To be enraged by the over-use of the word "role" to mean "job"?

[Thepeopleversuswork]

Top corporate bollocks-speak peeve at the moment. The way its bled into human speak is so totally pervasive that sensible people have started doing it and drives me mad. I don't mind seeing this on a CV or a LinkedIn post but people use it over drinks with their mates.

I've heard in the last week: "my previous role was exhausting so I agreed to cut hours". "I went for a role". It sounds as if everyone is auditioning to play Eliza Dolittle in My Fair Lady, even if they actually went for a job on the tills at Sainsbury.

It's not a snob thing either. Being CEO is no more or a "role" than being a toilet cleaner.

Can we just get back to your jobs please?

LOL.

I also hate resource as person.

Enraged? Really?

Go and re-evaluate your life if this is genuinely enraging to you.

Melodramatic much! Have you never been irrationally annoyed by anything?

But isn't the corporatocracy all just a big game in which we're all just playing our roles?

Meant to say- I don't think snobbery should even come into it. Imo it's not a case of role=what an important, pivotal person does and job= what a menial, unimportant person does.

It's more like job=your job title or type of employment, role=the function you fulfil when doing your job (whether as a road sweeper or a CEO).

I just dislike language being corrupted by corporate nonsense.

To add some context here: I have a degree in English and linguistics, so this is a subject in which I'm quite invested.

'Corrupted' is meaningless when applied to language. Objectively, language is not getting better or worse. It is simply changing.

You may well dislike certain words. There are plenty of words and phrases that I don't like, either. But the fact that you are annoyed by them doesn't mean they represent any kind of deterioration, and it doesn't mean that the inference you personally draw from them is any kind of objective truth.

Complaining that language is being 'corrupted' because you don't like a word is a bit like complaining that fashion is being 'corrupted' because a particular style of jeans doesn't happen to suit your personal shape. Fine to say something irritates you, but your subsequent attempts to prove that you are intrinsically right to be irritated by it or that it represents a corruption of language are simply meaningless. You're neither right nor wrong to be annoyed by it, but you are wrong to suggest that your view is backed up by any kind of objective evidence.

Have you never been irrationally annoyed by anything?

The issue here isn't that you are irrationally annoyed by something. It's that you are vehemently suggesting that your annoyance is actually rational and that everyone else is wrong.

A "role" to me suggests something with pivotal, strategic importance to an organisation. A job is an arrangement where someone does tasks for money. Most jobs are not "roles", they are jobs. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this, but calling it a "role" doesn't glorify it, it just makes it sound ridiculous.

Many organisations have volunteer boards or similar strategic group that aren't doing tasks for money, so I'd guess they'd have a role, but not a job by this definition. What would non-strategic volunteer roles/jobs/positions be called then?

I've never viewed a role as more glorious than job. I think technically role is function-based, job is task-based, and position is where one sits in the organization, but "Our job here today is..." and "Our role here today is..." are pretty much the same concept to me.

Life is way too short to care about this kind of bullshit, it's just exhausting to care about something so completely unimportant.

If you do want to get worked up try focussing on something that really matters and that is worth expending energy on.

Or y'know, lapse back into general apathy like most of us do because there's just too much that's wrong and once you start to really think about it it's all a bit too much to deal with.

Your choice though, obvs.

Ah Op - you just need to “role with it”

Relax, OP. You are Recognising Your Own Value with a role, apparently.

www.wilsonperumal.com/blog/do-you-know-the-difference-between-your-role-and-your-job

"Enraged"? YABU

I'm another who can't see why you would be "enraged". Life's too short.

Words change, language changes, and thank fuck it does I haven't the brain power to be talking like I was in a chaucer novel

You appear to hold two entirely contradictory positions - both that a CEO is not a ‘role’ and “A "role" to me suggests something with pivotal, strategic importance to an organisation” (what, like the CEO?), and I’m of the firm belief that there is no point engaging with stupidity.

I totally agree @Thepeopleversuswork , it's driven me mad for years.

I guess it fits in with the increasingly outlandish job titles (character names?) which usually give you no idea as to what a person's job actually is (or perhaps how they develop the plot of the drama).

💕👏

It means "written by a twat"