CAUTION: Jargons ahead!

Business meetings might not be as fancy as the power suits of the attendees. They involve a lot of multi-tasking between grasping the colorful chevrons dancing on screen, deciphering graphs, crunching numbers,  and above all understanding/delivering a story that can bring us close to a decision. Amid all this chaos, imagine a clown pops into the room, juggling balls on a unicycle. How’s that for a distraction? Well, sometimes we don’t need a clown. Overused corporate jargons do that task.

Unfortunately or not, in a company, jargons spread like an epidemic. They mix into our vocabulary like salt in water, and before we know it, we are already using it our official and even informal conversations. In fact, sometimes people use them deliberately to pass as professionals. These jargons might sound smart at times, and some of them are even too harmless to notice. While others are more like speed breakers in a formula one race track, unnecessary and fatal to a conversation.

Here’s a list of 12 weirdest jargons that I have come across in conversations and articles:

1.       Boiling the ocean – In a time where we are constantly reminded of climate change, the first image that this phrase paints in my mind is pretty scary. Well, thankfully this one has got nothing to do with Al Gore or any of the apocalyptic prophecies. It just means to waste time going overboard with analysis.

              

2.       On the beach – Again, nothing to do beach, or even a holiday. In fact if your chargeability means anything to you, you’d prefer being away from this beach as much as you can as being on the beach means you are between projects. Now why would you break hearts with such a metaphorical contradiction?

3.       Peeling the onion – This refers to doing a deeper analysis. Well, if I were to analyze stuff, I’d rather peel a pomegranate than peel an onion. What’s the point in wasting your tears analyzing something which ends into nothing? The onion nothing but the peels right? It is as futile an effort like boiling the ocean.

              

4.       Over the wall – A colleague sitting in the next cubicle once asked me to pass a document over the wall. I didn’t get it. Should I take a print out and pass it over the partition? That didn’t make sense. Later I came to know that passing something over the wall means sending it to the client/vendor. What’s wrong with “Mail it”?

5.       Push the envelope – Now this one I could have never guessed in seven lives. Care to take a chance? Pushing the envelope means thinking out of the box. As if it wasn’t enough already, we have a jargon to cover for a jargon!

               

6.       Put it in the backburner – This means leaving it out of the agenda for the time being. Since it isn’t a burning issue yet, we will deal with it once it has been cooked, boiled or entirely burnt. Unless it’s the ocean.

7.       Price point – If you believe in brevity, this one is an utter wastage of words. Price point means the same as point.

 Bleeding edge – This refers to something extremely cutting edge. Like EXTREMELY.

9      Hard stop – When I first heard this one, I misheard it as ‘heart stop’. It sounds like your heart will stop functioning if you don’t move out of the meeting. Thankfully the actual translation isn’t that scary. It means that I have more important stuff to take care of and I just cannot spend one more minute talking to you. Phew!

1     Bandwidth – This mighty one word jargon is probably one of the most used nouns in office. While saves us from saying “I am jobless” (no one wants to say that right?), it does make everything seem very much plugged into the wall, being transported in binary signals or something. Just like matrix. Imagine Trinity tells Neo, “I have some bandwidth”, and Neo says “Well, come over and help me kill some bots then” 

            Sweat the Asset – This is a very graphic and smelly analogy for making your resources work double the hours without charging. It is borderline Pharaoh-ish

Open the kimono – This is the weirdest of all, and can get you sued in certain situations. It means revealing more information. Gosh! I will rather peel the onion.

That was my list. If you too have some funny ones to share, drop a comment below.

Share a laugh! J