Jesus fucking Christ. This was excellently written and horribly real.

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?’

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?”

How do I delete someone else's comment.

Lol

The only time I hear rightsizing is for cloud resources. I've never heard of it in human resources. That sucks.

I call this one oral tradition, it always gets a chuckle

wow I was not expecting to find something worthwhile in here but I will definitely be using that lol

This is a gamer term. I've never heard it in a business environment. Even as a IT engineer.

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.

Thats not so much a corpo thing as a gamer thing IMO.

"AFK, Bio break" is much quicker to type.

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

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.

I don’t use that, I usually just say I’m going to go grab some water but it’s better than saying “brb ima go take a wicked piss”. That being said, I’d respect the hell out of anyone who said that

fuck. i hate this one the most.

just say “break.” let everyone else decide for themselves if it needs to be biological in nature.

I always hated “circle back” but I did get into using it ironically for a while.

Touch base too

Can we put a pin in that and circle back later? Maybe parking lot it and we can discuss it at the end of the call

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.

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.

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.

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.

Take it offline as in turning it off? "We're taking the service offline" or "Let's talk about this face to face?"

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

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.

Does it mean the same thing in corporate as in balatro

I’ve got a manager that’s replaced problem with “opportunity to succeed”. Well, I’ve got 99 opportunities to succeed I guess.

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

Dance, monkey, dance!

Rightsizing

They do, the family just happens to be dysfunctional and abusive.

That's what you get for being such a Will

"No"

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?

I work hard and I play hard. Not here to play.

Everybody dance now!

Especially if the MVP ends up with a lot of scope creep for features that are not MVP

Congratulations, you win both this thread and my disgust. This is literally every company in software development these days.

Take your upvote and choke on it.

"Oh yeah? What's my name then?"

I had a visceral reaction to this. If you've heard this in real life, my deepest sympathies.

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"

I have to say, I have used the phrase "Drill Down" to refer to the same thing? Does it cause the same reaction?

Ew.

Unrelated but I only recently realised that when someone says they believe in family values it means they want to impose their definition of "family" on everyone else.

From an employer I guess when they refer to family they're really referring to a bond beyond work, which basically means they're expecting more from you than you're paid for?

#1 toxic workplace red flag

I fell for this once. Thought it sounded great. Everyone at that place hated each other, constantly spread rumors and sabotaged each other's work.

Next biz bro bestseller: "Leverage the power of your bowels to produce fertiliser that promotes growth"

I mean, yeah, but actually streamlining things is something I like. I work on helicoptersn so example:

Aircraft is broken because of a faulty component. So the maintainer has to go and sign on to our grossly over-bloated computer (which can take anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes to start up), look up the relevant illustrated parts breakdown and download it (because they've moved everything to the cloud from our previous local servers) which runs through our exceptionally bottle-necked security system (seriously, usually ~50-100kbps download on a 100Mbps connection), find the part, log into a different system to get the national standard number and see what type it is to find what system to look in to see if we have it, look up the part location. Look up the maintenance procedure card (which is not classified) from the same place as the manual, download it at 100kbps, figure out the operational check for the replaced component is not in the card but in a separate maintenance manual, go back into that system and download that manual, find the ops check. Try to print out both the card and the ops check from whatever printer wants to work today. Fill out a requisition form, grab the part, and now you can start the job. Basically, add approximately an hour of work to any task for this nonsense.

Streamlined: Have a standalone computer that is not connected to the internet, is regularly updated via approved external hard drive with the latest Maintenance Procedure Cards and manuals, pre-filled requisition forms (with locations) for parts, lists of consumable components (like gaskets) for each repair, connected to a standalone printer hardwired to the standalone computer. Pull up card, manual, form, and ops check and print in 5 minutes.

Finding time wasters that only serve to frustrate workers and finding ways to cut those time wasters out makes the workers and the managers happy, assuming the people doing the job want to do the job well and quickly (we all want to be here, so that describes our hangar deck).

I'm a fan of streamlining.

Yeah.... bring your own sack lunch and it's "voluntary", so no OT. That the lunch and learn I'm familiar with anyway.

"vibes"

“High energy multitasker”

“Detail oriented”

“Fast paced environment”

Translates to: “You will be simultaneously micromanaged and expected to know everything with no prior documentation, and you will be underpaid for your efforts. We also have no organization whatsoever :)))”

We’re like family is a HUGE red flag for me. I had a boss use that as a selling feature to get me to work there. I had come from a place that really was like a family, a nice one, where we all really cared about each other. Turns out she meant it in the unpaid slave labour way. You can’t make a group of people a “family”, it has to grow that way Crystal. And not through pain and suffering!

Typical double click request is as follows:

Manager: Leadership wants a "double click" on the numbers on slide 8.
Doer: What do they want to see.
M: Well they wanted to see more about the numbers on slide 8 they thought it was interesting.
D: What number? Interesting how?
M: They want a double click? Does that work? How long will that take?
D: ummm a week?

Sorry, I run KDE.

This one comes from Excels Pivot tables, where you double click to see the source data, but it got picked up and bastardized

My thoughts exactly...Every time I walk by the door that says "server room."

This phrase is currently running riot at my work. Leadership have just created a new "North Star" so that they can Kingdom Build and leave their mark; years of progress on other projects are being thrown on a mini-bonfire of the vanities.

“That’s a big ask” drives me crazy. I’ve been hearing it everywhere lately. When did ‘ask’ become a noun?

Tabling means to save for later. You put it in the table to deal with it another time.

Does “tabling” mean putting a subject on the table or taking it off?

Depends on if you follow the British meaning or the US American one.

This one works in my company. If you have a ticket with no actionable items (you can't do anything to improve it or it is complete), then you use that lack of actionable items to make a timer to close it, or pressure the team you're waiting on.

IME, when they talk about sense of urgency, they want you to cut corners and rush through everything, but somehow make no mistakes. Usually said when you've been assigned double the normal workload for your position.

You can’t fight here, this is the war room

Lmao!

I'd ask if they want me to get rid of it.

I also have a colleague who refers to Apple computers as MAC, and has at least once asked for MAC addresses of some devices when what she meant was IP addresses last associated with the devices.

I suppose it could be used in the sense of a dog flushing out game for the hunters - to make something hidden visible so it can be dealt with.

I can't think of a sentence in which it doesn't sound heavy handed.

Please effectuate the reports. Accounting will effectuate the invoice. HR has effectuated the hire.

I’ll take “myself” over using “I” as a direct object any day of the week.

But specifically "How could we use AI?". If you dont know you don't need it. Also looking st you big tech.

I mean that one is kinda funny. "Project Sloth" might have worked a bit better but been too on the nose.

Nice. I'll drive alignment on this value with my directs. I'll status you tomorrow.

I used to have a coworker who would also say things like "I'll ping you after the meeting" and I'd chuckle because it sounded so stupid.

One day he asked me why I was smirking and I lied and told him "You know what 'pinging' means, right? It's the act of putting a metal rod in your urethra and tapping it with a tuning fork."

He NEVER said it again.

What do you have against massages? I find them relaxing.

This sounds like an Eric Andre sketch

“Good catch!”

We 'nice catch' each other all day. We celebrate when people find dumb shit, especially when it's our dumb shit. We positively reinforce that natural code review and checking one another in the name of safety.

But I work with a bunch of pros on some private-possum shit, and that's culture they've preserved from before the 2005 dark ages began. If you don't know what positive reinforcement sounds like, I get it. Learning's fun.

I haaaaate this one! It's lessons ffs lessons.

Because it's new and awful. Also implies that these massive new work is just a simple tasks. 0/10

I fucking hate “strategy” because upper management loves to use that word to describe EVERYTHING. Yeah, no shit there’s a strategy. If there weren’t, what the fuck are we all doing? Random bullshit until something sticks to the wall?

Used by spineless weasels when it something that they could have avoided, or can still be solved but they are too scared or stupid to say anything.

I relate to this so hard.

literally based

Sometimes I say this in a glib or sarcastic or ironic kind of way. It's not an "every meeting" kind of thing.

I'm not a manager but maybe a supervisor I guess.

I'd respond with "venture" every time.

After a round of layoffs 😭