The Corporate Lingo Cheat Sheet

The other day at my office, they celebrated an employee's 20th anniversary with the company. I was upset. Not because I wasn't invited, because I was. Nor was I upset at the prospect of toiling away 20 years of my life working at the same meaningless pursuit. No, I was upset because while most of the floor was enjoying cake and coffee, I was trapped in another meeting that was lasting far longer than necessary.

An important thing to note is that we never have free coffee at work. Another important thing to note is that I am completely addicted to coffee.

Yet a third thing to note is that I thoroughly enjoy discussions featuring co-workers trying to one-up each other with stories of their childrens' prowess in after school activities. Actually I really don't. In fact, I greatly dislike people who talk just for the sake of hearing themselves speak.

So on this day, not only was I angry that I was missing out on a free dose of what I affectionately like to call the "Elixir of Life," but I was becoming increasingly frustrated sitting in a meeting as a bunch of Type A wannabe executives blew out jargon laced with corporate buzzwords.

Some of you may be familiar with this situation - not the meeting itself, but people throwing out words that sound important or, more accurately, words designed to make the user feel important. While this may fool a lot of people, it doesn't float past a jaded corporate drone like me.

But I don't post columns to complain. (Well, I don't post them JUST to complain, I also try to inform and educate.) So for those of you who haven't spent a lot of time in what Donald Trump calls the "Corporate Jungle," I am offering up a dictionary of corporate terminology for your reference. Actually it probably falls more within the "cheat sheet" classification. Regardless, feel free to use it either as a script or as a translator:

Phrase 1: "We need to get signoff on this"

Translation: "No one here, including myself, has the grapefruits to sign our names to any sort of binding resolution. So, fearing for our jobs, we should instead agree to pass this to someone with more authority so they can take the fall if this plan goes awry."

Phrase 2: "What are the key takeaways from this meeting?"

Translation: "We've basically sat around talking for the last hour and we still really have no idea what we've been talking about. So in order to explain to our superiors where we've been for all this time, let's use the next 30 seconds to pound out a few bullet points that we can neatly put into email format for wide distribution."

Article Author: Hardy

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