Archive for August, 2008
Resources
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 | Filed under: Douchewords | No Comments
I’m thinking “trees, maybe? Or a supply of clean water? Perhaps some ever-pricier oil?”
Admittedly, I work for what’s effectively a media company so I’d be pretty fucking impressed if it turns out we’ve got a secret drilling lease on a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but, y’know, you’re yammering on about “resources” so I figure there’s something pretty awesome going on here.
Right?
No?
Oh. When you said “resource”, you meant me?
Listen, fucko… I’m a person, not a “resource”. I enjoy an occasional glass of red wine, I really liked the new Batman movie and I hate working late because I want to get home and spend time with my girlfriend. I actually like my job here, too, when I’m not subjected to your douche-isms.
When did “people” become a taboo word in the office, anyhow? Have we depersonalised our working lives so far that we’re scared to acknowledge the very humanity of the people who work with us?
I’d blame whichever fucking resource originally coined the term “Human Resources”, but unfortunately their identity appears to be lost in the mists of time (aka, 1970).
Anyhow, focussing my rage again for a moment, when you talk about our “resources”, you’re using a really generic word…
…which makes it impossible for me to understand what the fuck you’re actually saying. Most businesses have all sorts of needs – people, paper, computers, concrete, planks, hops, angora wool… Probably not all at the same time, but see, you’ve got me all confused.
What are we even doing here? Writing a newspaper? Building a house? Making a website? Brewing beer? I forgot because I’m staring at a spreadsheet filled with nameless fucking resources.
Cut it out. People are people and everything else has an actual name too. If I hear the word “resource” one more time, I’m going to be depleting your resources…
…with a swift kick in the ass.
Deliverables
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 | Filed under: Douchewords | No Comments
…uh, yeah. Can you wait just a second? I just need to check…
…no, I’m just checking the sign on the office door. And it still doesn’t say “FedEx” or “UPS”… so why the fuck are we talking about “deliverables”?
I get deliverables at the office, sure. Every once in a while I receive the exciting email from the nice girl in reception; “A package has arrived for you”. And down there I tear like a kid on Christmas morning to take receipt of my latest bundle of consumer crap from Amazon.
But we’re not talking about my parcel-fetish[1], are we?
You say “your deliverables” and for some reason I start thinking about the uncomfortably large lunch I ate, and the fact that I’ve avoided taking a shit at work ever since I found the office pervert’s hand lotion, inadvertantly left on the toilet cistern in some kind of post-wank daze[2].
Um… yeah. Sorry. Anyway, “deliverables”?
Why not just call them “tasks”? Or “work”?
“What work still needs to be done to complete this project?”
There’s a question I can answer right away, without having to think of the urgency of my bowel movements… or the foot-induced disruption of yours.
[1] – I was going to shove a picture of a UPS uniform into this post. And then I saw the Google Image Search results for “UPS Uniform”, realised that yes, everything in the world has a parallel porn-universe version, and gave up in despair.
[2] – True story which happened to someone I know, not actually me. And no, it wasn’t my fucking hand lotion.
Move The Needle
Friday, August 15th, 2008 | Filed under: Douchewords | 1 Comment
If Spencer Johnson has an ounce of sense he’s already working on a bestselling follow-up to his most famous book, themed around junkies and titled “Who Moved My Needle?”
After all, you lot are certifiable addicts, even if your poison-of-choice is bizarre metaphors rather than industrial-grade heroin.
It doesn’t really matter what the drug is though, does it? At the end of the day, we all have our coping mechanisms, and few things are harder to cope with than the fact that we’re actually living in the future now.
I know, it’s kinda scary that your desk houses ten times the computing power which sent men to the moon. It’s even more bewildering when Excel refuses to format your cells properly for the fifth fucking time in an hour, so we understand; really, we do.
When you get that glazed-over, far away look in your eyes we know you’re dreaming of a simpler, kinder time; wishing that you were in one of those 1960s NASA control rooms where all you had to do was monitor a few fuck-off-huge analog dials for a glimmer of activity.
So, you go, spacegirls and boys. You keep on movin’ those needles. Up here in the 21st century we’ll be speaking our crazy futurist moon-language and uttering phrases like, oh, I dunno… “make a significant difference” or something equally whacky.
Such advances in descriptive language are, one might say, “one small step for a man“. And a giant kick-in-the-pants for “needle movers”.
Touching Base
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 | Filed under: Douchewords | No Comments
Most people I know who work in the corporate world have, at some point, attended some kind of “Sexual Harassment Training“. Contrary to its poorly-chosen name[1], the function of such training is usually to instill in the drones that, for example, asking for a blowjob in exchange for a raise is morally wrong…
…because nothing increases workplace harmony like stating the fucking obvious.
I always thought that the goal of this training would be better achieved by giving everyone a quick multiple-choice questionnaire, with simple questions like…
Is it wrong to squeeze a co-worker’s tits? YES / NO
Instantly, you have the means to simultaneously lower the risk of harassment and raise productivity, simply by firing anyone who scored less than 100%. After all, with employees that stupid, who needs competitors?
Now, I’m not saying that I’m against enforcing such codes of conduct, rather the opposite. But all this leaves me a little confused. In such a caring, harassment-averse environment, how is it that you manage to get away with offering to “touch base” with me?
I mean, come on, “let’s touch base” is only slightly less cheesy than “if I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?”. Maybe I just have a dirty mind, but as soon as someone says “touch base” I can hear the 70s “wah-wah” porn-guitar starting up in the background.
It’s not that I don’t want to have a meeting (well, it depends on the meeting and its likely quotient of the word “synergy“), but… could you just ask me to “have a meeting”, or maybe even “chat for five minutes”?
That way, you don’t come across like a creepy dude who’s packing an industrial-sized tub of Rohypnol, and I don’t have to feel a fraction of my soul wither each time you open your mouth to speak.
It’s what you might call a “win-win” situation… if you still insist on talking like an idiot.
[1] – I mean, really… I go searching for examples of “sexual harassment training”, and the first result I get back is hosted at sexualharass.com. It’s like they’re trying to look stupid.
Synergy
Monday, August 11th, 2008 | Filed under: Douchewords | No Comments
It sounds so good when you trot it out at the Monday morning meeting, doesn’t it?
“We need to leverage more cross-functional synergy”.
Let’s ignore the fact that you said “leverage” for a moment, and that I’m therefore now regarding you as I would something unpleasant on the bottom of my shoe.
No, instead, let’s look at that word “synergy”.
Now, on the face of it, it’s not a bad word. But it’s kinda pretentious, really. It only means “two things happening at the same time”.
So you just said “we need two things to happen simultaneously”. Newsflash, bucko – pretty much every business on the planet relies on multiple concurrent actions to get work done. You just filled the air with meaningless “blah blah”. Again.
And you wouldn’t talk like this at home. If you told your partner “I’m just off out to effect a synergy between my getting exercise and our not having dog shit in the kitchen (…by taking him for a walk)” they’d look at you like you were a total douchebag.
And they’d be right.
One more thing -”powerful synergies”? I’ve heard this one a lot, and it feels as though you’re all quietly cottoning on the the fact that “synergy” is a dumb word, and trying to bolster it with meaningless adjectives.
How on earth is closer collaboration between the Marketing and Product departments “powerful”?
The mysterious interactions between water and various organic molecules that likely led to life on earth – that’s a powerful synergy. Your latest half-baked scheme to increase sales by 2% is not.
The next person I hear using this word in a business context will be experiencing a synergy indeed – one that involves some steel toecaps and their buttocks.
Welcome to Douchespeak.com
Saturday, August 9th, 2008 | Filed under: Site News | No Comments
This site was one of those ideas which comes in a flash of inspiration. Or, in actual weird-but-true fact, a twitter of inspiration, received at the very moment I was, myself, grinding my teeth to dust over the constant mis-use of the word “leverage“.
So over the course of about an hour I registered a domain, threw up a tumblr blog and then pondered the idea for a day or so. And lo, it seemed good (and feedback from friends was positive), but I decided that tumblr was a bit limited (no comments, for one thing) so I spent some more time throwing up a Wordpress install, making some templates and writing some posts.
Sorry if RSS feeds have been a bit wonky for the last day or two. Moving sites across publishing systems is annoying.
All of which is mind-numbingly dull and completely free of the invective I know you’re all secretly craving.
The long-term plan is to post something here about once a week. This has two useful effects – it means I definitely won’t run out of things to write any time soon, and also means I won’t run out of time to write them.
But every site is better with some actual content to get appetites whetted, so this coming week I’m going to throw in a couple of extra bonus posts here and there.
You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! And hopefully, just hopefully, you’ll stop talking like a douchebag.
Leverage
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 | Filed under: Douchewords | 2 Comments
“Leverage” is douchespeak for “I don’t know what the fuck’s going on, but I’m afraid I’ll get fired if anyone finds out.”
Let’s look at some (sadly real-life) examples:
- This system will leverage our R&D experience.
- We need to leverage our community.
- Can we leverage this particular server?
- Here’s some analyst reports we can leverage.
The common thread here is a lack of how any “leveraging” might take place. The speaker (or writer) feels that they’re off the hook because they’ve suggested the “leverage”. Another job well done – time for a sneaky 11 o’clock donut.
Unfortunately, back in the real world, no-one is any nearer to an actual, concrete solution. The word “leverage” (and the sentence containing it) doesn’t form a meaningful part of a conversation.
As soon as a conversation takes place, the word “leverage” becomes redundant because there are better words to use. To have any actual impact, you need to describe what you’re actually going to do. Let’s rewrite the above:
- This system makes use of our R&D experience to increase system performance.
- We need to encourage our community to participate by providing better feedback mechanisms.
- Can we use this particular server to host the test environment?
- Here’s some analyst reports which may help your decision on which vendor to use.
Yes, the sentences are longer, but they’re also purposeful. They provide questions, or topics for progressive discussion:
- How much has performance increased?
- What are the weaknesses in current feedback mechanisms? What would actively encourage people?
- Does the server have the right OS installed?
- What do the analysts actually say about the vendors?
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, all the examples at the top of this post use the word incorrectly. Go look at the dictionary definition… No, go on, go and read it. I’ll wait.
See? Wrong.
English has a long and colourful history of subverting words and adding new meanings. But in most cases, those changes improve the language, providing a needed meaning which we didn’t have before at the cost of a word with multiple synonyms.
The douchespeak version of “leverage”, on the other hand, is vastly inferior to a host of more meaningful words, while devaluing the rather important primary meaning it has in the financial world.
If you’re talking finance, go ahead and “leverage” all you need to. If you’re talking anything else, well, I’ll be imagining one thing:
My foot, leveraged up your ass.