The worst I ever saw belonged to a company called Medspeed. One day about 15 years ago I was driving along and I saw a car with Medspeed livery, and words “Now Hiring,” so I went to their website to apply. What I was met with was – and I swear I’m not making this up – something that read like:
“At MedSpeed, we synergize agile logistics solutions to seamlessly optimize the end-to-end movement of mission-critical medical assets. By leveraging scalable infrastructure, dynamic delivery frameworks, and cross-functional stakeholder alignment, we empower healthcare ecosystems to achieve operational continuity, real-time responsiveness, and sustainable value creation. Our commitment to leveraging best-in-class innovation ensures that every specimen and supply chain touchpoint is an opportunity for transformative outcomes and disruptive impact.”
That’s not the exact wording (thanks ChatGPT!) but it’s close enough.
Their website is slightly less arcane now – slightly – but it still has some zingers like:
“MedSpeed integrates healthcare organizations through the system-wide,last mile movement of physical materials…”
I think what all of this means is that they transport medical this & that from Here to There, apparently in some innovative way.
It was at a job interview for Chief Operating Officer. I had a cold, so was jacked up on cold meds, which didn’t help much. I don’t remember the exact wording, but the CEO used words like “leveraging”, “infrastructure” and “networking” as I recall. When she got done asking the question, I just looked at her and asked “Can I buy a vowel?” Luckily, she and the guy with her both laughed. I explained my health issue of the moment and we moved on. I got the job, which turned out to be worse than not getting the job.
Must-see for anyone who has to put up with this gobbledygook in their job. Bonus points if you’re familiar with Crosby Stills & Nash’s work and how inappropriate it is to this type of content.
I am sick and tired of doing Value Optimization work all the time lately. It just another name for cross reduction that hurts the suppliers. Don’t get me wrong, it’s neccesary, but it sucks to listen to management constantly focus on it.
Not a specific example, but when “downsizing” was used in place of “corporate layoffs” to sound better but now downsizing is a bad word so they’re trying to replace it was “rightsizing” which will inevitably lead with that being replaced in 20 years.
I did a rant years ago* about how hard it is to find what many companies do.
A company might screw on the tops of toothpaste tubes, but their website will have stock pictures of good looking people in an office smiling at each other and will say they are synergizing technology or something, before telling me all about their DEI / green initiatives (I’m in favor of both, I just don’t want to see it before knowing what the company even does and/or how to contact them).
