Let’s have a lunch and learn!
Alright, team, let’s circle back and ensure we’re fully aligned on our north star objectives. We need to leverage synergy, engage in blue-sky thinking, and touch base on our pain points to drive mission-critical outcomes. But let’s not boil the ocean with unnecessary jargon - at the end of the day, we need to optimize our bandwidth for real, value-driven impact. If we keep moving the needle with this kind of thought leadership theater, we risk losing sight of our core competencies and drowning in a sea of meaningless buzzwords. Let’s pivot toward clear, actionable insights and sunset the overuse of strategic messaging before it becomes a blocker to true innovation. Instead of just playing the fast-follow game with every trending framework, let’s focus on original, high-impact execution that actually drives results.
Thoughts?Chris, do you have any builds?No?
Good. Then let’s action this and drive it across the finish line!
Jesus fucking Christ. This was excellently written and horribly real.
Other than the lack of a “shift left” it’s just about perfect.
I threw up in my mouth a little bit.
Thanks. It hit close to home. I hate it.
Perfect except for ‘Thoughts?’ Instead of that it should be an appeal to the speaker’s boss: ‘Chris, do you have any builds?’
Done. 😁
There was a website at some point that would put up themed meeting phrases each week, with points if anyone used them and caught it. I still remember a few of them.
“I don’t want a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, I expect a pot of uranium.”
“We either play barbie or go home. I didn’t get come here today to be Skipper.”
“I don’t say we build a barbie dream house, I want use to build a barbie on ecstasy house.”
“Is this a queen alien problem? Or more of a face hugger we can ignore for a while?”
I want this to still exist
Lol
I heard “rightsizing” for the first time last year.
I have no idea what knucklehead PR dumbass came up with that but it made the following layoffs even more unpalatable.
The only time I hear rightsizing is for cloud resources. I’ve never heard of it in human resources. That sucks.
“Tribal knowledge.”
- image: We, clan. Together, strong.
- reality: Ask Tommy if he remembers how to reset the printer
Though, I actually like this one. It’s a pretty cool phrase you can use anywhere.
I call this one oral tradition, it always gets a chuckle
This is normally called “institutional knowledge” which is definitely a real thing, I don’t think it’s a marketing or HR buzzword. Though, a lot of the time it somewhat trivial things those things do add up. Institutional knowledge around things like how to deal with a finicky piece of specialized hardware, or what are the right words to convince your bosses boss to pay for you to go to a conference are pretty helpful. If you have an older “individual contributor” in your company that has been there for a while and hasn’t climbed the ladder, they might be a gold mine for that kinda info (they could also just be an ass)
wow I was not expecting to find something worthwhile in here but I will definitely be using that lol
- Alignment
- Scalable
- Circle back
If you use these regularly I KNOW the meeting you just booked me into should have been an email.
Huh why scalable? I feel like that applies to a lot of things, not just the corporate world.
I can’t remember last time I heard someone use it in a normal conversation, but in the corporate world I find it gets incredibly overused.
I guess it doesn’t bug me so much because it’s not so cringe and actually clearly communicates the point. We do in-house video editing at the company I work at, and when we talk about scaling we’re talking about making sure our processes hold when we add more and more people and increase our volume. It’s a growing company so I have to constantly talk about anticipating and buying things to make sure we don’t run into a wall with our growth.
I guess this is less pushing back and more asking what word you would rather see?
It’s fine is used properly, but management tends to use it to mean “magically gooder.”
I always hated “circle back” but I did get into using it ironically for a while.
“let’s just put a pin in that, and circle back to it later”
I wouldn’t actually mind “circle back” if it wasn’t just used as cover to kick the can down the road.
For me the guy who always said it was a former boss and he was good at actually circling back, but sometimes it felt more like “fuck that for now.”
Every meeting should be a fucking email.
I spend more time in meetings talking about the work I’m going to do, than doing the actual fucking work.
Bro I have my first “big company” job after working smaller places for over a decade. This feels so real. I’m dying.
I’m not in many meetings but when I am, I oversell and overpromise then immediately forget everything we discussed as soon as it ends.
Just send a fucking email.
I always want to do things by email instead of a meeting, but have to admit the meeting is often necessary. Of course it wouldn’t be if people could actually read and comprehend a detailed email and if they could also actually communicate information into writing without expecting you to be their minds enough to make sense of the incomplete vague phases they hurriedly type.
Unless there is a need for faster communication or because it covers a topic that people have strong emotions about and need to see how others respond so they don’t assume the other person’s feelings about something. There are some cases where humans, being social animals, do need some interaction beyond words to accomplish coordinated tasks.
The vast majority of meetings should be emails though. Just wish people actually read emails…
Touch base too
FUCK touching base that one’s the worst.
Synergy
Mostly because I have never heard it used correctly in the context of a copprate speech/talk.
Does it mean the same thing in corporate as in balatro
I don’t play Balatro but from what I know about it, the game probably uses it correctly, unless it has nothing to do with, like, playing two cards that work better when used together.
In corpo speak. I’ve seen it used as a synonym for “energy.” Like after the crowd quiets down, “Wow! The synergy in the air tonight is electric!” makes me cringe so hard.
In corpo speak. I’ve seen it used as a synonym for “energy.”
Wow that’s bad. You have my pity
Bio break.
I don’t think I have to elaborate on that one.
I like it because it’s so vague.
A nap is pretty biological! And nobody will ask why your bio break was an hour long.
This is a gamer term. I’ve never heard it in a business environment. Even as a IT engineer.
Lucky you, it’s all over my company.
I’ve never heard it in a business environment. Even as a IT engineer.
My friend manages a team of engineers and TAMs for massive companies that do stuff like make airplanes and manage phone networks and you know the names. They specifically produce a toolsuite and rent out pro-serv nerds to go to mammoth DCs and show people where they fucked up their cabling and double the throughput. Like, SO nerdy.
‘bio break’ is used a few times a day.
- Its unprofessional.
- Its gross. Saying something thats basically “gonna go take a dump” is unnecessary. Personally I don’t give two shits, but not everyone is as easygoing as me. Best to keep a professional hat on at work.
I did use it at work once and a single “Dude TMI” was all it took for me to stop. Online playing an MMO as a group is casual and often used as a trigger for a group break.
At work I just say “going to step away for a bit” and that’s all that’s needed.
Def all over the business world. It’s more polite than saying “okay, let’s have a 5 minute break from this meeting so everyone can piss and get some more coffee”
Thats not so much a corpo thing as a gamer thing IMO.
“AFK, Bio break” is much quicker to type.
Quicker than “brb, bathroom”?
“brb”
I never heard a gamer use “bio break” lol
Uh. It’s been used for YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAARS in MMOs.
^ usually just “brb bio” or “afk bio”, or just “bio”.
Its seriously old, like, “woot” or “LFG” levels of old.
Makes sense! I haven’t played a real-time MMO since RuneScape was new! Haha
Maybe it’s an American thing, because give never heard it used on European servers
“AFK, Bio
This is all you needed to type. Kids are too lazy to type the rest.
Yeah, hate this. To everyone saying it’s not corporate: or certainly is. I did B2B work for around a hundred corps through the one I worked at and I heard it at probably 70% of them.
It’s just the company trying to control literally every part of your life. Like who gives a shit what I do on my break? That, and you can’t get an “extra” break later saying you have to pee.
I work at a school and that one gets used sometimes. A lady that helps us develop programming said it quite often and my colleagues picked it up, I don’t use it myself.
Huh. I literally only know this from the context of mmo games.
TIL where that is from
I heard teachers use that term. 🤷♂️
Bio break.
My friend uses that all the time.
It means a pee break, a tea break, sometimes a ‘walk rover’ break. When meetings cross that 44-min mark, it’s break time.
fuck. i hate this one the most.
just say “break.” let everyone else decide for themselves if it needs to be biological in nature.
Referring to people, staff as resources. Nice and dehumanizing.
An old line manager referred to me as a resource in front of me once. I should have told her to fuck off.
I’ve heard “human capital” before. The soulless fucks make others a commodity by stripping the mere mention of their existance of its humanity.
There are many but I find “let’s double-click on that” particularly grating
I always reply with, “Or we could right-click on that to see our options”.
“I already three-finger-swiped down to minimize, sorry.”
I’ve never heard that one. What does that mean?
It means let’s take a closer look at a problem or project. Sounds like a Microsoftism
Cheers. I might use that one next time I’m in a meeting with the BAs haha
Leadership at the company I work for started saying “let’s double click that” to mean let’s go into more detail on that topic. Hate it.
Also “let’s take this offline” which just means let’s have a different meeting about it, it’ll still be online because we’re all remote.
Oh snap I should have read more comments before posting about “double clicking”. I hate it.
I’ve been hearing “velocity” a lot recently and that also makes me cringe.
The first one is an Abomination unto Nuggan. I’m OK with the second one being used in a meeting to divert a topic that needs covered but is getting off tack.
Also “let’s take this offline” which just means let’s have a different meeting about it, it’ll still be online because we’re all remote.
See, I would think that would mean for more individual discussion, as in “this isn’t relevant to this meeting, why don’t you and I talk about this after the meeting or at a later point.”
I think everyone has those coworkers who see meetings as an opportunity to ask about things with no relevance to anyone else in the room and makes everybody sit through 10 minutes (per discussion) about an issue that only pertains to them, instead of just going to the manager/whatever’s office in their own time to ask about their personal situation.
If it’s just to table it until another meeting, though, that doesn’t make any sense.
I think in many cases it results in separate discussion over slack, probably between managers but it still often ends up in a follow up meeting.
In my experience, “take this offline” means they don’t want to have the discussion in front of present company.
For example, mentioning anything less-than-ideal in a meeting in front of large groups. It’s basically a thinly veiled way to control morale through selective information.
I guess it depends on the company, so far mine it’s just making more meetings but keeping the current one focused. I’m fine with that, just hate the expression because it only makes sense if the follow up meeting was in person but we’re all remote
Take it offline as in turning it off? “We’re taking the service offline” or “Let’s talk about this face to face?”
Nope, all in a teams meeting discussing something, topic diverges or becomes too complicated and is slowing the meeting. Manager says “let’s take this offline” or “we’ll discuss offline”. Keeps the meeting focused but I hate the phrase. It’s not offline because it’ll just be another teams meeting!
Do you have a better way to phrase it? I usually see this to mean “focus on this topic rather than get distracted. We can discuss that later” … or I guess that’s a better way to phrase it
Let’s take that offline perhaps better as let’s discuss that separately/later.
Double clicking should just be something like “to go into more detail” or something. I get why it happens, easy and quick to say, i just find it so irritating.
Before “double clicking”, it was “drill down”. That was no better
I really wish they’d use drill down instead
let’s discuss that separately/later
That can come off as, “Not now dumbass.” The new slang comes off as, “Yeah, needs covered, and we will, but not now.”
As always though, it’s all in the tone.
I had one retail manager who constantly kept using “moving forward” for everything. It was so freaking grating!
I hate that I’ve learned to censor myself around these soulless void-skulls by replacing “problem” with “challenge.” No, I don’t “solve problems”, because to acknowledge something as a problem is negativity we just don’t need here at Emperor Clothing Inc! I “tackle challenges”!
It’s so freaking goofy and they just eat it up. Everything needs some sort of business-positive spin or they lose their minds and think you’re not being a “team player.”
Seeing opportunities everywhere. The same underlying mechanism is at work here as with challenge: Let’s replace the word for this bad thing with a different word that means something similar but positive. And then it looks like something good! I am very smart
I’ve got a manager that’s replaced problem with “opportunity to succeed”. Well, I’ve got 99 opportunities to succeed I guess.
I don’t mind lunch and learns. I get overtime for that, AND they buy me lunch. I’m either stuck near the office for an unproductive hour I don’t get paid for, or at my desk working on the same shit I was earlier for an extra hour.
But all the bullshit buzzwords attempting to paint employees standing up for themselves as bad things are obnoxious as hell: quiet quitting and the like
Yeah… bring your own sack lunch and it’s “voluntary”, so no OT. That the lunch and learn I’m familiar with anyway.
That’s them half assing it, not a knock on the actual thing.
Anything they use to replace the word “layoffs”.
Rightsizing
Fun sizing
Excising.
Can we “just double click on that” for a second?
shudders
I had a visceral reaction to this. If you’ve heard this in real life, my deepest sympathies.
What is it even supposed to mean?!
“Let’s explore that topic more”
What would a linux user say for this?
“Can we just dot slash that then chmod plus x that semicolon dot slash that for a second”A linux user would just throw a craft beer bottle.
Ew.
MVP - as in “minimum viable product”
More commonly known as the slop of a product or solution that’s being slinged to all the markets early on without adequate documentation, support, usability, scalability, standards or security.
“Corner the market” also deserves a disgusting mention.
Especially if the MVP ends up with a lot of scope creep for features that are not MVP
“Department / Corporate Retreat”
As in, “we’re holding our annual corporate retreat next Wednesday! It’ll be offsite, you’re all required to be there, and we’ll be spending the day having a 6 hour meeting about absolutely nothing, just like we do every year. But dont worry, when we’re done we’ll play a game no one wants to play, or do a craft no one wants to do, but everyone will pretend they enjoy it because if they don’t, they’re not ‘team players.’”
This year, our day-long-nothing-meeting was about how management is working to secure everyone’s jobs despite budget cuts, and we have nothing to worry about. Then we took a personality quiz that said I was a character from Stranger Things. Then the next day, they told me I’m getting laid off and have 3 months left at the company.
Fucking RETREATS are so relaxing.
That’s what you get for being such a Will
Actually, I’m a Nancy!
Briefcase wanker.
