Buzz Words 0
Mike Armstrong pleas for clarity:
These phrases are so loathed that Accountemps put them into its buzzword hall of fame along with the one that irks me the most: “solution.”
I’ve found that using buzz words and puffery–words that make something sound more significant that it is–usually indicates one (or maybe both) of two things:
- Mental laziness. It takes energy to think outside the box. Too often, it’s just old wine in new bottles.
- Something to hide. Someone’s trying to put the best face on the elephant in the room or make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.
I think the most absurd experience I had with this sort of stuff was a support call I took once. It was not from the tech; it was from the sales guy. He’d been to advanced sales guy school and, for him, everything was most enthusiastically an “opportunity,” an opportunity smothered in margarine and imitation maple syrup with a cherry on top.
He must have said “opportunity” at least a dozen time during the ten minute conversation, when anyone else would have said, “problem.”
When we finally verified that the “opportunity” was a broken circuit board, he said,
Great! We have an opportunity for a repair!
