The Orifice

Its not often I write a post about work-work, but there are moments when the day to day humdrum reaches the dizzy heights of my blog.

 

Having had a few months off work, blissfully soaking up the delights of the day, it was not only a rude awakening being shoved into the year end accounting process, but also a pretty sharp slap in the face to be surrounded by people talking in a completely different language – one where you use the most convoluted, string of words to embrace a simple concept. 

 

Normal person: “sound good?” 

Same person at work: “are we singing from the same hymn sheet?”  

 

It’s a language of pointless nothingness, or “Management Speak” as it’s commonly known.  So why do normal, self-respecting people use it given some fluorescent lighting and a row of desk pods?

 

I once worked with a Manager who, in effect, doubled the irritation by peppering emails with Management Speak encased in ‘single quotes’. Argggh!  Apart from irritating me, it had the double effect of dumbing down the message so it could be decoded successfully by a 5 year old.  Reading my emails was like being magically transported to my high chair with a plastic spoon edging towards my mouth: “choo-choo …open wide for the train”. But this particular Manager in question was a timid little soul, a bit scared of ‘rocking the boat’ and I’m under no illusion his Management Speak served as a bit of a cushion to keep everybody happy, pacify the masses, mixed in with a little butt kissing.

 

Yet still, I remember another crapweasel I worked with many years ago who not only used Management Speak but actually re-phrased it.  Sort of ‘re-branded’ it as if to make it his own. I distinctly remember a bit of a low point in a project where we all realised we’d screwed up the best part of a year’s work. 

 

Crapweasel: “The way I see it, the horse has left the stable … the question is, we just gotta find a way to catch it”

 

I don’t think I could contain myself in that rather blatant, yet abysmal rehash of “close the stable door after the horse has bolted”.  Crapweasel was a big fan of inventive Management Speak and used it to impress the big guns. And there is some ‘method to his madness’ as I have seen some positive correlations between Management Speak usage & job rank. But there’s a fine line with Management Speak, and Crapweasel didn’t quite pitch it right.  His inventions were a little too way out there and eventually Crapweasel was pretty much counselled out of the firm.

 

Yet here I am again, 10 years into my orifice career and it still trips off the tongue of all professionals alike – clever, stoopid, old, young, wise, foolish … and I even found myself on a couple of occasions stoop soooo low to use it myself. In fact, it can be cunningly used to your advantage”.

 

Manager X: “Acuvoice, what happened to that report I asked you to produce last week?”

 

Acuvoice: “Yeah … ummm … I think I ‘dropped the ball’ on that”

 

Manager X: “Cool, ok”

 

Bingo.

 

But yet, my fondest memories of the orifice have to be of those honest little souls who won’t play by the rules.  I was once privileged to be in a meeting with an enlightened colleague who actually wrote “bored” on one of the orifice mints and rolled it across the table in a meeting in a blatant ‘fingers up’ to the establishment moment.

 

Now that I treasure.