BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary

Subject: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Mar 11 - 04:49 PM

Want to move up the corporate ladder fast? Want to impress that good looking business gal in the power suit? Get your boss's approval and get that juicy vacation package? Position yourself for a spot in the Board of Directors? Be president of the USA one day?

It's all here, in...........

The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Mar 11 - 12:38 AM

Hmm. Too lazy to read the link, eh? Okay, I'll help you out. Here is some top flight business jargon for your amusement:


De-integrate [v.] To disassemble.

"We're going to have to de-integrate the entire assembly and start from scratch."

Tall Foreheads [n.]

1) A swipe at older white men with receding hairlines who predominate in most senior management teams.

2) Experts or intellectuals.
"I made the pitch to a room full of Tall Foreheads."

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Mar 11 - 04:53 PM

No takers? Right then, here's a another:

Sausage and the sizzle [AUS-exp.] A sales term for the extra effort required to close a deal.

"John you've got the sausage, but where's the sizzle?"

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: gnu
Date: 12 Mar 11 - 07:00 PM

I used to sit in meetings with those types. One time, an accountant, senior accountant in the audit section, started in on me for violating a cardinal rule of accounting and was using a number of crap "jargons" to support his authority and superiority.

I used some engineering "jargons", to whit, paraphrasing... "I did what I did because it was December and water freezes. If I hadn't, the fuckin thing woulda froze up and we all woulda been fucked and you woulda had fuck all to account for. Now, you push the pencils and I'll build stuff that you can account for."

I never was one much for jargon OR bullshit.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Mar 11 - 11:50 PM

LOL, gnu!

Thanks, LH, I'll take a look.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 12:25 PM

I was once on one of those stupid 'management/team building' courses with other 'team members' from my place of work. We were split into sub-teams and given one of those silly exercises that you do when you're on one of those courses. This mainly involved wasting lot of marker ink on a lot of flip-charts.

At the end of the exercise each sub-team was supposed to choose one of their members to present the sub-team's findings. In the case of my particular sub-team this task fell to me. I put together, what I thought to be, a reasonably good summary of our findings. I 'ran-this-past' my sub-team who agreed that it was OK to present except for one particularly obnoxious and pushy woman who felt that I should re-write the presentation in "business language" (i.e. the sort of jargon infested BS described above). She was very persistent and with about 15 minutes to go I lost it and shouted, "OK you do the f*cking presentation! I resign!" So she did the presentation.

At the end of her BS-laden pitch the assessor said: "I didn't understand a word of that! Why couldn't you have used plain English?"

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: wysiwyg
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 12:36 PM

Deceptionist [n.]        A receptionist whose job is actually to delay or block potential visitors. Ruthless with a polite, perfect smile.

===

I have seen many great school secretaries and several great bishop's secretaries able to do this painlessly. (I'm glad to know that there is a word for it so I can teach it to our parish secretary!)

I can see how, in some large organizations, you might be passed thru succeeding hoops till you got shunted to the deceptionist. I wish they had them for hold buttons on the phone instead of the relentlssly bad music-- we need something more like a USO hostess of old!

(Secretary AKA exec asst or adm asst)

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 02:40 PM

Eat a reality sandwich [exp.]

An 'action' necessary when one's ideas are completely inappropriate for the given situation. "I can't believe your last suggestion. You better eat a reality sandwich before you walk back in that boardroom."

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: wysiwyg
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 03:33 PM

At our house we say, "What weed of unreality grows in YOUR garden?" At the diocese, I've heard: "Whose cup of KoolAid did YOU drink?"

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 03:42 PM

Have to admit that since I'm NOT working or in one of these business situations, I find all these silly phrases very funny, I love them. eg "Run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes", "Blue sky thinking". Adored the sausage and sizzle one, Little Hawk. The thing is, after about six months, these expressions become old hat and redundant (like the employees perhaps?) and so one has to invent some new ones. "Load of old squit" as we say in Norfolk UK.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 03:44 PM

Yeah, so do I (find them funny). ;-) Here's another one:

Open the kimono [v.]

Revealing confidential business information. The term would probably be more offensive if it wasn't usually one overweight, middle-aged man asking another to open his kimono. "You'll have to open the kimono on your IP before engineering will sign off on the deal."

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 03:45 PM

LOL! I'm cooking dinner and laughing at the same time!

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: gnu
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 04:30 PM

What's on the back burner? Anything we can simmer til it boils?

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 06:33 PM

LOL again!

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 06:43 PM

Warm bowl of nothing [n.]

A project or idea that has no substance, but is sold as a great opportunity.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Midchuck
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 07:31 PM

I was reading through it. I came upon:

Anacronym [n.]        An acronym that is so old, no one remembers the original phrase. Examples include RADAR, ASCII, and SNAFU.

I read that, and said "RAdio Direction And Ranging. American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Situation Normal, All F***ed Up." Then I checked in Google and I had them all right.

So does this mean that I'm so old I count as no one? Jeezum!

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 07:44 PM

Humbling, isn't it? ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 01:33 AM

Jargonaut [n.]

A true master of ridiculous jargon, this individual has a 'robust' vocabulary, but none of it means anything.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,999
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 11:08 AM

Some I've encountered in both business and education:

We have a new challenge for you. Translated that means we are gonna fuck you for overtime without paying you a dime.

Team player: someone who kisses ass of the right--read management-- people.

Think outside the box: It means come up with something that works because all the stuff we tried didn't.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,999
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 11:32 AM

And another. It's not a business term, but I hear it frequently. It's a buzz word that people seem to think means something: detox. "I need to--and here the back of one's hand gently sweeps across one's brow and the eyes blink slowly--DEtox."

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: EBarnacle
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 12:04 PM

Ambrose Bierce lives.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 01:48 PM

Capsizing [v.]

Laying-off employees (downsizing) to the point where an organization can no longer function.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 02:26 PM

Tall Foreheads used to be Suits...

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 02:50 PM

Same thing. Only Tall Foreheads are older Suits, that's all.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 05:41 AM

At my former place of work the buzzword was 'Innovate' (as in, "we've got to innovate!"). Roughly, this meant sitting around in meeting rooms (sorry, 'centres of excellence' ... silly me!) 'brainstorming' new products. 'Team Members' were encouraged to come up with 'blue skies', 'off the top of the head' ... errr ... notions ("be as silly as you like!"), which were carefully written down on flip-charts. At the end of each session the silly notions on the flip-charts were equally carefully typed up and filed - never to be looked at again.

We never did come up with any new, innovative (in the real sense of the word) products.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 07:08 AM

I sincerely hope you didn't 'Brainstorm', Shimrod. That's very non-PC as it may 'offend' epileptics. We have to refer to that process as a 'Thought-Shower'.

We refer to those who dream that kinda crap up as a 'Fuckin' Shower'.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 10:51 AM

Well, I've been out of the working-for-somebody business for a over a decade, but I still remember being told "We must all be pulling on the same oar", and responding that that's the way to go in circles.

"Proactive", and "executive decision" were popular then.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: gnu
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 03:42 PM

dick... hahahahahaa

I LOVE it!

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: gnu
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 04:14 PM

dick... minds me of the Bird of Diminishing Returns... it flies in tighter and tighter circles until it flies up it's own ass and disappears.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 05:44 PM

Actually, 'Backwoodsman' I suffer from epilepsy (controlled now by drugs)and I wasn't offended in the way that you suggest. I was offended, though, when I questioned why we were wasting our time with this crap and was told that I was "failing to keep up with modern methods"!

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 05:52 PM

Who was the American politician who hated bureaucratese and instructed his staff to write coherently? My head says William Proxmire...but I think that he was just the one who gave out the "Golden Fleece" awards.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,999
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 06:05 PM

From a book I read to do with WWII, I recall that Churchill was purported to have done something similar. A correctly punctuated English appeared on a memo to troops. However, Churchill had trouble with the contortions the fellow had gone through to make his English sound fancy (WC had an estimated usable vocabulary of 50,000 words. Most people get by with about 8000.). WC scribbled a note in the margin along the lines of "This is the sort of language up with which I will not put!" Anyway, that's what I remember.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: A Wandering Minstrel
Date: 16 Mar 11 - 08:46 AM

Actually Thought showers are old hat too. We now have to convene a solutions realization circle (Duh?)

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,999
Date: 17 Mar 11 - 01:22 AM

No shit?

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: eddie1
Date: 17 Mar 11 - 02:23 AM

Many moons ago, I was involved in a Training Panel for Community Education. During a residential weekend for would-be Youth Workers, the groups of trainees were "working independently" This means the training team had found a good excuse for doing nothing. Somebody came up with an idea for a "Jargoniser"!

At it's simplest, this was three columns, the first, adverbs, the second, adjectives and the third, nouns. You simply take any word from each column and use them together as if you knew what you were talking about!

We used to throw these into lectures and watch for the listeners who would nod sagely as if they understood.

The phrase "Transactionally exocentric parameters" comes to mind!

Guaranteed to impress!

Eddie

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Mar 11 - 02:52 AM

My sister's husband teaches accounting at the University of Wisconsin. He's bound and determined that his MBA students will be human beings when they graduate with their Master of Business Administration degrees. So....he plays "buzzword bingo" in class. Whenever anybody uses a buzzword, that person has to make a donation to the fund for a class party.
He also takes classes to Europe, so these Wisconsin farm kids will have the sophistication needed to work in a global economy.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,999
Date: 17 Mar 11 - 10:03 AM

Encountered the following years back. This is for Eddie1 with thanks for reminding me. From the www.

Shakespeare Insult Kit

Combine one word from each of the three columns below, prefaced with "Thou":

Column 1            Column 2            Column 3

artless             base-court          apple-john
bawdy               bat-fowling         baggage
beslubbering       beef-witted         barnacle
bootless            beetle-headed       bladder
churlish            boil-brained       boar-pig
cockered            clapper-clawed      bugbear
clouted             clay-brained       bum-bailey
craven             common-kissing      canker-blossom
currish             crook-pated         clack-dish
dankish             dismal-dreaming    clotpole
dissembling         dizzy-eyed          coxcomb
droning             doghearted          codpiece
errant             dread-bolted       death-token
fawning             earth-vexing       dewberry
fobbing             elf-skinned         flap-dragon
froward             fat-kidneyed       flax-wench
frothy             fen-sucked          flirt-gill
gleeking            flap-mouthed       foot-licker
goatish             fly-bitten          fustilarian
gorbellied          folly-fallen       giglet
impertinent         fool-born          gudgeon
infectious          full-gorged         haggard
jarring             guts-griping       harpy
loggerheaded       half-faced          hedge-pig
lumpish             hasty-witted       horn-beast
mammering          hedge-born          hugger-mugger
mangled             hell-hated          joithead
mewling             idle-headed         lewdster
paunchy             ill-breeding       lout
pribbling          ill-nurtured       maggot-pie
puking             knotty-pated       malt-worm
puny                milk-livered       mammet
qualling            motley-minded       measle
rank                onion-eyed          minnow
reeky               plume-plucked       miscreant
roguish             pottle-deep         moldwarp
ruttish             pox-marked          mumble-news
saucy               reeling-ripe       nut-hook
spleeny             rough-hewn          pigeon-egg
spongy             rude-growing       pignut
surly               rump-fed            puttock
tottering          shard-borne         pumpion
unmuzzled          sheep-biting       ratsbane
vain                spur-galled         scut
venomed             swag-bellied       skainsmate
villainous          tardy-gaited       strumpet
warped             tickle-brained      varlot
wayward             toad-spotted       vassal
weedy               unchin-snouted      whey-face
yeasty             weather-bitten      wagtail

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 17 Mar 11 - 10:41 AM

I really hate "going forward".

Exactly what is it that's going "forward"? The only possible answer I can come up with is "time". So, since when does time go any way other than forward? Can it go backwards? Can it go sideways? Can it bounce up and down like a pogo-stick? No, it can only go forward.

So why even mention "going forward" when doing so carries the unintended implication that going some way besides forward is an option?

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,999
Date: 17 Mar 11 - 10:55 AM

Totally, enhanced thought, BWL. You have empowered us with a pro-active, logic-based scenario and in so doing created a relational synergy we need at this point in time.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 17 Mar 11 - 12:56 PM

"We need to develop services that consume their own smoke" said one of the so-called senior managers at a meeting a while back. "We've already developed arseholes who swallow their own bullshit," a colleague muttered to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Mar 11 - 01:12 PM

LOL!!!!!!!! Great stuff! I'm glad to see that we have well-trained personnel here who can prioritize language, thereby maximize their communicative efficiency, and achieve a clarificative level of dynamically accurate interpersonal information transfer.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Mar 11 - 03:56 PM

I might say that indicates a positively transformational interface paradigm, which any polarized confluence of shared motivational thinkers can actualize.....


but I don't talk that way.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 17 Mar 11 - 04:11 PM

Does anyone remember back to the 1970s when shops suddenly became 'centres'? For a few years everything became a 'centre' - presumably, somewhere, there must be a public toilet called a 'p*ss centre'.

My favourite was when my former employer took a bog standard office, re-decorated it and equipped it with white boards and called it "The Centre of Excellence".

Does anyone know of a central, centre managers' training centre?

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 17 Mar 11 - 04:39 PM

At the other end of the scale,I absolutely LOVE Toys-R-Us and Spuds-U-Like.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Mar 11 - 04:49 PM

So, you would prefer "Whores-R-Us" to "Madame Rosa's of Pocatello Turn-of-the-Century Western Casual Entertainment, Libation & Relaxation Centre for Sagebrush Caballeros, Cowboys, Rounders, and Gents"?

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 17 Mar 11 - 04:53 PM

LOL! I MUCH prefer your second one, Little Hawk. Tee Hee!

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: HuwG
Date: 17 Mar 11 - 07:16 PM

I love the idea of dining "al desco"!

"Desk-diving"; one of my most time-consuming activities at present. The phrase "desk-rabbiting", derived from the UK comedy series "The IT Crowd" is also in vogue.

I get the wiring organised, then someone says "We've just bought a new printer. No, we're not getting rid of the old one, just plug the new one in somewhere!" So, I add under-floor cabling, sockets, then have to install the printer drivers ...

This also means dealing with great balls of cabling in patch cabinets. It brings a new meaning to the term "cable spinning" for me.

Subject: RE: BS: Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 18 Mar 11 - 11:07 AM

Only today I was told by my line manager that "we need to bottom this out and move it up". I told him he wasn't my type...