bignoseduglyguy

Metaphorically speaking

I had a note on my Palm to write a post about how certain words and phrases seep from work cultures into our everyday personal lives but Ian sort of beat me to it. In a post, Ian points to a Plain English Campaign press release concerning their recent vote on the most irritating phrase in the language. Simple language folk around the globe voted "At the end of the day" as the most irritating phrase in the English language, followed by "At this moment in time", the use of "like" a form of punctuation and "With all due respect". By way of a segue into my original subject idea, below are others that received nominations, are sadly in common usage in my company and tend to irritate - feel free to add your own two-finger quotation mark gestures as you read along:

• 24/7
• absolutely
• address the issue
• basically
• basis ("on a weekly basis" in place of "weekly" and so on)
• epicentre (used incorrectly)
• glass half full (or half empty)
• going forward
• in terms of...
• it's not rocket science
• literally (when the reference is far from literal - grrr)
• move the goal-posts
• ongoing
• prioritise
• pushing the envelope
• singing from the same hymn sheet
• the fact of the matter is
• to be honest/to be honest with you/to be perfectly honest
• touch base
• value-added (in general use)

Now, this is not to imply that I am immune from using such tosh but, in my defence, it does tend to be inadvertantly when others are throwing such phrases around and I get sucked into their verbal vortices. However, what I do notice is how susceptable I am to picking up work jargon and industry lingo and then using it at home with family and friends. Years ago, in between acting jobs, I was a courier and cab driver and spent most of my waking hours hop-scotching around London and the Home Counties on bikes, vans and cars whilst chuntering incessantly into a PMR (private mobile radio). At the other end of the connection was the despatcher/controller (this person, by dictating where you went and what you did, had enormous power over one's earning potential). After a while, courier radio-speak began to creep into my everyday vocabulary. An affirmative reply ceased to be anything other than 'roger-rodge', it's opposite the simple 'negative'. The acceptance of small amounts of money was soon just 'cash in yer bin' and driving anywhere with someone or something else in the vehicle with you meant you were 'P.O.B.' or 'passenger / parcel on board'. To this day, these phrases occasionally spring from my lips when I'm merely agreeing with someone, giving the kids their pocket-money or confirming that I have collected them from dance class. As with all licenced radio communications in the UK, all transmissions are randomly monitored, with heavy fines or loss of licence the consequence for repeated misuse or bad language. This led to the evolution of a whole new way of swearing - one that would convey sufficient meaning to those concerned without jeopardising the business. The standard response to a controller's request to deliver to an out-of-the-way address on a cold rainy Friday night (where refusal might cost you your weekly attendance bonus) was inevitably 'FRO!' which conveyed the sentiment that one wished the controller to 'go right away from here' or words to that effect.

A good few years later, I find myself in similar territory despite the fact that I am now in a totally different industry and inhabit the no-man's land that is middle management. Here, the language is far more transatlantic and far less colloquial, fuelled by the echos of the Thatcherite dream and a thousand 'how-to-get-ahead-in-business' books. Managers like myself no longer come across 'problems', we 'encounter issues'. Instead of solving the problem, we 'strive' to 'resolve the issue'. Likewise, a colleague who simply employs appropriately skilled people on a project is obviously not in the same league as the 'co-worker' who is 'focused on leveraging synergistic human resources in achieving the...' - well, you get my drift, I'm sure. The irony of managers from Surrey and Kent trying to talk like Wall Street warriors such as Gordon Gekko seems to be lost on these folks. This kind of thing sneaks up on one, as I found a few days back when a colleague was chatting about 'issues' he had with his girlfriend and I was offering him advice on a few 'win-win scenarios' that might bring about 'mutually positive outcomes'. SWMBO always said I talk bollocks, now I know it's true.