At the company where I work, there are two words or phrases in the corporate jargon that drive me crazy.
People using the word ‘impedance’ to mean feedback ie I send my proposal to so-and-so and I am waiting for impedance from him. I work at a technology company which employs many (electrical) engineers, while my degrees are merely mathematics (combinatorics) and an MBA, I thought that impedance meant resistance.
The other phrase that drives me insane is ‘talk to’. When people are reviewing chart (Powerpoint) packages, they’ll often say ‘I’ll talk to that chart’ or ‘I’ll tak to that point’ to mean they will discuss it more when presenting it. I always have an urge to say "hello chart, how are you today. ’
I figure that these two phrases are specific to my company, what are the annoying phrases used in your company?
We’ve got a number of customers that are academic library consortia. Get that? One consortium, two consortia. Now, “consortiums” doesn’t bother me too much, but some people say (gulp) “consortias.” GAH!
“I’m not married to that idea…” – Think of something else, please.
There is probably a better thread for these, 'cause they’re more like true tales of in-duh-viduals.
I’m on an internal corporate team where we get to decide how to spend the company’s sponsorship money, and we get to volunteer our (own personal) time for charity, if the mood strikes. So another person on the team did some reasearch on the County’s Literacy Volunteers program, part of which involved tutoring children. Her e-mail said, “If you would like to torture children, call this number…” Left me giggling for the rest of the day, thinking of all the ways I could torture other people’s kids.
I’m getting some new positions on my staff and have no place to put them, so we’re building some new cubicles. The Cube Farm is growing. This time, the e-mail said, “On Thursday, April 17, [insert name of cube vendor] will be installing new cubs in the following departments…” I forwarded the e-mail to my staff with a note that I hope our cubs are furry and brown and cute, and don’t have big teeth and claws. One person didn’t actually catch the typo and get my joke… He’s my senior copy editor. :rolleyes:
This isn’t quite what the OP is talking about, but my boss uses the word “typefonts” all the time. There is no such word. It’s either “font” or “typeface.”
If you are on probation and either commit a new crime or do something that you’re not supposed to do (like drink, hang out with felons, etc.), you have violated your probation. The judge will then revoke some portion of your probation, if it can be proven that you violated it. Instead of telling me that they’ve been revoked, 98% of my clients will say “the judge violated me”.
Many of my clients, when I ask them how they want to handle their cases, tell me that they want a "flea bargain". Or maybe "flee bargain", I've never asked any of them to spell it.
I also had one guy who put on his application for counsel in the "charges" part "Bad checks- Mr. Meanor".
If I hear bandwith one more time, I’m gonna scream. A team of people does not have bandwith. A computer has bandwith. Functionality also makes my hackles stand up on end. Basically any IT terms that kinda get bastardized into back-office usage I can’t stand.
Win-win. Ugh. Ew. Stop it.
And in my workplace, the term “on your plate” is used quite frequently. My former boss started it, and it’s usage has spread, even though she is no longer with the company. She used the phrase to mean what items you were addressing at the time, and could responsibility be shifted, depending on if youe “plate” was too full. I knew what she meant by it, but it freaking made me cringe every time she used it. It just didn’t sound professional.
Also - paradigm. Has anyone ever seen that Verizon commercial where it’s a guy spouting off all of this corporatespeak and says paradigm wrong? Like par-a-dig-em? Cracks me up every time - but what cracked me up even more was to hear a director at my company say it exactly that way.
I had to correct them - but I waited until after the meeting.
My department director used the term “step up to the plate” at least 10 times a day. I swear, she must lie awake at night wondering how to incorporate it into more conversations.
The most commonly butchered name lately is to ask me for a sasquatch dollar, when what you really want is one of the new Sacagawea golden dollars that the US produces. I’ve also heard it called about 5 other unbelievable name, but sasquatch is by far the most common.
I program for a video game company. We spend a lot of time discussing “vertices” and “matrices”, which are the plurals of “vertex” and “matrix”, respectively.
But many many people use a fictitious word best spelled as “verticee” when they mean “vertex”.
Oh, and several years back, when I was working on a tank game, our lead designer insisted on referring to a “Turret” as a “Turrent”.
my boss constantly says “don’t use up to many clock cycles on this one” for things that are not really important. Yes I work for an isp in a technical role… but common I’m not a computer.
This thread reminded me of Bullshit Bingo (http://www.qs9000.com/level2/Bingo.html) which is always fun to do on conference calls where you have a mute function.
