Every profession or line of work has a language. A lexicon, if you will. I am fascinated by speech, linguistics, and vernacular. I love a good saying. I love some good slang. I’ve worked for the same company for 17 years. In those years, I’ve adopted our’shorthand language’ and I use these phrases in the work setting all.of.the.time.
Tallest of the short or cutest of the ugly – We say this in reference to reports that track sales performance to goal. If everyone is sucking wind, then the person who sucks the least is the tallest of the short or the cutest of the ugly.
Let’s discuss your ‘did wells’ and ‘your next times’ – A nice way of saying here’s what you did right and here’s what you should never do again.
Shame them into performance – This where you create and publish a report so that you get those on the bottom of the report to be so shamed for being on the bottom that it motivates them to do better.
Let me socialize your idea – I don’t have the courage to tell you right now that your idea sucks so I’m going to share with lots of others, who will hopefully do my dirty work for me and tell you.
Let me noodle on this – This is a stupid idea however let me humor you and lead you on so that you think it will become a great idea in a week with the magic of time’s passing.
Voluntold – If you get ‘voluntold’ for a project, then you got stuck doing it and the person who assigned it is making it sound like you raised your hand for this sucky assignment.
Stay in your lane – Stop talking now. Just STFU. You are seriously over-stepping your bounds and about to burn your last shred of political capital.
He doesn’t know whether to scratch his watch or wind his butt – This person is a major moron.
Fake it til you make it – I have no idea what I’m doing but you don’t know the difference.
Inspect what you expect – If you expect someone to do X, then you better be asking for regular updates on X because us humans are prone to not doing something unless we have to.
Managed out – A nice way of saying got fired.
Smarties, be sure to check out my Word War post to see my favorite slang sayings and grammar mistakes. I hope you get a chuckle or two out of my observations!
