KFC-

I have an essential addition to your cubicle chronicles- office language: Pipeline. Relief valve. Backburner. Fodder. Low-hanging fruit. Ecosystem. Deliverable. High-level. Re-purpose. Circle-back. Follow-up. Reach-out. Streamline. MotherFucking Synergy.

What is it about spending a certain amount of time in an office that makes everyone talk like a dickhead? At what point in office history did normal words die and were replaced by these horrible, mutated versions? My guess is it happened around the same time that cubicles were invented and everyone became the Walking Dead. What the fuck is a low-hanging fruit anyway? Like a kiwi?

Cubicle monkeys use these words so that their job, and they themselves, sound more important than they actually are. It’s easier to say that you spent three hours working on a “deliverable” when the person to whom it was delivered, whether it be a client or a manager, probably will only spend 15 seconds glancing at it. If you wasted that much time on an “Excel spreadsheet” you’d probably kill yourself.

The worst, by far, is “bandwidth.” There is literally no situation in which “bandwidth” does not mean the exact same thing as “time,” but it’s used solely for the purpose of getting out of doing stuff. And it works. This dude next to me never has any “bandwidth” to take on more work, and my managers respond by asking how they can help take stuff off his plate. You have no “bandwidth” because you’re a professional and an overachiever who already has too much work to do. You have no “time” because you’re lazy and don’t care.

The most depressing part is that recently I have found myself uttering these words without thinking about it. Each time I do, I realize a small part of me dies, and I now go into the bathroom, sit on the toilet, and immediately pack a lip. It’s my soap. And because I’m addicted.

Jason

Nailed it. There is nothing more indicative of the Cube Monkey selling his soul and becoming a Corporate Lemming then when he starts talking like an asshole robot. There is absolutely nothing natural about any of those phrases. No way anybody says any of these phrases in their normal lives. Imagine if you were trying to make plans with some friends and you were like “Lets ‘circle back’ next week and figure out happy hour?” “Hey buddy hows the new girl you’ve been dating?” Great man we’ve got a lot of synergies.” For sure not. You would lose all your friends within a week. Probably get punched in the dick too. Its just the ultimate sign of succumbing to corporate slavery. Not only do dress like a monkey and work like a monkey, now you talk like one too.

And like Jason said, everyone falls victim to it. Theres only so long you can hold out before you start to speak like everyone in your surroundings. Its like when you live somewhere for a while and develop an accent. Or all the buzz words the NBA and NFL draft experts use. There’s a reason why all those assholes use stupid terms like “motor” and “length” and “upside.” When all the other idiots around you start talking like that, you can’t help it.