Yourself instead of you.
Liase instead of talk to.

I'm sure there are more. Really makes me wince.

 

How could I forget... I instead of Me

 

"Be quiet" instead of "shut up" ??

 

Gus Hedges The great 'business speak' chappy

'lets drop this idea into your toaster and see what pops up'
and many many more.

 

popular around here:

"well what the f*ck did you do that for?!" instead of "sorry, i think you may have made a slight error"

 

'Let's touch base' instead of 'Let's touch up Suzy from accounts'

 

At this moment in time = now
I have sent this e-mail to ask you ... Just get on and ask the question.

 

"we need you to think outside the box" = we tried the usual ideas and failed, what shall we do now?

 

"we need everyones' input in our efforts to streamline the business" = "you will all be sacked within the next month"

 

"Thank you for your valuable input." = "You're wasting your time, we're not interested."

 

Our product leverages a new paradigm = Same old crap, just new snazzy packaging

 

let's take this offline = I can't be arsed discussing this now, lets just forget about it.

 

On account of / as a result of = because
Paranoid = concerned / worried
in view of the fact that = since
in the event that = if
with respect to = about

 

"Let's sunset this project" - The budget's run out, we have no more resources to throw at this waste of time.

 

Commence = begin

 

"Let's try blue-skying this, shall we?" - Just come up with something, anything, no matter how ridiculous. That way it looks as though we're trying.

 

incentivise and my particular favourite heard on radio the other day: incentivisation

 

As an old boss once said '**** this, nothings this important, let's go down the pub and sort it out on monday morning' That's my kind of business talk

 

I used to work at a place like that. Them were the days

 

BP Ultimate then

 

I assume everyone has seen this?

 

Thank God I work in the public sector. I think I'd end up punching someone who used such pretentious expressions.

Mind, as soon as someone near me thinks up a good idea, it has to go through a working group, a feasibility study and a tender before anything happens. So I suppose there are good sides and bad sides...

 

<Sir Humphrey mode on>
Not forgetting inter-departmental comittees, oversight comittees etc.
<mode off>

 

Ah, Sir Humphrey. You're right, we don't have pretentious expressions - we just have euphemisms

 

'Lets raise this up the flagpole and see who salutes' = lets see if anyone else thinks its important.
'We haven't quite put it to bed but its certainly got its pyjamas on'= nearly sorted the problem
'Ducks in a row'= get things organised
'low hanging fruit'= easy to solve problems
'We're golden'

 

Thanks for the translations fellas. If I head anyone in my company comming out with this ****e they would get a 'de-bull$hitting session'.

And to tell the truth everyone would be laughing if anyone came out with this clap trap anyway!

 

Seems I've been a bit "out of the loop" as I hadn't seen this thread yet. Reminds me of a mail going around in the late 90's for a new game for tedious meetings called "**** word bingo". Googled it and came back with this -

http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~jhannon/woof3.htm

 

'Cept liase is the US spelling....

 

I'm working for an American company at the moment - so cut me some slack buddy

 

"Your call is important to us" when you've been waiting for 20 minutes already!

That Action Item comic is a classic

Les