“Let’s make sure that our bases will touch. I will touch your base to my base.”
“Together, we will all circle back. The circle will be mandatory, and it will never end.”
“At the end of the day, it is night, and we are alone in the dark.”
“We have no skin in this game. All of our skin is elsewhere. There can be no skin in the Skinless Games under penalty of flaying.”
“You are the Thought Leader; you must lead our thoughts.”
“I will reach out to you. Let me reach out to you. You cannot keep me from reaching you. We will all reach out to you, and we will touch your base.”
“It is what it is. All things are as they are; nothing can change now. All things same, no things new.”
“We must do that going forward. We cannot look back. We cannot go back. We must go forward, all together; looking back will destroy us. Do not look behind you.”
“You must never go where the rubber meets the road. Your death crouches for you there, whispering your name through its jaws.”
“Soon the COB will come. The Close of Business will be here. We must prepare; we must prepare. There will be no business after the Closing.”
Tags: business, cliches, the surreal
Ahhh yes, I’m going to creep around my office today intoning “Soon the COB will come. The Close of Business will be here. We must prepare; we must prepare. There will be no business after the Closing.”
YES. These are all great, this one in particular. Also, now when I hear/read COB I imagine a giant cob of corn emerging from the wall and floating around the office ominously, like some sort of portent of doom.
I’m pretty sure this is what management at my office actually does.
It sounds like something out of The Wicker Man.
Hell, it probably is.
I will touch your base to my base.
D:
I did not consent to my base being touched.
please don’t touch any of my bases
We will all reach out to you, and we will touch your base.
So funny! 😀
NO HIDDEN CODES, you cheeky lil spammer you.
all your base are belong to us
Hostile takeovers are the worst.
that is an ace of a base reference
Roses are red
Violets are blue
All my base are
Belong to you.
Somebody burn ASAP to the ground and then salt the earth.
Thanks for your feedback– I’ll pow-wow with my team & get back to you soonest. What kind of turnaround are you looking for on this?
you’re a monster
Or a game-changer.
Or a thought leader. Or a key stakeholder.
No matter how often I hear stakeholder I always think of Buffy with a stake in her hand. It’s soothing to the soul.
I’m guilty of regular “stakeholders” but will now happily think of Buffy whilst writing my nonsensical jargon.
So this is what happens if you get an MBA at the University of Night Vale, I assume.
“Synergy. We will achieve synergy. Synergy. Against you will, for what is will when there is synergy?”
“We are a customer focused business. We focus on the customer. Look at the customer. Never stop looking at the customer. Are they still breathing? Still screaming? Good. Keep focusing on that customer.”
Think of the stakeholders. THINK OF THEM, as they come ever closer, clutching their stakes, eyes wide with fury, marching relentlessly towards you, lunging and stabbing.
“What is the takeaway for the key stakeholders so we can get their buy-in?”
It is a nice chicken tikka with some pilau rice and naan. And a side of sag paneer. And a few samosas.
Whatever the future holds it must be cost-effective. Otherwise the cost will be your life, which will be effectively and brutally ended.
“In the final analysis, we will find out what you’re made of. REALLY made of. We will look at your insides. We will analyze them, one last time.”
“Let us think outside of the box, which can contain our arcane secrets no longer. Let us open our minds to the clear skies above and embrace the horrifying terror that awaits us all. Let us gibber together uln ph’Chaugnar Faugn throd chtenff ebunma, Hastur mg ebunma uln grah’n. R’lyeh y-li’hee hupadgh llll Tsathoggua zhro nnnYoggoth ‘ai Tsathoggua kadishtu, Cthulhu Chaugnar Faugn R’lyeh ep nilgh’rior mg hupadgh Chaugnar Faugn, y’hah ngllll gof’nn ee y-hlirgh ee Tsathoggua syha’h.”
“through the roots of grass, we shall bury ourselves deep down below the dirt and mud and decomposing body-matter of the earth and out through the roots of the grass shall we extend our reach, and no one, no one shall escape our campaign”
“All of our skin is elsewhere.” Oh god Mallory thanks for that nightmare fuel I was running low.
..Are you playing Don’t Starve? (nightmare fuel made me wonder, and I am played so much this weekend I dreamt in Don’t Starve graphics)
I am not — and now I know not to! I hope you have fluffy bunny dreams instead soon.
The first time I heard the phrase “thought leader” uttered at a meeting, I snapped my head up and looked around the room, sure that I would find another horrified face. I did not. Apparently this is now an acceptable thing to say and not the MOST ORWELLIAN PHRASE IN THE UNIVERSE.
I’ve not yet come across it, perhaps because I worked retail. But it is terrifying, terrifying and anyone who unironically spouts it near me will be put on The List of Dangerous Future Totalitarian Dictators
Our corporate management just started talking about the need for Thought Leadership development. None of my coworkers or I had ever heard of it. We made a lot of Orwell jokes, started naming random things Thought Leadership (“good Thought Leadership with that decision to go with cupcakes for this month’s Treat Day”) and still have no idea what it is.
As someone who works at a PR firm: Thought Leadership is here to stay.
This article is such an innovative display of entrepreneurship. But how shall we leverage these innovative practices?
By reaching out to our stakeholders with key thought leadership before COB, to see if we can get more in-depth buy-in before going forward with our innovative vapor ware.
(Ex-Big Four consultant, you guys. I can do this all day. And apparently, now also in my nightmares.)
Congratulations for escaping. We have a big group of McKinsey people upstairs. They are young, shiny, and vaguely International and are always wheeling in and out with their big briefcases. They look like pod people, or people who would be called in to star in a Diet Coke commercial. I think they are neutralized on their 30th birthday. (Kind of like Logan’s Run)
Still relevant more than 12 years after I first saw it.
http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html
A consultant once asked me to “whiteboard an idea.” I wanted to leave the room screaming that you can’t just turn office furniture into verbs.
Is this the new ‘brainstorm’? Or does it literally refer to writing ideas on a whiteboard?
I want to make sure we’re on the same page. I’m willing to sacrifice an intern so that we all fit on that page.
We will leverage our best practices. All other practices will fall before us. We are the fulcrum on the lever and we will leverage our competitors until the final close of business takes us all, and we can, at last, TGIF.
My current favorite: I regularly have 60 hours of work to complete in 37.5 hours. Overtime is parceled out like a rare earth mineral. Got 3-4 hours this weekend, and told “We trust you will make the best use of this time.” Then they “thanked me for my loyalty and diligence.” (I blew it off and got my hair done instead)
“Thank you for your loyalty and diligence.” equals “Thank you for bending down further so we can f@ck you even further up the ass.”
Moe you can swear in the comments, it’s ok!
Fuck yeah, Mallory! P.S. Your Hemingway piece has reached London and Australia and everyone is peeing in their pants laughing. #4 and #13 are special favorites. See twitter feed for author Olivia Laing (author of To the River and The Trip to Echo Spring)
Me too! Except my overtime is unpaid hahahaha. Haha. Ha.
Don’t cross the horror-streams.
internal screaming
We are outpacing our competition with vertical integration, horizontal integration, diagonal integration, upside-down integration, and even the fabled inside-out integration.
“Subject Matter Leaders will submit their takeaways. ” Phrase actually uttered on a call this morning.
It’s not technically business speak, but I once literally had a boss end a meeting by saying “let’s talk about thinking about talking about this some more” which I think pretty well sums up the process of getting anything done around there.
WE WERE ON THE SAME CALL
Ping me when you’re free. You are a submarine in an empty ocean. No one will ping back. You are slowly taking on water.
soon you will be free
People in my office say ‘ping!’ Like we’re playing effing Pong around here with our communication. I hate it.
TopBusinessTip: approach a coworker from behind. do not be seen. whisper “pong,” into their ear.
Ideally at that point, you will dissipate into mist. This is key.
“Not really sure if you have the bandwidth for this right now.”
OH MY GOD IT’S HAPPENED THEY’VE REPLACED US WITH ROBOTS.
You are in the meeting for a solid hour before you notice the CAT5 cables trailing to a center console from the backs of each of your team’s skulls. You reach for the door… too late. You are now part of the LAN.
ROBUST SOLUTIONS
I always wonder what the non-robust solutions look like…like tiny little 90-pound weak, wilting solutions, getting sand kicked in their frowny little horrified faces…
You know, I think I would be willing to invoke the ancient gods and be transformed beyond mortal understanding, doomed to do their bidding long after humanity itself is an echo of a memory, if I could get a guarantee that our marketing person would never again ask me what my bandwidth is looking like this week.
“Well, I shouldn’t be using up TOO much, but I was thinking about streaming some Pandora this afternoon, so depending on how that goes I may use up a bit more than usual. Has IT been noticing odd usage patterns on my IP? Should I talk to them? Thanks for asking!”
We must think outside the box. There may be a world outside the box. Do not ask why we are trapped in a box. Sleep now. Rest. The box is your home.
Strategic partnerships with a dire subterranean parasite race are now available. Leverage this opportunity to JOIN US.
“What’s the value-add?” you ask, tears streaming down your face. You are at the bottom of a pit. There is no value in the dark emptiness that is your world.
Futuremr. Theory has started to say ‘walk with me’ during his normal non-work life. Like, if we are talking in the study and he wants to go into the kitchen to get a beer. Walk with me. Walk with me. Follow me, blind and trusting, and I shall take you to the end of the earth and into the abyss where there is no more walking only the gibbering nothing.
Uh oh. Are you marrying Aaron Sorkin?
great minds, etc 🙂
Maybe he just wants to be walkin in a Sorkin wonderland
This post is in my wheelhouse.
It’s also in mine, and the wheels are getting restless. I’m afraid they will roll over me, leaving my body shattered by their merciless rims.
My dance card is full for Thursday
One Monday morning, you are late to work. You enter the office to find all the cubicles and desks have been replaced with gurneys and hospital partitions.Your coworkers have needles in their arms. At first you think they’re receiving some kind of IV fluid– was there an outbreak of stomach flu over the weekend? But then you notice your supervisor’s deathly pallor.
“We’re being asked to do more with less… blood,” she whispers.
I want to cry.
“operationalize”
WHAT?
what does this even mean? because my boss keeps saying in re my team’s goals and I just nod enthusiastically
i’m not kidding thought what does it mean
Google tells me it means “put into operation or use”. So like, “operationalize that protocol”. Ugh, the worst.
If there are any problems, let’s make sure we bubble those up.
You can also “surface” them…and then maybe whiteboard some solutions. And then maybe bitchslap everyone in the room, scream “DEATH TO HORRIBLE VERB-NOUNS” and run quickly out to the street, taking deep gulps of sweet, sweet jargon-free air.
“I’ll ping you” is my most hated business-speak.
Pinging is my favorite because our internal IM actually pings
so I say “hey bb I’ll ping you when I’m done”
and then I message them and I can hear PING a few cubes over
so satisfying
I have a coworker that uses effort as a verb – like “we are efforting that right now”
D:
What I learned most from working in HR was that there are no “problems,” only “opportunities.”
Examples:
“Amy, there are some opportunities with this W4. Could you reach out to the hiring manager and have them address those opportunities?”
“She’s actually on medical leave due to some infection she picked up on vacation. She has some severe intestinal opportunities.”
Aaahhh. I’ve been through a couple feedback solicitation things lately where they want us to give good and bad things about our experiences, but refuse to use any word with negative connotations. Instead we give “pluses and deltas” or “positives and opportunities for growth”. Those are words that have opposites already that you are clearly avoiding!
Few things are as guaranteed to make me sigh, roll my eyes, slump in my seat, and generally revert to being 13.
Threw me under the bus. My least favorite. Sarah Silverman quote: “People who say the phrase ‘throw me under the bus’…say it a lot.”
Also at work is the horrifying, “If I get hit by a bus” used to primarily to talk about file management- aka if the team can find your saved excel sheets. Horrifying because I’m always tempted to say in response, “we can only hope next time you don’t look both ways before crossing.”
OMG YES. BOTH BUS ANALOGIES INFURIATE ME.
She is a well-seasoned professional. At first, we just tried steaming her, but it turned out 15 minutes under the broiler with some garlic salt and a little olive oil worked much better.
You know, my LinkedIn profile starts with “Seasoned business professional with deep experience in…” and I always wonder if it’s basil or oregano.
I love these. Thank you.
Don’t forget using “status” as a verb:
“Can you status me on that SOW before COB?”
I want to set that sentence (“sentence”) on fire.
I just learned a new command in our inventory system to check a book’s return status and the command is FRT so of course my coworker and I were just making fart jokes aplenty like “did you fart on that book” “I farted but nothing happened” “thanks for teaching me how to fart”
so that’s the level of discourse at my bookstore
We’re going to open the kimono, as soon as we can find someone wearing a kimono who is unlikely to sue us for sexual harassment. Maybe we could hire an actor? You know like the guy who pushes that giant envelope around the office so clients can see how edgy we are? We should probably take this discussion offline, so please met me in that field where all our phones lose service asap. Bring your 4 wheel drive so we can get some traction out there.
A direct quote from my manager: “We need to touch base before the hooha.” I’m not entirely sure that’s legal.
or anatomically possible!
Most important lesson I’ve learned from my boss – you can respond “roadmap” to basically any query. It absolves you of the need to consider the question, and passively indicates that, yes, you are aware and working towards a solution.
“do you want to go to dinner?” she asks, “roadmap,” i utter… and kick-flip a skateboard down the stairs while a guitar riff echoes from nowhere.
I heard “roadmap” as a verb the other day and even I, Consulting Queen of Jargon, wanted to kick the speaker in the shins.
OK team, let’s reach out and touch base with your inputs tomorrow. Puts your in in my base. Reach out and inputs it. Go team.
My spouse has threatened to put out a hit on the next person who uses “it is what it is” in his presence.
I have similar feeling about “it’s all good.”
But tautologies are the best way to express the immutable forces of the universe!
Growing this business. A pale abomination squirming in the subterranean depths, uttering mewling cries that curdle the blood, sightless eyes ever staring into an endless night of horrors. This business. Growing.
Another day, another dollar. Each day a silver coin, deposited in the box of time, a futile effort to accumulate worth.
My least favorite phrase that my adviser uses ALL THE TIME: “I need to pick your brain.”
I need to pick your brain. The harvest is upon us. All extracted brain material will be burned at the altar of the appropriate funding agency, as per protocol.
“We can bucket it this way: the legs and arms can go in the extremities bucket, and the butt, back, stomach, and head can all go in the torso bucket.”
I heard "roadmap" as a verb the other day and even I, Consulting Queen of Jargon, wanted to kick the speaker in the shins.
REORG. That isn’t a word, dammit.
Let's run it up the flagpole and see who falls to their knees in terrified supplication.
“I’m just trying to get the ball rolling on this project” It is a very big ball, and i’m having a lot of problems pushing it, because I just want it to roll over and flatten the hell out of this project.
Mallory you are my people.
NEVER heard of any of those. American English language is too indirect …. unless it sounds like THIS >>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO_t7GtXO6w
ABCs babay!
###
Low hanging fruit. It must be picked. The lower the fruit the easier it is to grab so bend over alllll the way. Use your knees not your back to lift all that low hanging fruit.
I’m writing a novel and one of the characters is using business cliches, so I’m internet surfing for some “bad” examples and came across your blog. I am laughing hysterically! Kudos to conveying your point!