaningless buzzwords. Most folks here have posted these. Proactively synergize your leverage with this you pompous ManagerTwit! See also https://professionalsuperhero.com/
Marketing speak. The promise that doesn’t; the comparison that isn’t; the claim that almost.
When I am Emperor there will be a truly ginormous bonfire and a lot of twits will find themselves and all their writings upon it.
Your entire argument seems to hinge on a very narrow definition of the term ‘guest’. Is it authoritative and universal? Let’s check Merriam-Webster:
Webster’s dictionary:
Collins dictionary includes the UK term “paying guest”
Which demonstrates that “paying” is not mutually exclusive with “guest”.
If all the dictionaries say that a paying hotel customer can be a guest, and dictionaries are considered to be authoritative as to the meaning of words, then by what authority do you claim that they’re all wrong and you’re right?
Harvard Business Review had a great podcast episode about this:
Oh two that came to mind recently:
Someone I work with actually wrote “available to timing services” in a document. What he was trying to say was “uses a timer”.
I got an alert from eversource that there may be power outages “during the Christmas holiday.” If only we could figure out one word to use to describe “the Christmas holiday”!
But we have another word for that which is “customer.” This definition has thus destroyed the term “guest” and deprived it of any meaning. If you knocked on my door right now and pointed at my mother in law, and I said she was a guest, would you believe I had charged her for admission? You would not. If I said she was a customer, you would believe that I had charged her. Regardless of dictionary definitions, that is the common understanding of the difference in those terms.
Otherwise, we might as well eliminate the word “guest” from our language.
“Reach out” always strikes me as weirdly 60s-ish. It reminds me of the song “Reach Out of the Darkness,” and the Burt Bacharach album Reach Out. If someone says they’re “reaching out” to me, I’m tempted to respond with “Groovy,” or “Far out!”
No, silly, words are not destroyed when they take on secondary meanings. We use a thing called “context”. Most people don’t seem to suffer any confusion about the difference between “guest” and “customer”. People who are supposed to pay, pay. Those who don’t, don’t. I’m not sure what harm you think is happening here.
Okay, so we’re going with “I’m right and all the dictionaries are wrong?” That’s your final answer?
People at my company have started to pronounce the word “processes” with a long E (processeeze). As if “process” were a Latin word like “index” or “matrix.” We’ve improved a number of processeeze. They seem to think it sounds more professional. In fact, that’s probably why they get promoted so often. I don’t care, I’m still not saying it that way.