What phrase do you hear ALL THE TIME during your working day, that makes you want to scream?!

We use ‘patient touches’ as a measure of how successful a product is in med tech. Always sounds wrong to me. “We managed to touch 20M patients this year, so next years target will be 30M patient touches.” Eeewwww

I just posted this too. I hate the phrase, particularly when it seems to be on every email and I don’t even know the person. I’m pretty sure it started during covid.

When people use ‘I hope you are well’ on an email. It drives me mad. They don’t care if I’m well or not 🤣

No, President Trump’s carers.

So much this!

@Els1e that phrase is acceptable only if one works in a dental surgery.

That just gave me a sorrowing smile as my dad would do that every day he was in hospital for his final illness, plus he'd ask for a bottle of beer. 😄 Once he was in hospice they actually gave him the occasional beer and it would make his day.

Reminds me of my manager who had appalling grammar, and who used to bang on about the tidiness of my desk. I told him that if he kept off my desk, I'd keep off his grammar.

Mind you, he was the one who suffered for it as it meant he sent his letters etc out uncorrected and revealed to the world just how illiterate he was.

Another one here who cannot abide "reaching out". You aren't reaching out, FFS, you're asking or contacting. Stop talking nonsense.

Current buzzwords from the ExCo members at my company seem to be “affecting a cultural shift” and “setting the tone from the top”. 🙄

Not only do these phrases indicate how invisible, ineffective and lacking in credibility this leadership team truly are, I’m 99% certain that buzzwords are all they will ever be…..Both individually and as a group, they are useless when it comes to taking any kind of substantive action that would actually deliver a definitive, positive change.

Frankly, if I wasn’t fully contractually Home-based and my salary and benefits package wasn’t so good, I’d have run for the hills some time ago. A fact I have to remind myself of regularly, especially after I’ve just had the same utterly pointless f*cking conversation as I had the previous quarter with one of said senior numpties.

Roll on retirement!!

Oh wow, yeah I couldn't be doing with that.

(Luckily my managers are variously entertainingly candid or mercifully brief in their communication.)

That's the difference, then - we get them from people we literally see every day. It's not their voice. It's not even them, it's AI.

My manager threatens to do it to me regularly. I told him that if he does, he will get back a florid email with zero paragraphs, Oxford commas, with some bonus ones in strange places for extra interest, and repeated three part sentences, faithfully promising that I shall do the needful, remaining his loyal servant, in perpetuity, and offering multiple faith based blessings to him and his woman. And if he does it again, he'll get all of the above, plus more exclamation marks than he ever thought possible for anybody over the age of 14! As it's really irritating! And never makes the writer sound enthusiastic as it's intended to do!

We're not allowed to use Teams because, well, they say so. It would definitely reduce email traffic, though, leaving Outlook purely for messages intended for public consumption.

Look at things in greater detail. There is some rather ancient software I use that requires me to drill down to open up individual records to handle errors and queries and drill back up again (did the developers never use a Black & Decker to know that's not possible?) to see the broad statistics.

It's vaguely related to the 'deep dive' - although that always reminds me of movies where if somebody decides it's a really good idea to go that deep, they always disturb something that eats the guy on the right's head.

My colleague (who thinks she is senior / superior) saying 'we need to drill down' whenever there is something to discuss. What does that even mean?

“I just wanted to touch base with you”

It's my voice. Obviously not to close colleagues but distant people and external clients/suppliers, absolutely.

It's just a brief opener to someone I have a slightly formal relationship with and who I haven't communicated with in a while

I think emails can read as very rude/abrupt without them

‘Misssss have you got a pen I forgot one?’

Of course I do but if you can remember your phone and your lipgloss you can remember a pen.

And before anyone asks - no I don’t give detentions for no equipment, no I don’t make a big deal out of it. I spend £5 a week on pens at Tesco and give them out when required with minimal fuss.

Yeah, but he makes me laugh all the time!

@BestZebbieaaaah yes - the unnecessary reflexive. Beloved of recruitment consultants and estate agents.

Not a work comment but when I'm out with my Nordic Walking group, we either get "Have you lost your skis?" or "Where's the snow?"

Actually choosing the AI voice?

I'm not sure if that's better or even worse.

What an arse.

My husband is this sort of person. I apologise on his behalf. The other day we were going through the checkout st our local small supermarket and he'd picked up some mouth wash. As he put in the bag he said, 'Ah, yes - some mouth wash for my wife's bad breath.' I scolded him and everyone in the queue was lsughing. I could've died. He does things like this all the time!

I used to teach in a srcondary school. It was the skirt thing for the girls and 'tuck your shirt in for the boys. Must've sounded like a broken record!

We mustn't forget the new

'I hope this email finds you well'.

I was just saying at work today, how this fucking annoys the shit out of me.

It’s so utterly pointless and meaningless and, dare I say it, girly. Like the nauseating ‘x’ at the ends of texts, I don’t see men doing it.

Get to the point and stop using this insincere and overused platitude.