50 Office-Speak Phrases You Love To Hate

[PHCgull]

However.............

leverage your pedantry to foxtrot oscar.....

 

[Collar Feeler]

'But no-one's talking about the elephant in the room'. My response to that in a meeting once was to interupt and pipe up, " What are you on about, what flipping elephant, can we just use plain english please?" The speaker finished a few moments later, glared at me for the next half hour and never uttered another word. I actually cringe and wince if I ever hear it now, it is total bollocks why can't the person just say - "what we need to be discussing is ..." in fact why do so many meetings end up with so much indecipherable bollocks spoken, do people think it makes them sound more intelligent or something.

 

[Robbie G]

'Touch base' - ridiculous

 

[vegster]

" roll-out " wins my vote. Usually, a new computer prog or proceedure for shops and companys is "rolled-out" like a square wheel...

 

[cheeseroll]

Thinking outside the box.
Look at the big picture.
Proactive..
Its not rocket science...

 

[happypig]

I had a yank ring me the other day and ask to "touch base". I asked him, all innocent like, what he meant. He then had to explain it all to me, including the baseball reference.
At the end, I said "ok, thanks for that but it's not something I've ever heard before"

Yanks are sooooo easy to wind up and such fun too

 

[Goldstone Rapper]

Over the last week, I've heard the word 'language' used as a verb, as in: 'Language your example in one of the following ways:"

I hope it doesn't catch on.

 

[highway61]

Flag up, flagging, grrrrr

 

[Jello]

One customer always wants 'rolling change' when they update a product so they don't have to pay for any old stock, if only it was that simple.

 

[hart's shirt]

"Please do the needful."

 

[beorhthelm]

"Please do the needful."

ah, the joys of outsourced colleges

 

[whitelion]

Ball Park Figures!

What ?

 

[Beach Hut]

Off-shore :US:

 

[Rambo]

Put it in the greenhouse and watch it grow.
'Lets take that one offline'
I f***ing hate the word 'feedback'.
Granularity Is one I am hearing all the time now, what a load of bollox.

Most people in my company speak this bollocks all the time, I get the feeling it makes them feel clever. It almost seems as if you dont speak it you are the odd one out. Muppetts.

Oh and 'Pre Meetings' a meeting before a meeting WTF!!!!

 

[tedebear]

I got "lets ensure a clear glide path for this one" in a meeting yesterday - nearly spat my water everywhere and people sniggered. My boss (the culprit) had the decency to look embarrassed, I think he'd probably got it from a more senior meeting and liked it - sadly us underlings thought it was more hilarious than useful.

 

[tedebear]

Off-shore :US:

Yes - we have/hate that one too. For those IT offshore they are remote eyes and the people here are local hands - makes me giggle everytime

 

[Barrow Boy]

At my old company, as Team Leaders, if we pointed out to our Plant Manager (sorry, I meant Business Unit Leader) that one of his latest "Initiatives" was unworkable, we were told we'd have to "Micro manage" the situation to ensure the "Initiative became embedded into the departments culture and current Ways of working"
Our production streams that used to breakdown suddenly became "Towers" that started "Falling over"

And I lost count of the number of "Flags" that were "Run up Flagpoles" while we tried to "Touch base", checked that the Ducks were all flying in a row while avoiding "Potential Elephants" who were trying to put the ideas that had come from "Blue sky thinking" on the "Backburner" in the F**king "Parking lot"


There, I think I feel better now

 

[Beach Hut]

Leverage is another stupid term that keeps cropping up where I work, normally by dickheads who feel the need to walk around the office all day shouting into a mobile phone.

 

[seagullsoverlincoln]

not technically an office expression but f***ing hate the expression "double dip recession". 10 out of 10 in the bullshit bingo club.

 

[Scampi]

I used to work with an eager ladder climbing recent graduate. He said the right things and impressed the credulous as he had a 3rd from some ex poly. This for some reason dazzled some of the idiots i worked with because he had also been to some minor public school.

He was very keen on management speak to the extent he didn't like it if someone used a phrase he didn't know. Me and a couple of friends who also couldn't stand the tosser would invent phrases and use them in front of him. We got him to adopt several of our invented phrases but retired after we got him to use a phrase we invented for people that dodge work and pass it on to other people.
We were in an interdepartmental meeting with IT finance and sales, when he accused the marketing department of not getting any work done because they'd been too busy "flicking the bean". Cue an amazed look on the finance directors face (a woman) and myself and several colleagues corpsing. I got a stern talking to by the HR trolls for that.