Reaching out

[Icimoi]

I'm dealing with someone at work who never says that he'll contact someone, speak to them, phone them, email them etc - he always says he will reach out to them, or asks them to reach out to him. When he does it with me I find it hard to keep a straight face. I've noticed it occasionally with other people. Where on earth has this nonsense come from?

Big chocs, that made me laugh. FU meetings!! Although I think someone once did mean fuck you meeting and had to do some quick thinking:)

Shasham actually in my experience less consultants (who tend to be fairly blunt) more management :)

We actually had a discussion the other day at work about it and the one which wound everyone up the most was "granularity". "Am I hearing here that you want more granularity on the employment figures?"

ConstableOdo I would love it if we replaced "reach out" with "enmesh with tentacles of contact" You are right that not all business speak is bollocks, I actually particularly like "locus" which is a real bureaucrat's word and all non-bureaucrats laugh at me every time I use it. It

My favourite example is from internal comms at, er, a place which shall remain nameless. At the time, the organisation was going through a period of job losses and people were worried about it. Management saw fit to put out a cheery circular which informed us "We are on a descending flightpath of headcount, which will smash the silo mentality."

Which raised some unfortunate comparisons to other descending flightpaths in the news which ended up in things getting smashed...

I have an ear worm now Goringbit

Depeche Mode - Reach out and touch base.....

Reach out has a perfectly acceptable meaning

Yes, it means to reach out physically towards something. It doesn't mean phone, email or speak to someone.

Wtf cares? We all understand what's meant and it is a simple concise way of asking.

Why is it more simple and concise to say "Please reach out to me" than to say "please phone me?"

And I didn't say I cared. I said it made me want to laugh. I quite like laughing. I might equally ask angeltulips why she cares enough to come on here to justify it.

Going forward
Reaching out
Boxing off
Park ideas

My colleague has a saying, if someone asks if he is ok - he says "Cock on"

Northumberland My FIL says cock on, he is very northern. Its usually "Aye, Im cock on pet".

What about "Frame it" as in "pull together an update and we'll work on framing it for a more senior audience."

Any ideas what it means?! I'm thinking it means adding some context and/or re-writing the original because it was rubbish.

But next time someone asks me to "frame it" I may need to go to Hobbycraft to buy a frame...

I work somewhere where management babble is the route to promotion

A sandbox is a system environment where you can "play", set up test data, run scenarios.

I can't bear "reaching out".

"Going forward" is not bothersome to me at all.

I've lived NE all my life Q - I hadn't heard it before.
Still think it sounds wierd !

Icimoi as well I think reach out has a connotation that the person you are reaching out to is hurt or in a bad situation. "This will help us reach out to people who are being bullied in the workplace, but might not report it".

Grumpy if we get told to "frame it" if it means two things. Either "you have written it at a level which isn't appropriate for your audience" or "you've written this in a way which isn't going to convince anyone". The first would be the equivalent of writing instructions for new starts in the cleaning team (who have English as a fourth language) which sounds like something out of Private Eye's Pseuds Corner. The second would be when you've stated an opinion "I strongly recommend that everyone gets an additional hour's lunch break on Tuesdays" without even attempting to say why.

I watch Catfish on MTV. They 'reach out' to people all.the.fucking.time.

I love Nev & Max, but my god, I want to punch them during every episode.

Northumberland He is most certainly a little bit weird so it fits.

Make yourself a corporate bullshit bingo card, next time he asks you to reach out, jump from your desk waving your arms and shouting house.

Then ask him to take an action and step change his way into the blue sky helicopter and learn to talk like a normal human rather than a corporate robot

Icimoi as well I think reach out has a connotation that the person you are reaching out to is hurt or in a bad situation

Yes, that's at least an acceptable use of the term. But it makes it even more ludicrous when you're using in the context of just fixing up an appointment or something.

lampygirl, I like it, but it wouldn't really be practicable with this person. I did once work somewhere where we whiled away many a meeting playing bullshit bingo. However, we had to ban the choice of "across the piece" because it was the favourite phrase of one of the attendees and guaranteed to come up at least three times an hour. Instead we played games where anyone who didn't manage to work that phrase in at least twice had to pay a forfeit.

A colleague of mine has starting referring to the training given to the new starters in our department as their "onboarding". WTF? Onboarding? Makes me want to punch someone.

In my previous employment, one of our managers would invite us to a "deep dive" whenever he wanted to meet us to discuss an issue. Used to make me feel a bit queasy, that one.

A new guy at work once said to me: "we must touch base soon to build thought bridges and share our knowledge capital". He meant sit down and have a chat about work.

OP, I first met this phrase through watching The Sopranos. Tony was always 'reaching out' to someone or other or moaning that someone or other should have 'reached out' to him.

Now I hear it everywhere and its meaning seems to have moved on from having a word or asking for help to any kind of contact at all.

If someone told me to frame something there is a danger I would start singing the Mister Maker theme tune.

'High level' is my bugbear. Keeping it high level, Abbie, what are your thoughts on..."

Just ask for a general summary, for heaven's sake. There is much talk of 'gateways' in my office at the moment as well.

Let's run it up the flagpole and see who salutes

My work uses this. Makes me want to scream. Who the fuck things this is a normal thing to say ? Seriously who ?

buzzword bingo - guaranteed to make a dull meeting fly by.

I am SO glad I don't work in an office any more!

Make sure you circle back after you've reached out.

My boss uses going forward all the time. In every sentence. Sometimes twice. I cringe a little bit every time he uses it now. There are numerous things he does that piss me off, but that's definitely in the top five.

How would you, other than "going forward", indicate that a decision has been made that will be implemented ASAP?

I guess you could say "from now on", but that's slightly less succinct.

As I was leaving work today, a bloke came up behind me (reminded me of Ainsley Harriot) and asked me if I was going to have a cheeky little sit in the garden when I got home. I did wonder what is at all cheeky about sitting in my own garden. I managed to witter on about honeysuckle instead.

We have a manager who says, "Correct me if I'm wrong," rather often (one day I will give in to the temptation and take him literally, even though what he actually means is "Don't you dare correct me, even if I'm wrong, which obviously I'd never admit to anyway.") Had to stop keeping count of it in meetings with a colleague, because it got too dangerous to catch each other's eye, and we were on the verge of giggles all the time.