Asking
Only logged in members can reply and interact with the post.
Join SimilarWorlds for FREE »

What phrase do you wish people would stop using?

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »
newjaninev2 · 56-60, F
"On a ----- basis"

On a daily basis = daily (just one word needed)

On a weekly basis = weekly

On a regular basis = regularly

and while I'm here...

'going forward'

remove the phrase completely and nothing changes

I could add several to the list, and might start doing so on a daily basis going forward.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@newjaninev2 I agree wholeheartedly.

I recall a presentation at work when the Personnel Manager* used "going forward" so often when her speech was so obviously of the future, that I switched off and mentally planned my weekend instead.

This is why games like "Cliche Bingo" arise!

I think this book should be compulsory for all business-managers:

James Schloeffel & Charles Firth's

W*NKERNOMICS: A Deep Dive Into Workplace Bullsh*ttery"
.

Pub. Jon Murray Publishers, London, 2025. (Be aware some of the language is more SW than vicarage tea-party!)
......


*I refuse point-blank to use that appalling term "Human Resources", which sounds as if concocted in some "Business College" of outstanding mediocrity in rural Kansas. When addressing an internal envelope I always used Personnel, Rm...

Now, all sorts of companies, charities etc. have all followed that pretentious, and tautological, "Chief Executive Officer" style likely from the same Business College of Oz.

Hence some so-called Human Resources Directors now call themselves "Chief People Officers" . It's slightly less impersonal but just as ostentatiously ghastly.
22Michelle · 70-79, T
@ArishMell Human Resources aka Management's Condom!
supersnipe · 61-69, M
@ArishMell 'HR' seems to have been around for a very long time!
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@supersnipe I'm sure it has, but cliches like those do take a while to creep around, and I think it appeared in my employer's words only about 30 or so years ago.

Another word I hate is "Technology". Everyone uses it as if if some sort of modern term for digital electronics, but it was coined in the 1930s, probably to cover all engineering and just as vague then as now.
supersnipe · 61-69, M
@ArishMell It had got as far as the place where I studied in France in the early 80s, in translation: Organisation des Ressources Humaines, or ORH for short. I can remember things like Maslow's Pyramid...
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@supersnipe Maslow's Pyramid... That's a new one on me! I don't think our company made personnel management needlessly complicated though.

Intrigued, I looked it up, only to find Wikipedia seems to have quoted blocks from self-help books on the psychology of self-help psychology jargon! I did learn Dr. Maslow himself had not invented the coloured triangle.

Businessed do latch onto cock-eyed fads, usually excusing the latest nonsense by claiming Honda / General Electric / Shell Oil or some similar company has adopted it, so it must be good. (Some are invented in the Japanese car industry.) Do these companies still use them? No-one seems to know. Theese "initiatives" can't be achieving anything because they soon fade into oblivion, to be replaced by the next consultant-infested, money-wasting, jargon-coated fad.

.......

Sometimes - I forget the frequency - we'd all be invited to traipse over to a large room in another building to hear a report on the company's performance, by the Cheif Executive or whatever he called himself.

The room was a former restaurant so level floor and of modest height, so if you were sitting nearer the back the lower half of the screen was hidden by the heads in front ot you. We didn't miss much though. 'Powerpoint' slides of 'Excel' graphs intended for meetings of a few people in a small room, or circulation in print or electronically, are rarely any good in a big hall!

And he'd refer to projects or business planning in abbreviations, too.

So we all left not really learning much!
newjaninev2 · 56-60, F
@ArishMell
consultant-infested, money-wasting, jargon-coated fad

We used to say that there is light at the end of the tunnel - but it's the tail-lights of a consultant's BMW
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@newjaninev2 Very good!

I used to know some people who worked for the government science agency that became privatised under the name QinetiQ.

They said it took ages for reporters and other outsiders to learn to pronounce it. Staff members themselves had an uphilll battle especially in telephone calls, teaching their banks, insurers and so on both the pronounciation and the spelling of their employers' name.

("No, not 'Quinetik' or 'Quintek' or 'Quine-tek'... There is no 'u' in the word. It is pronounced as 'kinetic' - one of the states of energy!" Though I doubt many money-traders would understand that explanation.)

More, they told me, it paid the "branding consultants" to create a "corporate font" for all formal word-processed, internal reports etc. I think that was another common 1990s company fad, alongside "mission statements"*. It was very expensive, and identical to most of the standard, bland sans-serif fonts already on everyone's computers (including in text-messages like this). And just as hard on the eye in full-page texts..

So much for "consultants".... And directors behaving like teenagers seeing new brands of plimsolls.

......

*Mission Statement" . Bland, boastful, little meaning, no value. Probably written by Branding Consultants.

Its modern version is that quoted by frustrated investigative journalists, when saying, "The Department was 'unavailable for comment' but sent a statement that......." The statement of course, failing to answer the question.
22Michelle · 70-79, T
@ArishMell The statement that really riles me is when politicians say "I don't recognise.......". Wtf does that mean?
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@22Michelle Either genuinely not knowing - so if not, whynot? - or a clumsy attempt at denial or covering-up.

They may ouf course genuinely not recognise whatever it is if they strongly suspect the alleged information itself is plain wrong or wilfully misleading!
22Michelle · 70-79, T
@ArishMell If you don't kjow you don't know. You could say you disagree with what's there, but to not recognise a document? What is on the ficument is a different thing, but to say you don't "recognise" is so utterly vague and impossible to pin down that its beyond contempt.