leverage never means anything tangable
at the end of the day
in the fullness of time
to be [particular opinion] is to be un-[nationality] eg. to be against this policy is to be un-Australian


any more?

I have one for you.

The customer is always right.

"It's a win/win situation"

The customer is always right.

In their own mind yes they are. So, feel free to take advantage of these people. Pissing them off further will probably lead to a boycott of your store/company by them alone, and put their bad biusness at your competitiors. Also, when taking advantage of this, ensure they waste as much money as possible. "Sure sir, that extra $2500 card is needed in your server to control the hard drives, even though there is an included solution that you won't pay attention to".

Actually I like win/win as long as the person using the term knows what it means and where it came from (Covey's 7 habits, a book I didn't totally go for, but that particular chapter was interesting).

What I hate most is "tocuh base", as in "I wanted to touch base with you and see how the project is going". Makes me shiver.

My personal favorites that should absolutely be banned:

- think outside of the box
- drill-down (in all its various uses)

"Drill-down" is a perfectly valid description when applied to locating a subdirectory many levels deep on a hard disk. That's the only way I've ever heard it used. What dilbertesqe management concept have you seen it applied to?

Safety First

Think Safety

"Ok, you have to bend under these 4 ft high racks and load 100 of these 50-100 lb batteries onto this pallet in 5 min, or you get written up. But remember safety first."

Ok, I'll remember that while I'm breaking my back and coughing up asbestos.

elbows and assholes -- "i'm all booked up for meetings through next week--elbows and assholes"

____ has a ____ just like everyone has an asshole -- "they have an opinion, just like everyone has an [censored]"

any phrase with "paradigm" in it

etc.

Calvin

I have one for you.

The customer is always right.


Ugh...after 13 years in various customer service fields, I hate this one most. I hate customers who tell me this more. Someone actually told me that this weekend. I wanted to slap her. Badly.

how about.
"Get on board" or "All on the same page"
Those two make me cringe everytime I hear them.
or how about the single word "collateral" which normally means the glossy brochures that you dump seconds later.
Mind you, anyone who allows me to add the classic "Airlplane" line by saying, "Surely you ......add phrase here....". Only to be followed by, "but of course, but don't keep calling me Shirley"

How about:
"(insert name here) has the action item of..." - used by someone shrugging their responsibility upon someone else
or
"trust the software" - our director of engineering uses this one a LOT.

Here's some good ones I've heard:
"Don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining" when someone is indirectly giving bad news
or
"That's like kissing your sister." when someone throws out a really bad idea.

Phil

The customer is always right.

There's a variation on this one which I believe to be true:

Nobody ever won an argument with a customer

tanstaafl.

Ugh...after 13 years in various customer service fields, I hate this one most. I hate customers who tell me this more. Someone actually told me that this weekend. I wanted to slap her. Badly.

Ahh, I do miss my old job at times. I worked with executive power to answer complaints and problems. And in general, the more cocky the customer was to me, the less I did. And some people didn't realise there wasn't a non legal route above me, and the legal one was pointless for most. Having access to the one system that controls every aspect of customer information is fun. "Hmm, you don't want to work with me to resolve this? <type type type> Let me know when you are ready. At this time, I am the only person in this company you can talk to. All tech support and sales staff have been instructed to not provide you service. Have a nice day *click*"

I hate it when people use the term "Please advise" in their email. Usually some email from some joe-blow user goes like this:

We are experiencing blablabla problem with blablabla and cant do blablabla. Please advise.

Usually the user does not provide enough information to begin with.

"You must arrive to work on time"

Shit, I fucking hate that.

anything which sounds like this:

The [corporate product] product line balances the need to control user and IT staff efficiencies, resources, and management costs with the need to confidently extend and personalize business processes to employees, customers and partners. [product name] products provide the highest levels of automation, personalization, security and control for an end-to-end management solution

I know it is self explanitory if you think hard but would anyone like to put it more simply?
Maybe Helps everyone work better is closer to the mark.

I hate it during meetings when two people start going off topic, and then they realize that they are going way off and one says "Let's take this offline"

Hello? Are we having an "online" meeting? What the hell?

"Let's take this offline"

I'll email you, you email me and our browsers will have lunch.
ugh

Oh my god. Let's take this offline has got to be one of the worst.

A couple helpful links for those struggling to find more bullshit buzzwords..

http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html

http://isd.usc.edu/~karl/Bingo/bbbingo.html

Mission Statement Generator

We have a marketing guy here who seems to think he's being cool and funny when he uses phrases like, "Now that's a cross-functional process" to describe a social situation.

What does Alice say? Must control fist of death!

Point and laugh heartily at him!