Jargon Soup: The PowerPoint Patois of Modern Office Life
Dear Uncle Bobby –
Dear Uncle Bobby, I can’t take another meeting filled with phrases like “circle back,” “low-hanging fruit,” or “synergize our deliverables.” It’s like everyone at work is speaking in riddles. Am I the only one losing my mind, or has corporate jargon gotten completely out of hand?
Lost in Translation
No, you’re not crazy – you’re just drowning in a linguistic soup made entirely of PowerPoint slides and empty promises. Corporate jargon is what happens when grown adults decide that plain English is too relatable and instead start talking like motivational posters mated with a thesaurus.
Let’s decode a few of these professional hallucinations, shall we?
- “Let’s circle back” – Translation: I have no idea what to say right now, and I’m hoping you forget this ever came up.
- “Low-hanging fruit” – Translation: Let’s do the easiest thing possible and act like we climbed Everest.
- “Push the envelope” – I tried this once. Literally pushed an envelope off a desk. Nothing happened. No promotion, no paradigm shifted. Just paper on the floor.
- “Let’s put a pin in that” – Translation: I don’t want to deal with this, so I’m going to pretend it’s a voodoo doll and stab it until the conversation dies.
- “Bandwidth” – Are you a human or a router? If you have too many tabs open in your brain, just say you’re tired. Don’t bring internet speed into it.
- “We need to shift the paradigm” – Translation: I read a business book once and now I think I’m qualified to ruin your weekend.
- “Boil the ocean” – You ever tried to boil even a cup of water on a breakroom Keurig? But sure, let’s boil the entire ocean to streamline procurement. Genius.
And my favorite:
- “Thought leader” – Which, near as I can tell, is a person who posts vague LinkedIn quotes and has never actually led a thought in their life.
Corporate jargon exists for one reason: to make nonsense sound intentional. It’s the verbal fog machine of modern office life – a distraction from the fact that no one knows who actually owns the spreadsheet.
So no, you’re not alone. The next time someone asks if you’re “aligned on deliverables,” feel free to respond, “I’m still calibrating my synergy module, but I’ll touch base post-pivot.” Then slowly back away and go scream into a snack closet.
Just remember – if you start saying this crap unironically, it’s time to push the envelope… straight into a resignation letter.
– Uncle Bobby