Teyla Emmagan wrote: » Can't stop saying (or rather writing 'going forward'). Hate myself for it but..
starbelgrade wrote: » "Life Coaching".
Chuck Stone wrote: » What's up with that ****?
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.
starbelgrade wrote: » I don't know. But they're worse than Scientologists.
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.
DjFlin wrote: » Back in the Day
Chuck Stone wrote: » Y'all ever notice that certain words and terms are kinda en vogue at particular times?
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)
Samich wrote: » I don't get people who hate the term "going forward"? You could be going backwards?
