"Work stack" - FFS

[CovidCanDoOne123]

So in addition to the likes of 'reach out', 'align'; 'ducks in a row', 'going forward' etc etc etc...we now have 'work stack' instead of workload.

Losing the will to live.

Ps no AIBU. The use of 'work stack' is unreasonable.

@CowboyFromHell

I love that *@TheFoldOx* To be fair it makes a hell of a lot more sense than the Miro board I was forced to create in a team meeting last week.

I particularly like that the hexagon of aims is a pentagon.

My boss has told me it is "only my bandwidth holding me back"

... I have no idea what that means or what to do with such helpful feedback!

@IlFaitBeau

Today I got: “thought experiment”. I’ve also got “idea shower”, and the new inexplicable tendency to use the word “pop”.

“Pop it in an email”
“Something to make the ideas pop”.

Kill me please.

Would much prefer the honesty of "can't be arsed having an actual conversation with you so just email me" to "pop it in an email"

"Ping that over to me" also sends my hackles skyward

@Blea

'In the future' sounds too vague. I should go to sleep.

I'd say "from now on".

My best friend works at a small family engineering firm who've just appointed a marketing manager. There has been a lot of adjustment needed on both sides.

@CoddledAsAMommet

Uptick.

I bloody hate 'uptick'. What's wrong with increase?
Also, the new one I keep hearing is, 'it's in our gift' as in, 'its in our gift to be able to do this for them'. What's wrong with ' we are able to...'??

"In our gift" is really really really old. It dates from the time when certain job and posts were appointed by the local big landowner....so the posts of workhouse superntendant or school manager or the vicar of the local parish church would be in the gift of the lord of the manor...the point being that they get to choose who gets the post so the appointee will be properly grateful and keen to run things the way the giver wants. So if they are saying its in their gift to do something for a client I would suggest that they are WRONG

ones I like
I will take that under advisement
I mustn't keep you any longer
I will come back to you on that

And the "is that a legacy hand" in Teams meetings absolutely ends me every time.

I didn't know "work stack" was a thing other people were saying. I'm tech and I often desribe my current work as a stack to explain to my team that I'm in a situation where I've have to put work on hold to deal with a higher priority interruption, which itself was then put on hold to deal with an even higher priority interruption, which was then...

But I'm talking to people who know what a stack frame is. I wouldn't use that metaphor with non-engineers.

A lot of trendy phrases come from engineering, where, to be fair, they make sense. For example, "push the envelope" which annoys the hell out of me in a social context is useful shorthand among engineers doing stress testing.

Meanwhile, any time someone tells me to "reach out" instead of call, contact or talk to them, I have this strange urge to burst into that old Motown hit by the Four Tops:

"Darling, reach ouuuuut,
Reach out for me,
I'll be there ..."

But usually I just say "Is it OK if I call you?"

I used to work somewhere where they referred to your workload as 'what you have on your pad' i.e. 'have you got too much on your pad'?' 'whats on your pad today'? Drove me nuts!! YANBU

What sort of pad are they referring to?
a note pad, an ipad, a sanitary pad...?

Luckily I work in a creative/practical job and have never used or heard any of these cringey phrases at work.

@CowboyFromHell

Apparently instead of telling someone what was said at a meeting it’s now a ‘readout’ of the meeting. Why??

Is that any worse than reading the minutes of the meeting? Jargon is just a way of building a community and excluding outsiders, it's nothing new, the words and phrases just change. People are just getting cross that the phrases that are used to have gone out ot fashion..

Yes!! What is the difference between lived experience and mere experience - I'd love someone to tell me. How is it possible to have experience of something without being alive at the time?

Maybe it’s to differentiate it from a near death experience. Which is AKA being on the receiving end of nonstop bullshit.

When blue-sky thinking was first bandied about I objected to its use, on the basis we are in a part of the country where the default weather is grey and a bit drizzly. I asked if maybe we should call it grey sky thinking. My boss wasn’t amused.

I think this is due to a paradigm shift.

@Bessica1970

I’ve never heard this, but ‘mental load’ irrationally pisses me off.

Me too and “ life admin” , boils my piss.

I heard the term "padlet" for the first time today.

About 15 years ago we had a new department manager where I worked at the time. We were working for a charity and she was 100% professional marketing bollocks.

At the first meeting with us all she unveiled a new logo and got annoyed because we didn't gush at how wonderful it was. My colleague asked how much it cost (our budget was really tight and we often provided our own resources) - that upset her!🤣 Then she asked us to 'idea shower' improvements that could be made to the way we work. Several people looked confused and I asked if she wanted us to brainstorm ideas. She then lectured me on how offensive it was to say 'brainstorm' and that it was offensive to epileptic.

At that point I explained that I had epilepsy but was not defined by my condition and was much more than an 'epileptic' and I was offended that she had assumed I would be offended without ever asking me or anyone else who had epilepsy.

She topped all that off by saying she was sorry because I didn't look like I had epilepsy!

....she lasted 3 months and then buggered off back to a marketing career!

@OzziePopPop

I have ducks (real ones, around 20 or so) living in my back garden. I’ve tried all sorts to get them ‘in a row’. Best I can do is in a line, following each other and that involved a handful of their favourite split peas. Off topic maybe but just how does one get their ducks in a row, are mine faulty?

Ours can't even manage a line, I just can't seem to get the hang of duck management.

*epileptics

IT is the worst for this - we have stand ups and scrums. We even have a scrum leader! Work is delivered in sprints and we don’t go into training we go into incubation. Batshittery of the highest order.

@oakleaffy

Couldn’t agree more, these stock phrases are so unoriginal. So and so “ Welcomed a baby” “ Reach out” “ Ducks in a row” What on earth does “ Get to the granular level” even mean? Is it akin to “Rock bottom?”

I took it to mean get to the fine details. As in drill down to the granular levels.

LIFO/FIFO were accounting methods at University, also last in first out is a retrenchment method. Mostly where I live FIFO and DIDO are work methods rather than corporate speak, fly in fly out and drive in drive out, workers who don't live close enough to work to commute and live at the jobsite during their shifts.

@SockFluffInTheBath

On my PGCE we were told to use ‘pop’ as a non-confrontational option eg ‘can you pop your gum in the bin please?’. Seems to have proliferated in recent times.

Wondering what's confrontational about put. 'Can you put your gum in the bin' wouldn't exactly raise my ire.

@MasterBeth - I’m very sorry if I said the wrong thing. This was just another new phrase from the lips of a senior colleague (from London) who could not complete a sentence without some management speak.

@Taytocrisps - OMG, I’d forgotten about those. I think it was 1995 I spent 2 days in a basement conference room with senior management from several offices (US and UK). Our new MD insisted we need a Mission Statement.

Despite probably 50% of the staff having PhDs, and most of the rest having at least a masters, and years of industry experience (I was the newest person there), the process seemed to allude us.

It was a complete farce, and if I remember right, one of the directors walked out.

We spent the whole first morning on “what ethos do we want to conjure?”

I also remember going to a sales conference where we each found under our chairs, a copy of Who Moved My Cheese.

Slightly Oprah, but not Oprah enough iyswim.

In hindsight, it really wasn’t the industry for me.

I used to think lived experience sounded wanky but it plays an important role for people who are ND or have a disability/illness or who experience racism or discrimination, it's about not imposing the view of someone who hasn't directly experienced that thing onto those who have. An Autistic person has lived experience of Autism, whereas my experience of Autism comes from the perspective of a parent & carer. I have lived experience of my chronic illness, my doctors have experience in treating my illness, but they don't have the experience of living with it.

@CowboyFromHell see my post above.