Hardly Working. Officespeak 101

The very late ‘80s matured into the very early ‘90s and guys and gals my age began getting engaged, getting married, buying houses, having kids, and all that grown-up stuff. It was a decade where, for late Gen X, shit got real. We had one another’s backs and good examples to follow at home. But as much as we all grew up together, a lot of those big boy responsibilities meant growing apart somewhat.

My cozy small shop advertising job had run its course. Bossman taught me more in my first three months than I learned in seven years of college (IYKYK) — so I wouldn’t have to “join the fucking Peace Corps.” After more than four years under his tutelage, he did the best thing he ever did for me. He cut me lose.

Nothing dramatic. He just pushed me from the nest and into an industry I was not remotely prepared for four years prior. Call what I experienced grad school, I suppose. And for me, since language is everything and everything is language, I realized I’d learned two critical new dialects in that time — business and advertising. You’d think it would have been covered in school but whatever. I was on my way and on my first interview.

Nailed it.

In October 1993, I bought my first of 350 or so Long Island Rail Road Monthly tickets. Like everyone in the advertising business on the creative side, I bounced among agencies when doing so brought a new title and a pay bump, never staying anywhere longer than five years, sometimes as little as one. We’re a bunch of whores.

But this ain’t about that. This is about language, ‘member? And holy crap, did I see today coming. Right from the jump I started hearing things that were just not words but being used as such; gratuitous terms and colloquy tossed into conversations for the sport of appearing smart. Spoiler Alert: It doesn’t work.

Let’s do a deep dive into some of the etymological changes to office communication. No wait. Let’s not. We can discuss it. We can talk about it. We can even go into great depth on the subject. I only hope the juice is worth the squeeze.

Before we continue, I’d like to know if you have the bandwidth. Because I think you are a damn machine, not a human. And despite wondering whether you think your schedule allows for the required time for the assigned job, I’m going to confuse things by asking about your damn bandwidth. I could simply ask if you have time. But that’s just boring. Logical and common and clear, but boring. But wait, there’s more. Now there’s a bastard stepchild that’s been spawned by the bandwidth brigade. Another idiotic way to ask if you have time is to ask if you have availability. Come on. That makes it sound like a damn STD.

I love how supervisors tell me they’re happy with the creative concepts my partner and I come up with. They won’t just say that. Instead, I’ll learn we’ve delivered. What am I, a friggin’ mailman? Sorry, letter carrier — see, women deliver mail, too. Mine is a woman. Her name is Rosie. I call her my femailman. She thinks I’m hilarious. Rosie is not a candyass.

But back to our delivery of solid concepts. Why speak like that? We had an assignment and we nailed it. Can we move on?

No. Turns out we did not have an assignment. There was an ask. Get the f-. It was not a request. It was not an assignment. It was an ask? Yep, these morons have turned a common verb into a noun. Sorry, I refuse. Can we just show it to the internal team and send it to the client already? You’d think so. But it gets weirder. Even if I were to go along with “we delivered on the ask,” the work is now going to be socialized. As if it’s a freaking child raised by wolves in the woods meeting other people for the first time. No. It’s an ad. I’ll show it around, thank you very much. For visibility. So everyone can have visibility into it. I get account management folks and clients talking like text books, but it’s also infiltrated the creative department’s lexicon. Kills me.

The consensus is the work will be memorable and effective. Great. But they’ll say it’s sticky. Ew.

In the office, we no longer do things. We action them. Sometimes, I shit you not, they’re actionized. But before anything happens, it’s essential that we ensure we are being choiceful. Not making good decisions or weighing options. Choiceful. See, that’s the only way we can ensure we’re purposeful.

We don’t have problems or issues. Things are problematic. On the other hand, things that are not problematic aren’t going smoothly and they’re not even seamless anymore. They are now frictionless. Yeah. We’re trying too damn hard.

Never shall we ever change the subject or move on from it. We’ll stick a pin in it. You know. For later. In the meantime, we can maybe pause for liquid realignment. That stupidity actually makes me miss bio-break. Just go to the damn bathroom if you need to pee.

I haven’t been busy in years. But I have sure had a lot on my plate. Sometimes I have too many irons in the fire. Then there was that time when I had a lot of balls in the air.

Ha. That reminds me we need to target the low-hanging fruit. <Snicker>

I can’t resist a good, base genital joke but we can’t simply agree that was a childish and fun transition. We need to align. If we’re really serious, we will seek agreeance. Either way, we just gotta get on the same page. No one’s sure, though, if we’re in the same damn book.

No more brainstorming, no sir. We have blue sky sessions. You know that SpongeBob hand motion when he says, “Imaggggination,” and a rainbow appears? That’s blue sky. Everything is perfect, no obstacles, we can think and (F me) action anything because the sky is clear, there are no clouds, and the sun is shining. Never gonna happen. So why even say it?

I can’t give you an estimate how many more examples there are of idiotic officespeak, sorry. But I’m happy to ballpark it for ya, fella!

I’m afraid I may drop the ball on the blog if I keep going with this dumb list. But I promise, I am getting closer to landing this plane.

Please, don’t keep me informed. Not anymore. Now I need to be kept in the friggin’ loop.

Don’t ever tell anyone under 30 that you are going to pencil him in for an interview. He probably doesn’t know which end of that archaic implement to hold let alone what that means. No one writes down meetings. Sad. And be sure to let him know, we are not simply looking for promising candidates with a good mix of this skill and that discipline. No, we are looking for unicorns.

On a somewhat serious note, it’s a little twisted that one of the most horrific events in modern American history has been idiomized in the workplace and, likely, most folks who say drink the Kool-Aid have no idea why.

Yeah. Jonestown.

Look, at the end of the day, speaking like Niles Crane has become par for the course in corporate America because there’s been a real paradigm shift. Or something.

OK, that’s enough. I want to be sure I’m not offending anyone so I’m going to circle back to the start of this section and do an empathy audit. If I have any additional thoughts, I will touch base and surface it up for discussion. So we can determine the solve.

I now hate myself.