Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Annoying workplace jargon

I stumbled upon this list of business catch phrases that most annoy workers worldwide and had to share it. I also feel compelled to add a couple to the list. My current workplace seems fairly (though not entirely) free of this kind of ridiculousness, but McGraw-Hill was filthy with it. There was:

Blue sky, as in “What would you like to do with this project, blue sky?” Or “What would you like to change, blue sky?” In other words, “What would you do with this project if it existed outside the limitations imposed by reality? You know, if you had all the money in the world, a time machine, and a less annoying set of coworkers?”

Then there was the short-lived but extremely intense “thud factor” heyday. My boss (crazy Lisa, for those of you in the know) came back from a week long meeting where this phrase had apparently caught on like wildfire. Suddenly every book we published had to have a “thud effect” which basically meant it had to reach the customer with a whole mess of crap. No concern about quality as long as there was an accompanying CD, website, instructor’s manual, and tie-dyed pot-bellied pig to draw attention to the whole lot.

And then there was the famous Emily Barrosse not-quite-jargon-but-just-as-annoying-nevertheless, “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” To which I always wanted to answer, “Anything but this.”

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just can't believe that your current job has no business b.s.; every business culture has some jargon. a few of my favorite b.s terms are-
- ping: as in I'll ping (call/email/hallway conversation) you later about X
- 10,000 ft view: as in what's the 10,000 ft view?
- an open head: we need to write a job description for the open head. Ugh!

These are. Some and while I deride them I also use them all the time :(

Jen said...

I think I've buried my office experience so deep that I can't actually remember any of the phrases that I know made me want to kill people.

But "thud factor" might be the lamest example of stupid publishing talk that I've heard.

Anonymous said...

Hee hee. This might be before your time, but I was unpacking a box of kitchen stuff and stumbled across a mug with my favorite MGH slogan, "Zebras do it faster" from the most bizarre sales meeting in the world.

rg said...

"This is what's coming down the pike" was the favorite at my last job. I wanted to scream every time I heard it!

Tori said...

ellebee--is the "Zebras do it faster" thing part of the ongoing love Henry had of the lions versus the zebras (always pronounced zeh-bras)?

S Bennett said...

I don't know if "thud factor" is all that bad as a concept. Even in your post, you note that it isn't really the word as much as the imposed requirement that it made on your assignments. Most of these have more to do with overuse and the sloppy thinking that they try to disguise.

I also wonder if the "thud factor" is better than the "wow factor?" What about the "X factor"? Or, the "O'Reilly Factor"?

Also, I've never heard "blue sky" before.

The BBC list is great, however. Reminds me of b-school . . . sigh.

S Bennett said...

Sorry to comment twice, but I agree with anonymous about "ping." From my summer, I learned the following jargon (much of this is repeated from the BBC list):

Ping: see above
Roadmap: executable plan
Bandwidth: time/energy/will
Out of pocket: unreachable
Deep dive: analyze

And, oh, so many others that I have forgotten . . .

Anonymous said...

Yes! The Zeh-bra thing is totally from Henry. :)

Anonymous said...

This post hit home in uncomfortable ways (obviously). I'm actually keeping a dumb business jargon/buzzword log in the back of one of my notepads at present.