Life under the Chief Doublespeak Officer

Unspecified ^ | Unspecified | By William Lutz

[vannrox]

LOL.

[Tijeras_Slim]

I broke my manager of this crappy biz-speak a couple years back when the buzz-word was "dual use". I called corporate HR and asked if it was true that so-and-so was aggressively recruiting hermaphrodites.

[Jaxter]

[aardvark1]

This would be really funny if it wasn't tragically true.

[AppyPappy]

You need to add "off-line" to the list. If a manager heard something he couldn't understand or a question he couldn't answer, he would ask to "take that discussion off-line". It was like filing things in the trash can.

We played these games until we quit making a profit. Then it was back to work.

[Liberty Valance]

Maybe i should "out-source" all this leaf raking
that needs to be done on my lawn.:o)

Liberty

[Fiddlstix]

Rofl
Bump

[IronJack]

Every office worker has at least one manager who uses these kinds of Trendspeak. Remember "The Big Picture?" "Market depth?" "Customer synergy?" My director's newest gimmick is "long pole in the tent." We keep a weekly score from his various staff meetings to see how often it comes up.

It's all part of the banality of corporate life.

[xJones]

LOL at your #3! That post definitely goes in e-mail.

[razorback-bert]

"long pole in the tent."

You're the sex business?

[DumpsterDiver]

Maybe i should "out-source" all this leaf raking that needs to be done on my lawn.

Pray for big gusts of wind and call it a Spiritually Induced Flora Relocation Program.

[Uncle Sausage]

Your earlier post about HP contained some winners, too:
"adopt and go" (read it twice and still have no idea what it means); "integration team" (you won't be fired, just "dis-integrated" I suppose); "product road maps" (never could refold one of them).

[Tijeras_Slim]

But does any of this matter AT THE END OF THE DAY?

[archy]

I worked as a Navy civilian employee in a program that had previously had a *Zero-defects* program. When it was announced that that would be changed to a Japanese-style *Quality Circle* instead and that input from those of us on the shop floor was sincerely required, I signed up for the program.

In the early meetings, we were told we were expected to report fellow employees turning out substandard work or otherwise *negatively contributing* to the projects we'd been assigned, having reached a critical point to the extent that we were working 6 days a week, arriving at work before sunup and leaving after sundown, in a windowless high-security building. Accordingly, tempers became shorter and shorter, and there were at least two suicides of workers in that period.

When I pointed out that becoming a company snitch wasn't a part of the quality circles the way the Japanese practiced them, and asked if our QCs would have the authority to make meaningful improvements in the workplace enviornment and remove deadwood supervisors and managers who were more responsible for *negative contributions* than the grunt workers, as some Japanese QCs have, I was told that would certainly not be the case, since civil service hiring and transfer regulations ruled that sort of thing. So I asked exactly how the new program was going to differ from the old one.

Oh, there won't be any real changes, other than a drive for scrap and machine tool downtime reduction. It's just a new name for the old *Zero Defects* program....

We had an 800-number posted for reporting waste and fraud against the government. I called it, and reported our ¾-million dollar *Quality Circle.* Two months later it was gone....

-archy-/-

[wimpycat]

My company just went through a "reorganization" in order to "streamline" our operations. Thank God I wasn't "rightsized", because I'm a "multi-tasker" and a "team player".

[wimpycat]

Please be prepared to utilize your assets to facilitate synergy and to change the paradigm.

[antaresequity]

There is a bank right now that is advertising on television: (We dont call them "Loan Officers", we call them "Financial Advocates

Really dumb...and insulting to treat present and future customers with such a transparent tactic...

[Poohbah]

My family recently re-engineered itself into a team-based organization. Our first strategic initiative was to outsource Thanksgiving and Christmas Dinner in order to facilitate a synergistic refocusing on our core competencies.

[Centurion2000]

bump .... this looks like a corporate letter I once got :)

[maxwell]

"long pole in the tent."

Huh... Thinks right much of himself, don't he...