Does your work come up with stupid "buzz" words for things?

Question

My company constantly do it. I have to measure the efficiency of my engineers and some tw at decided to call it the "thermostat"

It's pure madness isn't it.

My firm has so many that I can't even remember them all. My favourite was the 5 S's. When asked what they were I could only come up with 3 and after proudly stating them in front of every at the meeting my manager said. "Thanks Louis for that, but the 5 S's don't have anything to do with how quickly you can get ready for work in the morning."

Answer 1

No longer a brain storm but a mind shower.........

Answer 2

It is unfortunately one of the side effects of any marketing scheme in a free market economy. The effect trickles down to the company employees in order to give everyone the impression that what they're doing is in some way more important or exciting than it really is. It sounds as though you're merely evaluating your engineer's performance, but one or more small-minded people have to make it sound more appealling or less oppressive, hence the 'buzz' word. Provided you can see through the BS, I wouldn't let it worry you too much.

Answer 3

I think it happens everywhere. I think the only sane response is to turn it into a game... a couple of years ago I had to split some billing data into seperate types & record them on seperate spreadsheets. So I called them Billing By Category 1, B.B.C. 2 etc

Answer 4

Yes, my old coworkers and I used to come up with nicknames and whatnot for things at work and see if we can get the names to stick. We've been ridiculously successful and still use a lot of them to this day. Several of the ones orginating at jokes have been used it official company documents and have even been picked up by our sponsor companies just because the verbiage is so common place. Here is a break down of one of them that evolved throughout the course of a year:

pre-oncology -->
pre-onc -->
pronk -->
proncci (plural of pronk)

sounds cheesy, and that's what it was supposed to be. however, it stuck. O.o

Answer 5

This Q reminds me of a hilarious Dilbert sketch...whereby they were so bored in meetings, they invented 'Buzz-word-bingo'.

As 'Catbert' (evil HR director) was giving his talk to the seated audience, the little guy responds to a question with 'Bingo, Sir'....

Classic.

Answer 6

I work at Pizza Hut. Needless to say, we have PLENTY of buzz words.

My least favorite being "Champs":
Cleanliness
Hospitality
Accuracy
Maintenance
Product quality
Speed of service

IMO, it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!

Answer 7

Thankfully in my industry its not so common. However, I have come across people (usually in sales or something) using stupid phrases and buzz words. WHY????
Don't they realise they look stupid not intelligent? I guess not, thats why they bought a BMW!!

Answer 8

My old boss was always using the term "program". That is not in the program or this is part of the program. Just constantly using that word.

Answer 9

Wow, that’s so nerdy and lame that I would bust out laughing every time I had to use the word. So how exactly do u take their temperature?

Answer 10

yes, I work for the local authority and they are forever changing the way we describe things. For example the people we visit used to be clients, now they have to be referred to as service users! Its barmy!

Answer 11

i work at a call center that provides diabetic services and we dont have buzz words but we have initals for eveything! its real confusing!! we have over 100 initials for words we use.