WORK in an office? Surrounded by wankers desperate to make themselves sound important? Then you’ll be sick of these irritating terms:
‘Actioning’
At some stage in the last ten years, some bastard decided the word ‘doing’ was too straightforward and took it upon themselves to invent this pointless verb, and people like your boss love it because it makes them feel powerful. When he tells Dave in Operations to ‘action’ getting more paper from the photocopier, you will want to shoot him, and rightly so.
‘Touch base’
Has Kerry from Accounts ignored your emails even though you’ve contacted her multiple times? Apparently you can’t just say that, and instead need to laboriously explain that you and she have yet to ‘touch base on the issue’, even though the issue is her nicking your Fruit Corners from the fridge on a daily basis.
‘Add value’
When a manager suggests that you need to ‘add value’ to this latest pitch, what they mean is you need to ‘make it less shit’, but why say something insulting but useful when they could come out with some vague and annoying jargon? Maybe because when you don’t win the contract, they can ‘transition’ you to being unemployed without having to say ‘you’re fired’.
‘Reach out’
Having wormed its way in through celebrity pop culture, ‘reaching out’ is a phenomenon that has touched everyone from Beyoncé all the way down to Gavin in Sales. Apparently it’s now the proper terminology for when you call someone, send them an email, or even just walk up to them in the f**king corridor.
‘Taskforce’
‘Team’ just wasn’t cutting it, so now every little problem needs to be solved by an official taskforce. It may be just you and the Annette from reception taking the recycling out, but ‘Sustainability Taskforce’ certainly sounds less obviously shit on your CV.
