2044: No, Thank You

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “No, Thank You.”

“If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?”

I’m going to cheat a little here and not talk about a specific word, but more a general style of communication. There are numerous words that could be used to represent this style of communication, but not one that particularly stands out more than others, so I’m going to talk in more general terms.

As most of you know, the rise of the Internet over the course of the last few decades has made it easier than ever for people to communicate with one another. And with that ease of communication has come a relaxation of the rules of formality when communicating. In some ways, this is a bit of a shame, because the distinction between formal and informal use of language can often send implicit signals to the people in an interaction as to what is and is not appropriate to talk about. But in others, I’m actually very much relieved about this, because formal language is so mind-numbingly impersonal it’s borderline offensive to be confronted with.

I’m thinking particularly in terms of “professional” email messages here, and I’ll give you an example of the distinction. I’ve been doing some freelance work for a company for a while. When I started, the company was very much in its infancy, with relatively few employees and a single point of contact for the work I was doing. Said point of contact was a delightful young woman who was always chatty, helpful and charming whenever we spoke to one another. It was a pleasure to interact with her, even though for the most part we were only ever exchanging standard pleasantries and details of work assignments. But just little things like her squealing enthusiasm for me when I told her I was getting married, or chats about the extremes of weather we’ve seen this summer — all of those things were nice, and gave me a feeling of being “connected” to her and, by extension, a feeling of “belonging” to the company as a whole, despite simply being an outside contractor.

A few weeks ago, my former contact was replaced as she (presumably) moved on to other duties in the company as it has started to grow. She’s still with the company and tends to get copied in on email messages, but I haven’t heard a peep out of her since. Her replacements are like robots. And I mean that pretty much literally — every message I get from them absolutely stinks of copy-and-paste, email-by-template communication… largely because they clearly are copy-and-paste emails-by-template, and it’s easy to tell this due to the fact that there are the exact same words in each one.

There’s a good reason for this sort of thing, of course; as companies grow and have to communicate and collaborate with more and more people, it’s not considered to be particularly efficient to manually type out each and every message. So in come the templates, the form letters, the copy-and-paste boilerplate text.

Efficient it may be, but that feeling of “connection” is gone as a result. I don’t know these people, and even having sent messages to them in the same tone as I spoke with my previous contact, they’ve made no effort to engage with me in any way; I may as well be downloading assignments from an automated message board.

This is frustrating enough by itself, but combine it with the passive-aggressive tone that business communications tend to take — all “gentle reminders” and “looking forward” to something you haven’t done yet — and it’s not something that I feel is particularly conducive to a good working relationship.

It doesn’t really bother me all that much, to be honest; the company in question is a means to an end (said end being “getting money”) for me right now, and ultimately a personal connection with it isn’t all that important to me. I just find it a little sad that what was once friendly, personal interactions between two people now feels like sending commands and requests to an automated system. You’re human beings; act like it!

So, to (sort of) answer the original question, then: I would ban business-speak, form letters and email templates from general usage and insist that everyone communicate with everyone else as an individual. It would help make the world just a little bit friendlier as a result, and I feel that would work wonders for making people feel more positive about all sorts of things.

#oneaday Day 814: Myself, Myself and Myself

Watched The Apprentice tonight. Out of the interminable string of asinine reality shows that the idiot-box forces into our collective consciousness, Lord Sugar‘s ouevre is the one that offends me the least. It still offends me, of course, though not for the same reasons that, say, Britain’s Got Talent does. No, Britain’s Got Talent makes me feel stupid for watching it. (So I don’t.) The Apprentice, meanwhile, finds me infuriated at the people depicted therein — the fact that the show itself typically shows them up to look like the bunch of chancers they are takes the edge off, however.

One of the worst things these people do is talk. No, seriously. Every time they open their mouths it’s a veritable string of business cliches, one after another. One of the most prolific, egregious examples is the incorrect use of the word “myself”. Everyone on that show seems to think that using the word “myself” instead of “me” or “I” makes them sound more “formal” or “polite”.

“Who was responsible for this?” yells Lord Sugar.

“That was myself,” pipes up someone with impossibly blue eyes.

“And who worked in the production side of things?”

“Myself was working in production, along with Randolph, Bellend and Fuckwhistle,” comes the reply from the blonde one with the annoying attitude. (I can’t remember their real names.)

You get the idea.

The same principle is also, it seems, applied to the word “yourself”, which has apparently become an acceptable substitute for the word “you” somewhere along the line.

“I think the team working on this should be yourself, myself and Craptwat,” says Fuckwhistle.

I can’t work out where this faux-formality that makes people talk incorrectly (or, to be less prescriptive about it, “faux-formality that makes people complicate their speech unnecessarily”) has come from. Perhaps it’s a modern-day variant of the archaic “thou art/you are” distinction, which everyone uses incorrectly these days anyway. (And with good reason, obviously — it’s archaic, duh.) Whatever it is, it needs to die, for the same reason that people who use words like “trendy” and “funky” just need to stop right now. Words like that are ones which lose all their meaning and become the opposite of what they’re supposed to be as soon as they come out of someone’s mouth. The same is also true for anyone who says Internet memes out loud or — God forbid — says “LOL” in earnestness.

But I digress.

Language is constantly changing and evolving, usually for the better. We have a veritable shit-ton more words than we used to (and plenty more, like “shit-ton”, that you won’t find in the OED) and the English language has never been more complex, more expressive and more descriptive than it is now. It doesn’t need to be overcomplicated with misplaced formality. There are already pretty good systems in place for indicating that you’re speaking formally — lose the contractions, cut the slang, actually bother to pronounce the letter “t” — so stop making up rules. And while we’re on, grab a dictionary and look up what “literally” means. It’s not an intensifier. It means something actually happened. Stop using it wrong or I will literally jam this pencil into an orifice of yours that it’s not usually supposed to find itself in.

And yes, I mean literally.

#oneaday, Day 129: Projects Procurement Specialist Wanted

Have you tried to get a job recently? It’s a massive, huge pain in the arse, and nothing to do with crowbars this time. The reason for it being such a pain in the arse is the sheer amount of bullshit that flies around with job advertisements, as I believe I alluded to in passing yesterday.

The worst bullshit is when you read through a job advertisement and, by the end of it, have no idea what you would actually be doing if you were successful in your application. What on Earth is a “Manager of Quality and Services”? Or a “Projects Procurement Specialist”? Or that old favourite, “Consultant”? Consultant on what? What are you consulted on? “Nothing, I’m just a consultant”.

Then there’s the job description itself. From the aforementioned “Projects Procurement Specialist” ad:

To provide the engineering department with tactical/strategic procurement support, including supplier identification and selection to meet the Engineering projects cost schedule, quality and delivery requirements.

To act as the liaison between the engineering and purchasing department whilst identifying opportunities to protect the business and to increase gross margins.

To raise and process relevant documentation for supplier selection criteria both technical and commercial and draft and negotiate contracts and purchase orders.

To contribute to continual improvement of processes and relationships at key suppliers and those internal processes affecting supply chain performance.

Now, granted, I am not a Projects Procurement Specialist. I’m not even a Projects Procurement Trainee. But I did do an English degree and can write a bit. And I have no idea what any of those sentences mean. Let’s see if we can break them down a bit, shall we?

To provide the engineering department (Okay! Easy so far. I can do this.) with tactical/strategic (Oh, so it’s a military job?) procurement support (Procurement of what?) including supplier identification (So… looking people up in the phone book who can send you things?) and selection (…and putting a circle around them) to meet the Engineering projects cost schedule (Cost is an amount of money. It doesn’t keep a schedule.), quality (How does cost have a quality?) and delivery requirements (I imagine they want it put in a box and sent to them. Us. Wait, who’s getting what delivered now?)

Whew. So some military person is required to get hold of some unspecified products that the Engineering department need, having worked out who can send them to them and for how much? SO WHY DON’T YOU SAY THAT? Let’s continue.

To act as the liaison between the engineering and purchasing department (Wait… I thought I was the one “procuring” things?) whilst identifying opportunities to protect the business (Well, you could replace the lock on that door for a start… and you should probably put an alarm on the fridge.) and to increase gross margins (Have you seen those margins recently? They’re disgusting, but I think we can do worse. Smear some shit over them or something.)

Okay. I’m getting lost now. Let’s carry on…

To raise and process relevant documentation (“Raise and process”? Do you mean “type”? Or “print”? Or perhaps “type then print”?) for supplier selection criteria (Relevant documentation for supplier selection criteria… um… like a checklist or something?) both technical and commercial and draft and negotiate contracts and purchase orders (There are so many “ands” in that sentence I can’t even begin to fathom what it actually means. Something to do with contracts and purchase orders. Still no word of what any of these things are actually for.)

I don’t think attempting to analyse this is actually making it any clearer to me. In for a penny, in for a pound.

To contribute to continual improvement of processes and relationships at key suppliers (What? You mean “get to know someone”? Or perhaps “set up an account with someone who sends us stuff”?) and those internal processes affecting supply chain performance (Reading this is giving my internal processes a funny bubbly feeling. I think I might need to go and sit on the toilet for a little while. Excuse me.)

So, having come to the end of those statements, I am still completely in the dark as to what a Projects Procurement Specialist actually does. Evidently their specialism is so specialist that anyone who has never procured a project will have absolutely no idea what they are supposed to be doing.

And herein lies my problem. When I look for a job, I tend to try and look for something that I know I can do. But when you’re confronted with page after page of bullshit like the above that makes absolutely no sense, it’s difficult to work out exactly what jobs you can do. Or indeed would want to do. Being a Projects Procurement Specialist sounds inordinately tedious to me, so I guess I won’t be joining that particular team.

But what can I do? If I don’t understand half of the job advertisements out there – and it’s not through stupidity, I might add, it’s through their extremely poor use of language – how can I be expected to find something I’ll be good at? I feel trapped in a cycle of doing crappy supply teaching right now, because for all the bullshit there is in education, at least I understand what the words “classroom teacher” mean. They haven’t quite taken to calling them “learning facilitators” yet, though I imagine it’s only a matter of time.

#oneaday, Day 128: Leveraging the Monetization of Excellence

Dear Businesspersonages of the World,

You don’t half talk a load of bollocks. Whether you’re sitting around a boardroom table with a cup of petrol masquerading as coffee, standing in front of an overhead projector training people who aren’t listening by patronising them (in the English way, not the American way) or writing job advertisements, your language is full of shit that doesn’t mean anything. In case you weren’t aware, the English language has been around a lot longer than the double-breasted business suit and so was already adequately equipped to allow clear communication between individuals, or even large groups of people, through the media of writing or speaking.

Therefore, I must please ask you to remove the following words from your vocabulary forthwith:

Leverage

Use. USE. You don’t “leverage social media applications to crowdsource popular opinion”, you “use Facebook to see what people think”. I have no idea where this word has come from and I see no reason for its existence other than to keep websites like Mashable in business. I guess people use the word “leverage” to mean “use really hard”. But I say again, the simple word “use” has been perfectly well-equipped for this purpose for years. And the word “leverage” has been quite happy with its original meaning of how much, well, leverage you can get on something. Like leverage on a boulder that you’re trying to push down a hill. Or leverage on a glued-down tabletop that you’re trying to remove. (I don’t know why you’d want to do that, but you need leverage to do it.) Leverage is not a verb. So just stop it. Or I will see how much leverage I can get on your arse with this crowbar.

Monetize

I understand that this is the 21st century and everyone wants to communicate as efficiently as possible. Therefore that oh-so-cumbersome three-word phrase “make money from” appears to have been replaced by the much more elegant word “monetize”. Was this really necessary? Again I point the finger at Mashable, whose favourite question about websites appears to be “how will they monetize this”? Were I writing an article about, say, Twitter, I would ask the question “how will they make money from this?” It’s just as clear. Yes, it uses a couple more words, but it sounds infinitely less pretentious. “Monetize” sounds like something a money robot would do. It’s a bit sinister. Imagine the money robot coming into your bedroom in the middle of the night and monetizing you. You’d wake up as a big pile of dollar bills or pounds sterling or the currency of your locality, unless the money robot was made in a different territory in which case it would probably use its own local currency. Which would make it terribly difficult to get anything done. Also, people would want to spend you all the time. So please stop this too. Or I will monetize the violation of your rectal cavity with this crowbar.

Excellence

Mottos used to be inspirational pieces of text, usually in Latin to make people look clever. Here are a few examples:

Natura Artis Magistra (Nature is the Teacher of Art – Amsterdam Zoo)
In Somno Securitas (In Sleep there is Safety – the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland)
Ex Obscuris Lux (From Darkness, Light – American Association of Ophthalmology)
Vita donum Dei (Life is the Gift of God – Royal College of Midwives)

Here is the motto for Purbrook Park School in Hampshire:

Working Together Towards Excellence

Somewhat less inspirational, I’m sure you’ll agree. It implies that the school is, you know, all right, but not what you’d call “excellent”. The word “excellence” is constantly used as something to strive for which is never actually attained. Therefore, I suggest that it is actually utterly useless. You may as well put “Working Together Towards Some Of The Children Here Actually Leaving With Some Qualifications And Not Getting Knocked Up And Living On The Dole At The Taxpayers’ Expense While Daily Mail Readers Get All Upset And Blame Immigrants For Taking Jobs That You’re Too Lazy To Get Anyway Because You Couldn’t Be Arsed To Work Hard At School”. Although admittedly that’s somewhat less snappy.

So please stop using “excellence”. Otherwise I will strive for excellence in the infliction of pain in and around your anus with this crowbar.

Self-Starter

You use this an awful lot in job advertisements, don’t you? Usually coupled with “confident” and “motivated”. What exactly is a self-starter? Can you tell me? Is it someone who can actually tie their own shoelaces? Someone who knows how to boil the kettle and press the button on the toaster so that the coffee and the toast are ready at exactly the same time so you have hot coffee and hot toast instead of boiling hot coffee and dry, cold toast or burnt toast and tepid coffee? Is it someone who runs like those new cars that don’t have an ignition key and you just press the button to start them up? Is it a person who doesn’t run on clockwork? Because most of us don’t run on clockwork, so I’d argue that most of us are self-starters. If we weren’t, we’d spend all our time lying in bed wanking, if we could be bothered. So please stop it. Otherwise I will demonstrate how much of a self-starter I am by, without any outside intervention or assistance, performing an amateur colonoscopy using this crowbar and a late-90s Handycam.

Fit for Purpose

No. It’s not “not fit for purpose”, it “doesn’t work”. What’s wrong with “doesn’t work”? I’ve been using the words “doesn’t work” for years. See this old pair of headphones? They don’t work. This remote control? It doesn’t work. This battered old PC? It doesn’t work. It’s pretty clear that none of these are working as intended (and that I should probably throw out some of these things that don’t work or at least replace the batteries) but I have never once felt the need to describe them as “not fit for purpose”. Similarly, the shirt I purchased from Primark who seem to think that XL-size gentlemen are actually more like S-size gentlemen was “too small”, not “not fit for purpose”. The fact that when you drop a mobile phone onto a concrete floor it tends to shatter into a million tiny pieces doesn’t make it “not fit for purpose”, it makes you a clumsy idiot who should know when to put your fucking Blackberry away. So please stop using this, otherwise I will show you just how fit for purpose this crowbar is for inserting into businessmen’s arses.

There are many other words I could continue this letter with, businesspeople (and don’t even get me started on why you use the word “persons” instead of “people”) but I have already written over 1100 words on the subject and I imagine that you have some important leveraging to get on with. So please remember what I have said, otherwise I will be paying you a visit with my friend the crowbar. And no amount of ergonomically-designed comfort-leveraging chairs will make sitting down comfortable for quite some time when I’ve finished with you.

Yours sincerely,

Pete