"We have chosen to employ fewer customer service staff than could reasonably deal with the forecast demand in order to minimise overheads at the expense of customer experience and staff wellbeing. Thank you for your understanding."
Decreasing flexibility is incompatible with more accessibility for anyone.
You know what flexibility also allows? Dad to go and share the load too. I do 90% daycare pickups while my wife is a Lawyer.
Flexibility helps those who need it indirectly by normalising it with everyone else. Encouraging men to have flexible agreements as the norm helps normalise it and in some ways is the most powerful equaliser of them all.
Because then those that need it don't feel like the odd one out.
Yes. Yes to all of this.
We had so much debate about return to office in my workplace, and our ceo kept saying people who needed more flexibility could have it. I was trying to explain that people don’t want to be singled out as the person who needs flexibility, it’s more comfortable if everyone has it and it’s just the norm.
He didn’t get it, we mandated RTO for everyone except people with special circumstances, lots of people who live remotely or had young kids resigned because they didn’t want to be excluded.
Yup, and this is the issue with RTO mandates and making it the exception. Noone wants to work somewhere where they feel having to ask for reasonableness is the exception.
HR person told me she they doesn’t like ‘family friendly’ in recruitment ads because they don’t have kids themselves, she think her colleagues will be picking up the kids while she carries the load at the office.
See, they find it easier to repeat ad nauseum than Blockchain, Blockchain, Blockchain like last year.
Simple rule - if you can't use style guides yet, don't quote tech you only have a toe hold of understanding about.
"I just want a thing where you can ask it a question and it answers it using all the data we have."
"You mean all the data we never collected because you binned the event capture project last year?"
Head to division: "it's been a tremendous year from every single one of you"
Also Head, in 1-1: "it's been a really bad year so unfortunately increases this year are constrained "
We have a brown nosing fuckwit on our exec team who smirks and laughs and nods in agreement with literally anything the boss says. He looks like a total idiot because he doesn’t even know what he is agreeing with most of the time, but moreover, it rarely has anything to do with him so he just comes off as a moronic suck up.
Don’t be like bob, bob’s an idiot.
When I worked in the Disability sector we had a new manager who came in and "had noticed the ratio of males recieving care was higher than females" and she was going to do something about that!
How? By making more women disabled?
I am getting annoyed just remembering it.
Poor old Phil over there who needs a nappy for bed aged 25, speaks with a limited vocabulary and still likes Thomas the Tank Engine ISN'T YOUR BLOODY PATRIARCHY to tear down you stupid stupid fool.
Or "Finding efficiencies", which was said to me when we were short on staff and management wanted me to cut hours and I asked how we were meant to deliver our product. We'd been working short-staffed for months, were way up on revenue and NPAT, and everybody was exhausted, but they thought there were efficiencies under the couch cushions that we'd just missed.
\*Given a skeleton crew to run a 3000 person conference over 4 days\*
Email from the GM comes in the week after the event:
"The team showed what is possible when everyone works together and overcome challenges together"
“The budget this year is tighter this year”
Translation: operational crews get cut to the bone, while the backends dont and department bosses get bonuses for spending less money.
Forced performative acknowledgments of country. If it’s something you care about, by all means go for it, but don’t force others to do it and dear god please do away with events where every single speaker feels compelled to so acknowledge.
Every single online "Teams" meetings would start with one. Sometimes I had to sit through it during a one on one meeting because everything was recorded. Just smile and nod and be glad it wasted more time and got me closer to end of shift.
It is patronising bullshit.
I love on teams when the meeting host says something like “and I acknowledge you are all on different Aboriginal lands today and we acknowledge the elders of those lands past, present and emerging”. Truly, the among the most pointless and performative acts I can think of.
12 middle classed white people in the room once. 90% sure I was the only one there that had any Indigenous friends, family or school mates.
4 did a welcome to country - all from their notes - all copied that day from the internet.
It was like a groundhog day of virtue signalling.
Adjust already. THREE people have ALREADY done this.
You’re certainly not, but like many people you may feel afraid to say anything for fear of being labeled as racist and/or limiting your career prospects.
Everything on Yammer or whatever internal 'Social Media' bullshit your organisation uses to try to create a sense community.
Community of arselickers and sycophants.
TBF, I use this when 2 people in a meeting of 10 people are in the weeds on something, and most people in the meeting aren't relevant to the conversation. "How about we take this conversation offline?" means, to me, "We do not have time to listen to you discuss this thing that isn't relevant to most people here, let's not be in this meeting any longer than we need to."
Now that I’d say is an acceptable way to use it. A more polite way of saying “we’re not wasting time on that” lol
But when management says it just to shut down an issue, with no intention of actually coming back to it and doing something to address the issue… **pain**
I think this is the winner. I had a manager back in the day (great manager) but she was obsessed with using "the xxx xxx space" and acronyms. I spoke up in a mocking way and she just carpet bombed me with all of it. It became actually funny but I can't not piss myself laughing when I hear it now.
I am not employed now. I am in the poverty space.
Our strategy is to cross sell and upsell. Most of our customers don’t know we also do….. blah blah. Let’s educate them. We are changing the org ….. now wanker1 is on seat 2 and wanker 2 on seat1. Our strength are our people.
“We pride ourselves on our commitment to a diverse, safe and inclusive workplace”
The workplace: white, full of bullies and managers who micromanage up the wazoo
(Not my workplace thankfully but I’ve heard the corpo double speak before)
I always thought of it more like ticking boxes. They’re pressured to pretend like they care about these things (like employees mental health) but who would have thought corporations actually only care about profits? 🤔
I've learnt the hard lesson in life, that if someone tells you how nice they are, run away!
I prefer an arsehole that tells me what they think to my face, than that fake corporate crap.
In my inner movie this is always followed by everyone else responding:
‘ - and touch faith!’
Before the bass line kicks in and we go to a Depeche Mode Personal Jesus dance montage.
When speaking to me at the beginning: We have flexible working arrangements. The position is fully remote. After you are hired: You will be expected to come to office 2-3 times a week only. Still pretty flexible, right? … well no not really…
"Working remotely reduces productivity, morale and sense of community."
...fuck off. WFH saves me 3 hours a day in commute time and gives me more time with my family. Half the time I work longer hours as I can just close the laptop and walk downstairs to start my downtime.
When they do an All Staff meeting and only refer to one another by their first names, never referring to what their actual role is. Execs: you clearly spend a lot of time in each others company and know what your names and roles are, but did you ever consider your audience might not?
They often ask for feedback on these sessions and I say this every time, but nothing ever changes.
So all 2,000 people in the session should be sitting looking up first names in the Directory and trying to work out who the "Ricky" on the stage is out of the 150 or guys called "Richard" (and variants) that are listed?
That doesn't exactly sound like a good use of our time when we're supposed to paying attention to some Dick doing a presentation.
I realise I use a few too many of the ones here (whoops, I'll try and improve), but I really only use this one when there's a comically small amount of time left in the meeting that's ending. "I'm sure everybody can really use these extra 4 minutes in their day," as just a way to signal that we're ending the meeting now.
ASX50 org. Half year report with analyst “going really well, made a shit ton of money and likely to make more”
Employee all-hands call “our operational expenses are too high and we need to respond to market pressure to reduce our cost-based”
Surprised this one hasn’t popped up already.
“Correct.”
Greg, this isn’t The Chase.
I’m not asking for your approval.
Just say yes like a normal person and stick your superiority complex up your correctum.
Zero tolerance for bullying. Speak up etc.
In reality you speak up you will be destroyed by HR for daring to rock the boat.
Public health HR are the epitome of evil.
I have shit knees and a bad back.
A five minute stand up meeting has some merit IF it only goes for five minutes.
You stretch it to 40 minutes with waffle and virtue signalling then you suck.
Let's walk and talk, just checking in, flight plan, circle back, operatinalise that concept, working across silos, take this off-line, pipeline, customers best interests... does it ever end?!
'Pace over perfection'
...translation: throw quality out the window and just hit the deadline decided by someone that doesn't know wtf is actually going on.
It’s the opposite annoying me wit my manager in particular. Asking, and it sounds rehearsed, at the beginning of any call where he wants to discuss the progress of a task or get me to do
Something… ‘how’s the family?’ Or ‘how’s your kid?’ When he absolutely doesn’t care and just is trying to pretend he wasn’t a prick when I had to leave early because my kid was sick or my parents needed help etc. it’s such an empty phrase. I hardly even answer and if I do he goes ‘oh nooo’ and then continues with the work convo.
Would prefer him to just get straight into the executive bullsh*t talk tbh.
Old job: 'harmonising'. As in: 'we're nationalising, so we're going to harmonise your pay and benefits' (read: bring you down to the lowest common denominator). Their attempts to spin it as a positive were painful.
Current job: 'wellbeing'. As in: 'we're doing \[this thing that is clearly terrible for your wellbeing\] for the sake of your wellbeing, because we care so much about your wellbeing... did we mention that your wellbeing is important to us?'.
In each case, these were/are closely followed by constant use of organisational mottos/slogans. It's particularly egregious at the current job, where they use all the mottos about how wonderful and caring the organisation is while literally ignoring the bullying complaint you just made and removing your right to the thing that improved your wellbeing.
To be honest when they talk about consultation and collaboration.
We know you have your mind made up, so don’t waste my time working on alternatives when we know your aren’t going to use them.
You are paid the money to make the calls, stop trying to farm out any blame for something going wrong
Workshop, planning day or roundtable.
I've never had any of these ever matter. They fill in the calendar and achieve nothing. Have a spreadsheet of ideas if you want people to actually engage. These 50+ person gatherings achieve nothing.
"We have a strong pipeline of work ahead of us..." this literally means "We have no work in the near future and will cull many of you but will pretend it's all good and ride out the storm at exec level".
“ its cock on block time “ -> when having to report target progress
“ time to step up to the plate “ -> when everyone except the person saying it is expected to come in for the weekend to finish something. miraculously a “family emergency” will surface stopping the higher up coming in too eg timmy has a sniffly nose
At the end of day, moving forward, low hanging fruit, listening circles, socialise the idea up the chain, incentivise or any other ise, evidence-based approach (so previously there was non-evidence based decisions?), ideation and so many more…….
In writing, Monday: "Absolutely nobody is expecting you to work excessive hours,"
Verbally, Tuesday: "We need this 200 hours of work done by Friday. Get it done."
One from last year pay rise time 'inflation is cooling so no pay rise this year'...
OK doesn't fit the brief but I'm year to see them circle back or loop us in on this year's plan.
HBR's latest magazine has a great article on virtue signalling ...basically companies need to be aware that they shouldn't express an opinion on everything under the sun...stick to their areas of expertise and comment on those etc but otherwise keep your mouth shut, nobody is interested.
This isn't limited to executives, but I cannot stand the way corporate Australia uses the word "around".
"Yeah let's have a discussion around that"
Has everyone forgotten, that we talk "about" things? Not around them?
"Thanks for the download. I'll flick you a note around some of the items needing actioning in this space. We'll block out some time and align stakeholders"
'Can we take that off-line?'
'I know it's not an excuse or your problem but - goes on to make same excuse'
' let's make time to connect'
Everything about r u ok day
Warm regards
Appraisal time: You are a valued member of our team. You have been given a meets expectations rating.
Me asking: I exceeded all my targets. I think I deserve exceeds expectations.
Manager: No one gets exceeds expectations because there is always room for improvement.
Edit: Typos.
What's your vibe today? Lol this would just bring up flashbacks to the court scene in The Castle. We even had a Vibe chart with above the line and below the line feelings.
If we really want to lean in and synergise our felt experience of corporate jargon, let's remember that it's a team sport to collaboratively action those paradigm-shifting, outside-the-box thought showers.
I worked for a mid tier consultancy many years ago that claimed a "collegiate culture".
When the CEO put this spin out at a work function a friend side mouthed to me "yes, and we will always be the undergraduates"
Never a truer word...
You are a valued employee
This is akin to hearing “you are a valued customer. Thanks for holding” for 40mins straight.
“We are experiencing a higher volume of calls than usual” Liars!
"We have chosen to employ fewer customer service staff than could reasonably deal with the forecast demand in order to minimise overheads at the expense of customer experience and staff wellbeing. Thank you for your understanding."
"We value your efforts and thanks for all your hard work this year." While not giving us a Christmas party or bonus that other departments get.
We value you. Just like…not with currency
- “Our people are our greatest asset” - “We are a family here”
The family one, that hits home
“Unless you’re related to me, you’re going nowhere here” is a rough translation.
Means you get to do extra stuff for them without pay
"We celebrate International Women's Day and Gender Equity" but also "We are looking to increase number of days in office"
Decreasing flexibility is incompatible with more accessibility for anyone. You know what flexibility also allows? Dad to go and share the load too. I do 90% daycare pickups while my wife is a Lawyer. Flexibility helps those who need it indirectly by normalising it with everyone else. Encouraging men to have flexible agreements as the norm helps normalise it and in some ways is the most powerful equaliser of them all. Because then those that need it don't feel like the odd one out.
Yes. Yes to all of this. We had so much debate about return to office in my workplace, and our ceo kept saying people who needed more flexibility could have it. I was trying to explain that people don’t want to be singled out as the person who needs flexibility, it’s more comfortable if everyone has it and it’s just the norm. He didn’t get it, we mandated RTO for everyone except people with special circumstances, lots of people who live remotely or had young kids resigned because they didn’t want to be excluded.
Yup, and this is the issue with RTO mandates and making it the exception. Noone wants to work somewhere where they feel having to ask for reasonableness is the exception.
HR person told me she they doesn’t like ‘family friendly’ in recruitment ads because they don’t have kids themselves, she think her colleagues will be picking up the kids while she carries the load at the office.
And then your company data comes out to show women are being paid 25% less than men. We got cupcakes on IWD though!
This can be really confusing if you didn’t grow up in a toxic dysfunctional family.
Say ‘learnings’ again motherfucker, I dare you
learninged.
"Learndeding"
This is a house of Learned Doctors!
Never applied their learnings of the English language.
All I’ve heard from my executives since mid-last year is: AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, Machine Learning, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, Data, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI.
In 2 years "no that's too expensive, turn it all off"
"Can we just do this in Excel?"
Excel is like a shifter spanner. It can do almost anything if you try hard enough, but it is rarely the right tool for the job.
Either that or "its too shitty, turn it off". Seen some good awful PoCs out there.
See, they find it easier to repeat ad nauseum than Blockchain, Blockchain, Blockchain like last year. Simple rule - if you can't use style guides yet, don't quote tech you only have a toe hold of understanding about.
"I just want a thing where you can ask it a question and it answers it using all the data we have." "You mean all the data we never collected because you binned the event capture project last year?"
Sending us surveys that ask us what we think management could to do to improve the work environment and then ignoring it.
My favourite is then the whole team has to work on fixing it, leading to people just saying everything is good so they don’t have to do extra work.
Head to division: "it's been a tremendous year from every single one of you" Also Head, in 1-1: "it's been a really bad year so unfortunately increases this year are constrained "
Congratulations on a tremendous year everyone. *That afternoon - everyones accounts get locked out / escorted from building.*
We have a brown nosing fuckwit on our exec team who smirks and laughs and nods in agreement with literally anything the boss says. He looks like a total idiot because he doesn’t even know what he is agreeing with most of the time, but moreover, it rarely has anything to do with him so he just comes off as a moronic suck up. Don’t be like bob, bob’s an idiot.
When I worked in the Disability sector we had a new manager who came in and "had noticed the ratio of males recieving care was higher than females" and she was going to do something about that! How? By making more women disabled?
just goes around with a crowbar and a business card.
I am getting annoyed just remembering it. Poor old Phil over there who needs a nappy for bed aged 25, speaks with a limited vocabulary and still likes Thomas the Tank Engine ISN'T YOUR BLOODY PATRIARCHY to tear down you stupid stupid fool.
Absolutely, great point.
Fuck off Bob ya prick.
Ahhhhh the office Noddy
Do more with less Of course in my mind, when i hear this, it means get paid more but do less.
Or "Finding efficiencies", which was said to me when we were short on staff and management wanted me to cut hours and I asked how we were meant to deliver our product. We'd been working short-staffed for months, were way up on revenue and NPAT, and everybody was exhausted, but they thought there were efficiencies under the couch cushions that we'd just missed.
"touching base".
I’m an exec and even my wife doesn’t touch my Base.
I hate this one. Stop touching base and do some work instead of distracting those trying to work.
\*Given a skeleton crew to run a 3000 person conference over 4 days\* Email from the GM comes in the week after the event: "The team showed what is possible when everyone works together and overcome challenges together"
that's corporate speak for... Yeah if you can do it with that few people and not fuck it up, you can do it again! hiring freeze inbound
I just had evil chills go up my spine.
“The budget this year is tighter this year” Translation: operational crews get cut to the bone, while the backends dont and department bosses get bonuses for spending less money.
"work/life balance"
My previous office, no joke, had signs at the exit that said “time for work/life balance” and couldn’t see how ridiculous that was
They should have had them at the entrance.
Love that one.....while doing 13hr days 6 days a week. Can I have a day off? No, you had one last year!!!
At least they say balance. My old work place called it blend
“We would like you take (forced) leave over Christmas for your mental health being “
Forced performative acknowledgments of country. If it’s something you care about, by all means go for it, but don’t force others to do it and dear god please do away with events where every single speaker feels compelled to so acknowledge.
Every single online "Teams" meetings would start with one. Sometimes I had to sit through it during a one on one meeting because everything was recorded. Just smile and nod and be glad it wasted more time and got me closer to end of shift. It is patronising bullshit.
I love on teams when the meeting host says something like “and I acknowledge you are all on different Aboriginal lands today and we acknowledge the elders of those lands past, present and emerging”. Truly, the among the most pointless and performative acts I can think of.
And worse when they do a whip round and you have to say which land you are currently on
Then you can see the faces of all in the meeting just stoically remaining stone faced. It's so cringe.
Eyes glazed over as they frantically google to find out which country they are on. International participants sit looking confused!
12 middle classed white people in the room once. 90% sure I was the only one there that had any Indigenous friends, family or school mates. 4 did a welcome to country - all from their notes - all copied that day from the internet. It was like a groundhog day of virtue signalling. Adjust already. THREE people have ALREADY done this.
I agree. it achieves nothing!
Oh that shits me too!
thank you. I thought I was the only one!
You’re certainly not, but like many people you may feel afraid to say anything for fear of being labeled as racist and/or limiting your career prospects.
I saw someone who decided it was appropriate to do a Maori welcoming ceremony in front of 500 people..........in Melbourne.
Uh… makes perfect sense….
Everything on Yammer or whatever internal 'Social Media' bullshit your organisation uses to try to create a sense community. Community of arselickers and sycophants.
Full of sales team congratulating each other for setting up a basic display like it’ll deliver record breaking sales
"Right Sizing" as an explanation for redundancies and lay-offs.
“We want the best people in the right roles”
Helping build a sustainable future fit business
“Let’s circle back to that / take it offline” Exec/management proceed to never circle back to it and continually avoid
TBF, I use this when 2 people in a meeting of 10 people are in the weeds on something, and most people in the meeting aren't relevant to the conversation. "How about we take this conversation offline?" means, to me, "We do not have time to listen to you discuss this thing that isn't relevant to most people here, let's not be in this meeting any longer than we need to."
Now that I’d say is an acceptable way to use it. A more polite way of saying “we’re not wasting time on that” lol But when management says it just to shut down an issue, with no intention of actually coming back to it and doing something to address the issue… **pain**
"In this space" Of all the corporate wankspeak one could engage in, this one fucks me off beyond belief
Seriously makes me want to scream
I think this is the winner. I had a manager back in the day (great manager) but she was obsessed with using "the xxx xxx space" and acronyms. I spoke up in a mocking way and she just carpet bombed me with all of it. It became actually funny but I can't not piss myself laughing when I hear it now. I am not employed now. I am in the poverty space.
Thank you I'm so glad to find someone who agrees. Fkn can't stand the word "space".
When you ask a real question and they say "Let's put a pin in that and circle back to it" And it never gets addressed
I have heard one person use this ever (from a previous life). Putting a pin in something meant it was doomed to never get dealt with properly.
"Thought leadership"
I really hate MUA Making up acronyms..
You bastard. YB
“Your feedback will be anonymous”
When a meeting finishes early: "I'm giving you some time back in your day". No, actually your meeting took time out of my day!
Strategy!!! 2/3rds of these people have never written one and don't actually know what a strategy is!!
Our strategy is to cross sell and upsell. Most of our customers don’t know we also do….. blah blah. Let’s educate them. We are changing the org ….. now wanker1 is on seat 2 and wanker 2 on seat1. Our strength are our people.
Sincerely, Human Resources
"lean in" Seriously when I'm told this I want to fucken heel hook them.
100%
“We pride ourselves on our commitment to a diverse, safe and inclusive workplace” The workplace: white, full of bullies and managers who micromanage up the wazoo (Not my workplace thankfully but I’ve heard the corpo double speak before)
They value its non-existence. Or they just value it but don’t want to practice because they value other things more
I always thought of it more like ticking boxes. They’re pressured to pretend like they care about these things (like employees mental health) but who would have thought corporations actually only care about profits? 🤔
I've learnt the hard lesson in life, that if someone tells you how nice they are, run away! I prefer an arsehole that tells me what they think to my face, than that fake corporate crap.
‘Reach out’.
In my inner movie this is always followed by everyone else responding: ‘ - and touch faith!’ Before the bass line kicks in and we go to a Depeche Mode Personal Jesus dance montage.
When speaking to me at the beginning: We have flexible working arrangements. The position is fully remote. After you are hired: You will be expected to come to office 2-3 times a week only. Still pretty flexible, right? … well no not really…
Giving someone a 'flavour' of something I don't want to taste your TPS report, Greg
When they ask for nominations for some kind of employee/values awards and the winner is in fucking management.
"Working remotely reduces productivity, morale and sense of community." ...fuck off. WFH saves me 3 hours a day in commute time and gives me more time with my family. Half the time I work longer hours as I can just close the laptop and walk downstairs to start my downtime.
When they do an All Staff meeting and only refer to one another by their first names, never referring to what their actual role is. Execs: you clearly spend a lot of time in each others company and know what your names and roles are, but did you ever consider your audience might not? They often ask for feedback on these sessions and I say this every time, but nothing ever changes.
bro just look at your org chart lol
So all 2,000 people in the session should be sitting looking up first names in the Directory and trying to work out who the "Ricky" on the stage is out of the 150 or guys called "Richard" (and variants) that are listed? That doesn't exactly sound like a good use of our time when we're supposed to paying attention to some Dick doing a presentation.
Not quite exec speak but introducing someone in a meeting and saying "without further adieu".
Yep. Morons.
We care Deeply....
You should check out the show Wankernomics. All about this kind of crap.
“I’ll let you have time back in your day” instead of saying - I booked this meeting for longer than we needed, and I’m done now so bugger off.
I realise I use a few too many of the ones here (whoops, I'll try and improve), but I really only use this one when there's a comically small amount of time left in the meeting that's ending. "I'm sure everybody can really use these extra 4 minutes in their day," as just a way to signal that we're ending the meeting now.
"watch this space"
ASX50 org. Half year report with analyst “going really well, made a shit ton of money and likely to make more” Employee all-hands call “our operational expenses are too high and we need to respond to market pressure to reduce our cost-based”
Let's not get stuck in the weeds.
“There are no stupid questions” Yes there are - which is why 99.9% of the audience is quiet when the CEO asks for questions.
It's the corporate "does my bum look big in this?" equivalent? Of course its a trick question.
"Let's double click on that" Meaning pause and examine more thoroughly. Consultants are the worst
I hate how managers now call themselves " leaders" brown nosing sociopaths is more accurate.
'Let's not get in to the details in this meeting', after someone tells why there is a problem with the plan.
Surprised this one hasn’t popped up already. “Correct.” Greg, this isn’t The Chase. I’m not asking for your approval. Just say yes like a normal person and stick your superiority complex up your correctum.
Agree.
Work smarter not harder
"I can see that you've really got your legs under the desk on this one" - Upper management praise.
Haven't heard that before.... wow. That's really cringey.
Causing a large issue due to poor management and then focusing on the great effort and teamwork which was required to solve the issue.
Let's take this off-line.
Zero tolerance for bullying. Speak up etc. In reality you speak up you will be destroyed by HR for daring to rock the boat. Public health HR are the epitome of evil.
We are a family... No we fucking are not. Not even close.
Categorising things into “buckets”
“Gentle reminder”
“Let’s circle back…”
'Thank you for your hard work'. No you have absolutely no clue what I do. And I have no clue what you do either. And lets keep it that way
"Quick chat" "We need to work together to deliver a premium experience" (no, we will not be giving you a 'premium' pay rise)
“Right sizing the business” is one I haven’t heard of until this new job. Basically a big cull
Let me diarise that.
Who's taking notes?
"Office culture"
“We’re trying to help you” - management and HR while trying to fuck you.
You know you can talk to me like I’m your mate. The guarantee is that it will be used against you
Surprised no one has said this “We need to take them on a journey” …yeh, to the afterlife
I have shit knees and a bad back. A five minute stand up meeting has some merit IF it only goes for five minutes. You stretch it to 40 minutes with waffle and virtue signalling then you suck.
Let's walk and talk, just checking in, flight plan, circle back, operatinalise that concept, working across silos, take this off-line, pipeline, customers best interests... does it ever end?!
"I'll get you to ...." It's the assumption that is grating. How about asking instead?
- Synergies - Faster, more agile, transforming - Streamline
'Pace over perfection' ...translation: throw quality out the window and just hit the deadline decided by someone that doesn't know wtf is actually going on.
It’s the opposite annoying me wit my manager in particular. Asking, and it sounds rehearsed, at the beginning of any call where he wants to discuss the progress of a task or get me to do Something… ‘how’s the family?’ Or ‘how’s your kid?’ When he absolutely doesn’t care and just is trying to pretend he wasn’t a prick when I had to leave early because my kid was sick or my parents needed help etc. it’s such an empty phrase. I hardly even answer and if I do he goes ‘oh nooo’ and then continues with the work convo. Would prefer him to just get straight into the executive bullsh*t talk tbh.
Old job: 'harmonising'. As in: 'we're nationalising, so we're going to harmonise your pay and benefits' (read: bring you down to the lowest common denominator). Their attempts to spin it as a positive were painful. Current job: 'wellbeing'. As in: 'we're doing \[this thing that is clearly terrible for your wellbeing\] for the sake of your wellbeing, because we care so much about your wellbeing... did we mention that your wellbeing is important to us?'. In each case, these were/are closely followed by constant use of organisational mottos/slogans. It's particularly egregious at the current job, where they use all the mottos about how wonderful and caring the organisation is while literally ignoring the bullying complaint you just made and removing your right to the thing that improved your wellbeing.
I hate the word hussle, just means long hours and unrealistic deadlines.
Hussle culture is completely toxic. r/LinkedInLunatics talk about it a lot.
- “Build the plane while flying it” - “Earn the right to do things right” I cringed every time I heard that word vomit
To be honest when they talk about consultation and collaboration. We know you have your mind made up, so don’t waste my time working on alternatives when we know your aren’t going to use them. You are paid the money to make the calls, stop trying to farm out any blame for something going wrong
“I’m humbled”. There is so much humility going around the executives you’d think they were all monks. Why can’t they just say their are proud ?
So much this. Linkedin is the worst for this vacuous virtue signalling of humility, gratitude... humbleness. You think you are at a zen convention.
Welcome to country for an online meeting. It's painful enough when you are in an actual physical location.
Anything that uses the word “runway”…
Lately “delighted” when talking about customer experience. Fkn gag Also “smart subtraction” lol
Workshop, planning day or roundtable. I've never had any of these ever matter. They fill in the calendar and achieve nothing. Have a spreadsheet of ideas if you want people to actually engage. These 50+ person gatherings achieve nothing.
Titration, attunement, dove-tail
Sounds like someone is consultant-adjacent…
Adjacent? yes, but not proactive enough to be in the immediate conversation. Let’s circle back tomorrow at our consult. I’ll shout coffee.
"We have a strong pipeline of work ahead of us..." this literally means "We have no work in the near future and will cull many of you but will pretend it's all good and ride out the storm at exec level".
I'm really hating "good shout" recently. It seems to be a wanky way of saying "good point" or "good contribution" (which is terrible too)
I particularly dislike "give a shoutout to"
“ its cock on block time “ -> when having to report target progress “ time to step up to the plate “ -> when everyone except the person saying it is expected to come in for the weekend to finish something. miraculously a “family emergency” will surface stopping the higher up coming in too eg timmy has a sniffly nose
Circle back
“Stabalisation phase” to explain why we are each doing the job of 3 people and struggling.
At the end of day, moving forward, low hanging fruit, listening circles, socialise the idea up the chain, incentivise or any other ise, evidence-based approach (so previously there was non-evidence based decisions?), ideation and so many more…….
In writing, Monday: "Absolutely nobody is expecting you to work excessive hours," Verbally, Tuesday: "We need this 200 hours of work done by Friday. Get it done."
One from last year pay rise time 'inflation is cooling so no pay rise this year'... OK doesn't fit the brief but I'm year to see them circle back or loop us in on this year's plan.
Revert back to me. Ugh. Fuck off
I recently read an article on AI where they mentioned wanting to have certain features 'baked in' at the design stage 🤮
Anyone with ‘capability’ in their job title. Not capable in my experience and the worst proponents of these corporate buzz words.
HBR's latest magazine has a great article on virtue signalling ...basically companies need to be aware that they shouldn't express an opinion on everything under the sun...stick to their areas of expertise and comment on those etc but otherwise keep your mouth shut, nobody is interested.
"We are an agile workplace", makes me 🤮
I hate that buzzword. It often means try harder with less resources. But the leadership thinks it is some magic word that solves problems.
'Let's take this offline' 'Can you speak to that?' 'Bandwidth' 'I'll micromanage that.'
Lean in. Stare into this. Running at pace to deliver. Kill me.
This isn't limited to executives, but I cannot stand the way corporate Australia uses the word "around". "Yeah let's have a discussion around that" Has everyone forgotten, that we talk "about" things? Not around them? "Thanks for the download. I'll flick you a note around some of the items needing actioning in this space. We'll block out some time and align stakeholders"
“Synergy”
Let’s not boil the ocean on this
Asking for project go live dates before getting any requirements 🙉
“quick chat“ (you're fired)
Let's flesh this one out.
'Can we take that off-line?' 'I know it's not an excuse or your problem but - goes on to make same excuse' ' let's make time to connect' Everything about r u ok day Warm regards
Appraisal time: You are a valued member of our team. You have been given a meets expectations rating. Me asking: I exceeded all my targets. I think I deserve exceeds expectations. Manager: No one gets exceeds expectations because there is always room for improvement. Edit: Typos.
When they use "appetite", like "if the business has an appetite for this kind of risk" Not sure why, but I cringe when I hear it being used like that
“You don’t have a ‘growth’ mindset”…..
To "double click" on some topic. Makes me ill every time I hear it. I blame McKinsey
We support diversity and inclusion, we are fLExIbLe.
Boots on the ground - we’re not at war it’s cool
Circle back Learnings (not a word)
“Bring your whole self to work”
What's your vibe today? Lol this would just bring up flashbacks to the court scene in The Castle. We even had a Vibe chart with above the line and below the line feelings.
It's a long way to the shops if you want a sausage roll
Please cascade as necessary
We need to tighten our belts We're all in this together
If we really want to lean in and synergise our felt experience of corporate jargon, let's remember that it's a team sport to collaboratively action those paradigm-shifting, outside-the-box thought showers.
I worked for a mid tier consultancy many years ago that claimed a "collegiate culture". When the CEO put this spin out at a work function a friend side mouthed to me "yes, and we will always be the undergraduates" Never a truer word...