On occasions too numerous to count, someone will throw out stupid computer industry buzzwords that make my teeth hurt.
Some are just kinda irritating:
“We don’t have time to spin cycles on that issue…”
“I’ll ping the UA people…”
Some are reeeeally bothersome:
“Can we establish an end-to-end convergence here?”
“Can we get a time-phase delta on that feature implementation?”
“Can we projectize this?”
But none of them - NONE compare to the word that I hate more than any other word in the English language. An execrable word that, when used by anyone I work with, causes me to immediately stop listening to them for the rest of their lives. I give you:
“Let’s see if we can create some synergy there…”
AAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUGHHHHH!!!
::Dooku punches him through chest, removes still-beating heart, eats it::
So what are your industry buzzwords that send you screaming from the room?
Huh. I thought I was going to have a lot of them, but the only one that comes to mind is:
Going forward: And what other direction would we be going, pray tell? Sideways? Diagonally? Up? Backwards, for Og’s sake? In a corkscrew pattern? Gaah!
Of course, being unemployed for three months has probably driven most of the annoying buzzwords from my mind…
Got y’all beat, because I’m forced to use this buzzword every day …
“Frappuccino”
… a word that means nothing, and exists only to make a drink sound trendy. Actually, though, according to official memos we are not ever supposed to call a drink a Frappuccino, nor is the plural Frappuccinos; the Official Starbucks Name is “Frappuccino Blended Beverage.” Thanks, guys, as if I didn’t have enough people ignoring me when I call their drinks.
(“Two grande mocha Frappuccino Blended Beverages, one tall caramel Frappu … aw fuck it, just get your effing pansy drinks already.”)
– Dragonblink, who is not at all bitter about being a corporate whore. Really!
As in, “Public Relations is sponsoring a contest. Please submit a dynamic, one-word slogan for next year’s outreach programs. Winners will recieve the ridicule of their colleagues.”
Okay, so it’s probably not as annoying as the ones you’ve all posted, but still.
I work for the post office and when we were in training to learn what to do with a mailpiece that is facing away from us (you wouldn’t think it’d take 2 hours to cover the necessary procedure of “turn it around” but it did), they refused to call it a “backwards envelope” or “misfaced” (though that’s the ‘technical term’) or anything of the sort.
They called it …
“a smiley”
Because of the shape of the flap of the envelope.
“Whenever you see a ‘smiley’, you need to turn it around, or if you can’t, the address won’t be read.”
Oh, and if it was turned around and upside down, it was not an “upside-down misfaced envelope”, oh no.
It was a “frowney”
Augh.
You want to know why postal workers go nuts, I can give ya a thousand good reasons why. And now you know two of them.
Synnove, that is one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a while. “OK, class, is this a ‘smiley’ or a ‘frowney’?” Yeesh.
My company is really a hotbed of acronyms rather than buzzwords: “Yes, the BCRS MSS group has a DOU with the SDC on the labor for IDS, HID, and FW mgmt.” <barf>
Opportunity – As in: It’s not a problem; it’s an opportunity.
A new release of software was installed on the test system. Tech support sent out a memo saying that, if the test system remained opportunity-free, the new release would be installed on the production system.
As in, “If we’re proactive about this, we can leverage this opportunity going forward.”
AAAAAAAAARRRRGHGHGH! It makes me want to shove sharpened pencils deep enough into my ears to rupture my damn ear drums. God damn, do I hate “leverage” and “proactive” and “going forward.”
I work in the finance industry, and the two words that drive me insane are “incept” and “indexes”. There isn’t a verb form for “inception”. An account doesn’t “incept.” And “indexes” instead of “indices”?? I know it’s in the dictionary, but I insist that it was included due to popular use, sort of like “irregardless”.
I work with a bunch of audiophiles who talk about sound “color” because thats the only way they can differential between two samples (that amazingly sound identical, and are in fact identical).
The worst businessese word there is, by far, and you can find it in ANY business, is “utilize.”
There is almost no situation in which “use” isn’t a better choice of word. You should never, NEVER use the word “utilize” (except in the specific case where you must convey the concept of “to use something with a specifically productive result.”) I proofread a lot of documents for other folks and I invariably replace every “utilize” with “use” and yet they keep coming back, like zombies.
I work in biotech, and there is a lot of mergers and acquistions going on right now.
So,
synergies - as in “the merger will capitalize on the synergies of the two companies” . It sounds better than “Holy s***, am I going to make a lot of cash from this!”
Value addition (some form) - “We need to focus on areas where we can add the most value” Geez, thanks for that pearl of wisdom boss. No wonder you make 10x what I do. Who would have thought of actually focusing on the operations that are the most valuable?
I’ll bring a notepad to the next meeting. I’m sure I’ll here a lot more.