Actual Words I've Actually Heard at Work

What with all the corporate-speak and the buzzwords and the general business blather I'm forced to listen to every day here in the cubicle farm, it's both scary and a little refreshing to be able to present to you the List of Corporate Non-Words that Sound Really Good. This is a list that hangs in my cubicle, and I add to it every time I hear someone utter a word that isn't really a word (or, might possibly be a word but could easily be replaced with a simpler one).

I started out by only including words that I received in written correspondence, but I recently changed my rules to include spoken conversations. I subtract a point if I only overhear it, but I give bonus points if I hear a word being used by a VP or above.

Customizable
Operationalize
Incent
Symbologies
Plateaud
Impactful
Irregardless
Messenging
Dimensionalization
Furtherment
Verted
Solutionize

My cubicle-mate/coworker thinks I should include "sortation", but I haven't yet. ("What is that? Is it a system you use to sortate things??")

Fashion at Work

I know I complained about those gaucho pants before, but I saw something today that almost made me laugh out loud. You know those Italian loafer shoes that all the cool boys are wearing these days?





Besides the alligator detailing and the two-tone brown with the buckle, look at how pointy that toe is! Practically a weapon. It makes me think of those poulaines that you always see in those 15th-century paintings:




I don't know why these are fashionable. Come on, guys, you look like you have clown feet.


Not sexy.


These are possibly only to be outdone by that old middle manager standby, the tasseled loafer:





Bleargh. If I were single, this? Would be a dealbreaker.

Eyeeesh.

Spinnaker Tower, Portsmouth, UK: The Glass Floor

This picture makes my feet tingle. Vertigo, anyone?

That confirms it. I will never, never, never, be able to bungee-jump.

It's About Time

VA Approves Pentagram as Acceptable on Veterans' Headstones

Hooray!

Also: Here's hoping we never have to use it again on a headstone.

Love plus Infinity

My dad and my son at the National Zoo, 2007

Advice

Love the earth and the sun and the animals,

despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,

stand up for the stupid and crazy,

devote your income and labor to others,

hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,

have patience and indulgence toward the people,

take off your hat to nothing known or unknown,

or to any number of men,

go freely with powerful uneducated persons,

and with the young, and the mothers or families,

re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,

and dismiss whatever insults your own soul;

and your very flesh shall be a great poem.

Walt Whitman

Finally.

Hey, I just moved over from Yahoo. I feel like I just graduated from a tricycle to a what? Schwinn? Anyway, there you have it. I graduated from blogging nursery school. :)