Thursday, January 31, 2008

Working Class Mantra

Can Someone Translate This For Me, Please?

If you want to lob a few thought grenades across the office, be careful they don't detonate too close to you. Why? Because a session of "blamestorming" could follow. Does all that sound like gobbledegook? You see, I'm told these are the latest lines in workplace lingo. A "thought grenade" is an explosively good idea. This phrase became fashionable among office staff last year, as did the expression "Let's sunset that", which refers to unsuitable ideas that must never be mentioned again. Every worker knows the pain of recriminations after a project goes wrong. Now it has a name - "blamestorming", which means debating why a deadline was missed and who was responsible.

FOOTNOTE: Lingo star.

11 comments:

virtual nexus said...

Thought grenades get thrown out of think-tanks, presumably...
nice one...

Mima said...

Love it, the phrases that people come up with! I have been out of an office environment for a few years now, so have missed these gems.

Sandi McBride said...

I suppose you could call it a "thinkbomb"...that is if it was odorous and foul! My career choice led not to offices but radios and backroads...I'm sure that was a lucky choice after this insightful post!
Sandi

Celebration of Life said...

An interesting concept that hasn't made it to Wyoming yet. I just might start this trend myself! LOL

final_transit said...

Hmm, they should introduce courses in Blamestorming in the b-schools

Coal Miner's Granddaughter said...

Back when I worked in the corporate world, I despised "synergy" and "global footprint." Every time someone would use those words/terms, I would just cringe.

Max Coutinho said...

Hello David,

LOL I laughed a lot. I didn't know any of this, and I hope you don't mind my taking notes of these "Working class mantras" - they are great!

My favourite is "Let's sunset that" - brilliant!

Cheers

Neoma said...

Having left the workplace some years back I don't know the current lingo, but I suppose it differs from country to country. I haven't heard any of these, "pushing the envelope", and "Pro-active" were big when I was working......and they are still being used today. Brainstorming is what we used, and I think they still call it that. Alhtough I am sure new euphemisms pop up all the time.

Sandy Kessler said...

"bobbleheading "agreeing nodding up and down to everything the boss says in a meeting -my favorite

Max-e said...

Another round of flavour of the month corporate gobbledegook?
Soory.....I have an allergy to jargon.

In South Africa it is rife. Every problem is a "challenge" - that can mean "overcoming obstacles", "dealing with gross incompetence", "coping with poor service delivery" etc. Couch it in the "right term" and you give it credibility. For example a "power outage" really means "Eskoms failure to generate sufficient energy to meet the contry's power requiremeents, though gross incompence"

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.