Corporate Speak

[redbirdjazzz]

I respect and admire a well rounded vocabulary. I've always imagined sighyoung to have such a vocabulary that I admire, expressing himself in an elegant yet unpretentious way. Where I have a problem is when it's forced. Who in the hell ever says "I concur"? That is not normal speech. And then they follow it up with "Could you join Bob and *I* for sushi after work" and oh by the way you need a pretty font and blue outlined in gold and pink ponies sprinkled with angel [expletive] hair on your presentation.

That's not just pretentious; it's wrong. The pronoun there is the object of the verb "join," and should therefore be in the objective form, "me," not the subjective "I." And now I sound pretentious too, but at least I'm right.

[redbirdjazzz]

I've had friends who told me to stop using big words. that confused me. i don't use big words. i said something like sporadic, and one friend stopped me and said, see there?

Language is fun. Why be intimidated or angry about it?

Sure, there are writers and speakers who are pretentious
as hell. But if I say that a writer is prolix, and you overhear
that, tough $hit if you don't understand or like it. The person
I am conversing with does. Go back to your cave paintings.

++

[jim]

I just got done giving my presentation - white slides with black text. Whatever the default was for PP. So I give the talk and it's technical in nature, and I know my boss has no idea what I am talking about. That's ok, I understand managers don't have to understand every detail, I manage 12 people and there are alot of details I don't understand. But when I get to the last slide, he jumps in: "Are there any questions for jim or I?" You have to [expletive] kidding, right dude? It was my talk, my information, you couldn't have answered anything in that presentation. You didn't have a clue what I was saying. And it's jim or me you pretentious idiot.

Oh and he uses clear nail polish on his nails, and I caught him admiring his fingernails at one.

I need a new job. I'm going to give this a 6-12 months, tops.

[cardinalkarp]

You should've asked him a question.

[jim]

Oh and our weekly status reports due Monday at 9, so effectively before you leave Friday. Format SUCKS ASS. Takes forever to line [expletive] up because of all the crazy ass [expletive] he has in the document. So it's 5:30 on Friday, and I'm fighting the format. I've got a few things in but not everything, so what do I do? Just leave it out because he won't know but should know, or keep working.

Mr. Slate blew the whistle 30 minutes ago. Pink ponies over content. You win boss man, you get a pretty document with 1/2 the information you should have. Or you could have had all the information you needed without the glitz.

[jim]

So el jefe wanted me to call this morning because he had questions about my status report that we go over monday afternoons with his boss. He goes down the list and you can tell he is just robotically reading things because he doesn't understand them, which in most cases was ok because they are acronyms of projects that he isn't familiar with.

But then he gets to one and says, "Why don't have have a defined policy in place for project XYZ? Why does it say TBD?" Well XYZ was basically the talk I have gave Friday, the one where I used the white slides with black text, the one where at the end he jumps in and says "Any questions for Jim or I?".

Well I go on to explain that it doesn't exist yet, so we haven't defined the policy. We will when it is finished and in production. Stammering ... and then: "Jim, are you saying that we haven't actually deployed this yet?" NO WE HAVEN'T DEPLOYED IT YET. THAT WAS THE WHOLE FREAKING POINT OF THE TALK I GAVE LAST FRIDAY - REMEMBER? THE ONE YOU WANTED THE BLUE SLIDES FOR?

Wow. But it gets better ...

Little tech talk but I think most can get this. We are rolling out IPV6 here, and that has implications for some of the applications I support. I just had the first meeting last week and had referenced TCP/IP in my report. He asks me, in this robotic voice, "Jim, what is T-C-P-DASH-I-P?"

Holy [expletive].

I tried my best and hopefully succeeded in telling him it was a network protocol, he initially thought it was an application I support.

Maybe that doesn't hit with some non-techys but trust me, this is off the Dilbert scale dumb. It's almost unfathomable to me that someone wouldn't recognize that acronym. Now he did backpedal like I hit him in the gut when I told him what it was, and he tried to cover up, so maybe he just had a complete brain cramp learning all of these new acronyms.

But I think he's just a big bag of fluff and buzzwords.

[JL21]

I'm not techy at all, and I definitely get how insanely stupid that question is coming from someone in his position.

That whole story you just recounted is a [expletive] nightmare.

[jim]

He was a consultant for many years, and he's so programmed. I have difficulty working with people like this, it's all substance and fluff and no content. He's a phony.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

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[Radbird]

He asks me, in this robotic voice, "Jim, what is T-C-P-DASH-I-P?"

I surprised you didn't just burst into laughter. How exactly did you control yourself?