Buzz words/terms.

Chuck Stone

Y'all ever notice that certain words and terms are kinda en vogue at particular times?

Crossing the Rubicon

Paradigm shift

Think outside the box

Knowledge Economy

Learning curve.

Going forward :mad:

Big society.

It's a load of ol' bollocks really innit?

Got any you'd care to share AH'ers?

AnamGlas

"Sure it'll be grand"

Knex*

Few naggins, be grand.

stupidusername

At the end of the day

TheZohanS

Blast it with piss..

Chuck Stone

Copper fastened

Sky King

Holistic approach

Teyla Emmagan

Can't stop saying (or rather writing 'going forward'). Hate myself for it but..

starbelgrade

"Life Coaching".

Dangerous Man

'With a rape hammer.'

Celly Smunt

"home owners"

Sky King

Optics

ronaneire

S'up?

Chuck Stone

Teyla Emmagan wrote: »

Can't stop saying (or rather writing 'going forward'). Hate myself for it but..

I think people almost say it to fill in gaps where someone else would use 'umm' or 'ehhh'.

tolosenc

Your ma.

This is AH, if you want a serious answer I suggest such and such a forum.

And there's another one I've been hearing a lot lately:

"No. Stop. No, I don't want to!"

Chuck Stone

starbelgrade wrote: »

"Life Coaching".

What's up with that ****?

Cianos

El Casei Immunitas

starbelgrade

Chuck Stone wrote: »

What's up with that ****?

I don't know. But they're worse than Scientologists.

Bride2012

Out of my comfort zone

Sky King

Here's a piece I wrote on the subject. (Pre recession so may be a bit outdated - havent read it in a while)

110 Percent (as in “Give 110 percent”)
I was one of the lucky few who had the opportunity to attempt honours mathematics for the
Leaving Certificate way back in 2001 (I got a D2) but the fact that there are engineers and
accountants using this makes me quite worried, frankly. These people are calculating load
stresses in our bridges and managing our bank accounts. AIB employ a lot of them, I’d say.

Benchmarking
I always thought a benchmark was kind of like an ass-groove that your posterior forges in
your favourite armchair over the years, but I was wrong. It is a means of comparing yourself
to something far better in order to improve your own situation. Like the teachers’ union ASTI
did in 2001.

Backward compatible
Means you can play your standard run-of-the-mill Xbox games in your Xbox 360. This does
not apply to CDs and record players though, as I found out last Christmas.

Best-in-class
I think this refers to that girl in school with the bubbly handwriting that always has her poems
learnt for teacher. Uses coloured pens and dots her i’s with love hearts. I hate her.

Change management
Managing change. I keep it in jars and then use it to pay a bill at the end of the month. Clever
no? On a slightly related note, I know a guy who keeps jars of his own urine. “Never know
when they’ll come in handy,” that’s what he says.

Communication
1) Your Team Leader explaining why the company is moving to Taiwan and why you are out
of a job.
2) Explaining to your Team Leader why you are in work hung over and why you haven’t met
that ‘crucial deadline’. Refer also to Deadline and Team Leader below.

Co-opetition
When companies that are supposedly in competition with one another work together in order
to screw even more out of the consumer. This is more commonly called a cartel. Refer to the
Irish insurance industry for more details.

Cutting-edge
Unless you are in the machine tools industry, I’d give this one a miss.

Deadline
‘Important’ dates made up at random by your boss in order to make you work harder. I know
this for a fact.

Due diligence
Doing your homework before you make a business decision. Like what the people who
bought Eircom shares in 1999 didn’t do.

Empowerment
Tricking your employees into working harder by giving them meaningless titles
(like ‘specialist’) and positions of faux responsibility.

E-Enable
Putting ecstasy tablets in your employees’ food to make them more agreeable. Ah no, I made
that up.

Excellence
Being really really really really really good at something. Really.

Facade
Like the happiness I portray at work.

Going forward
A totally unnecessary, stupid, meaningless, irrelevant phrase used the world over by morons
that is entirely superfluous to requirements in ANY discussion. Think about it. The next
time you hear a sentence with going forward in it, just remove it and say it again. Notice the
difference? That’s right, the second one didn’t sound stupid. What other direction would we
be going in? Backward? Sideways? Out the door, that’s where. Taxi!

Holistic
This word annoys me because it reminds me of alternative medicine hippies and I hate them.

Information superhighway
People who use this term are permanently trapped in 1994.

Interconnectiveness
A word made up by a buzzword-happy lecturer I had once upon a time. I haven’t heard it
since and I haven’t a clue what it means, but I thought I’d throw it in anyway, in case you
meet her on a cold dark night in an alleyway in Limerick.

Key Performance Indicator (or KPI)

A ‘metric’ that tells you that your company is going down the Josh Ritter. Has nothing to do
with locks or music or indicators on cars.

Knowledge base/economy/worker/management/anything
Knowelege is knowing stuff. Stuff about... things. So a knowledge worker is a worker who
knows about stuff. They’re the best kind of workers, I’d say.

Lean
Lean is the relentless pursuit of continuous improvement and the elimination of non “value
added” activities in the company, such as movement of the product around the production
floor and inspections. And going to the toilet and moving and talking and scratching your ear
and fantasising about killing your “Team Leader”.

Low-hanging fruit
Does anyone else get... imagery when they hear this?

Middleware
What, like a belt?

Mission-critical
Something that is of utmost importance when it comes to your mission. It is really REALLY
important. The tape self destructs after you listen to it. That is how important it is.

Mission statement
A bull**** sentence explaining how the company tricks people into giving them money.

Outside the box
This one is the granddaddy of them all. Thinking outside the box. WHAT BOX? WHAT
THE **** ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

Paradigm
Synonym for model. Not the kind of model you’d like to ‘do’, unfortunately.

Paradigm shift
Shifting a model? That would be hot. Oh yeah, bring it.

Plugability factor
Not a rating of female attractiveness as I’d originally thought. It’s something to do with
electrics or sockets or something. My friend Dave is an electrician. Go ask him..

Pornies
Don’t know what this means but it sounds totally unsuitable for the office environment.

Rain maker (in a business or sales context)
Not the missile loaded with Silver Nitrate that is fired into clouds to make them precipitate.

That is SO cool though!

Social software
The software version of social housing, as far as I know. Virtual shopping trolleys abound.

Solutions
Myself and a friend once had a competition to see who could come up with the most stupid,
pointless, meaningless idiotic name for a company. The result was Global Mega Euro Logic
Eco Soloutions Tech International.

Teamwork
Working with people. It is widely assumed that if you call a group of people a ‘team’ they
will work better together. I do not know why this is. It’s an Americanism, naturallement. The
Americans are big into this one alright. It’s all about teamwork… until the plant in Taiwan
staffed by ten year old children is complete. You can only get really fine stitchwork when
you use child labour. It’s the dexterity they have in their fingers, you see. Us adults simply
cannot compete.

Team leader
“Forward Looking” companys often have “Team Leaders” instead of Foremen/ Managers/
Supervisors. It doesn’t matter what you call him, he still the dick that asks you to come in on
Saturdays and gives out to you for putting your feet on the desk. Now THERE’s an idea! Call
him “The dick that asks you to come in on Saturdays and gives out to you for putting your
feet on the desk”. He would need really big business cards though.

Touch base
This expression reminds me of American high school heavy petting:
“John, did you touch base with Sarah about that MSA report like I asked you?”
“Yes, You will be pleased to hear that I got to third base with her before she got away. Say,
do you hear a siren?”

Value-added
A process step that adds value to a product. Like when you put petrol in a Fiat.

Vision statement
Similar to mission statement. Where the company hopes to be in ten years when it has
finished sucking the life out of employees and the money out of the consumer.

Web 2.0
Sometimes “2.0” is suffixed to other words too, eg “<This Organisation> 2.0”.
I don’t get it.

B_Fanatic

"It's the end of an old chapter and the start of a new one"

You must have some seriously low self esteem if you limit your life to book length. Come on! At least give yourself a series!

Samich

I don't get people who hate the term "going forward"? You could be going backwards?

Chuck Stone

starbelgrade wrote: »

I don't know. But they're worse than Scientologists.

Yeah kinda culty.

Chuck Stone

Sky King wrote: »

Team leader
“Forward Looking” companys often have “Team Leaders” instead of Foremen/ Managers/Supervisors. It doesn’t matter what you call him, he still the dick that asks you to come in on Saturdays and gives out to you for putting your feet on the desk. Now THERE’s an idea! Call him “The dick that asks you to come in on Saturdays and gives out to you for putting your feet on the desk”. He would need really big business cards though.

I remember working in an electronics factory some years back in a little section loking after a particular product - there were about 10 of us and a supervisor over about maybe 50 people us inculded.

Anyhoo they were laying people off so the moved a team leader down to our little well fucntioning section and when he arrived I said

'what you doing down here'?

'I was sent down to look after ye'

'Go down to the canteen and get me a cup of tea and a doughnut so please'

Lol he was really annoyed but just walked away.

tjones64

The Latest Technology

blahfckingblah

"lets not forget who got us into this mess in the first place" - every fine gael/labour TD when questioned on anything

"your trousers and socks don't match" - constituent
"lets not forget who got us into this mess in the first place" -Enda kenny

DjFlin

Back in the Day/Back in my Day (Both referring to the 90's)

Green Back

'Leverage/leveraging', popular management speak, especially among project managers and change managers.
Eg: 'We can leverage our resources to... blah blah blah '
Basically it's a substitution for the word 'use'

Chuck Stone

DjFlin wrote: »

Back in the Day

I like this one.

Naff?

later12

I once got an email from a work client saying something along the lines of

attn: later10

Just wanted to touch base with you re: (work matter). I will of course revert to you when I am back in HQ. Please be assured of our commitment to delivering fully on this issue going forward.

kind regards,
wankface

newmug

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Y'all ever notice that certain words and terms are kinda en vogue at particular times?

2 more there for ya!

Sky King wrote: »

Here's a piece I wrote on the subject. (Pre recession so may be a bit outdated - havent read it in a while)

Did you work in Intel by any chance? Cos you have it down to a tee!

Samich wrote: »

I don't get people who hate the term "going forward"? You could be going backwards?

No you couldnt. Its nearly always used when referring to time, for example "going forward the economy will pick up". You cant go backward in time.

The other time its used is as a filler, or to sound posh. For example "Going forward, could you do x job, going forward". Bullsh1t in its purest form. It just doesnt make any sense. People hate it because its insulting to their intelligence.

Shane L

The fact of the matter is.....

Shane L

Flat out

SlyBacon93

Ahh ye would ye

Chuck Stone

We've turned a corner. (on a square roundabout).

Keith186

Dolescum is in fashion these days .

im invisible

Whaazzzzup!

Ive seriously been thinking of bringing this back...

Turpentine

im invisible wrote: »

Whaazzzzup!

Ive seriously been thinking of bringing this back...

Please...please don't...

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