"Let that sink in."
Mostly annoying because it is almost always preceded by one of the stupidest, most illogical comments I'll ever hear.
"Let that sink in."
Mostly annoying because it is almost always preceded by one of the stupidest, most illogical comments I'll ever hear.
I'm really trying to think of something like this that bothers me and I'm failing. Fillers kind of annoy me (uh, um, so, you know...), but only on conference calls.
Really the only thing that comes to mind is incessent cheerleading in a non-competitive environment. "Way to go team!" or "Let's keep our eyes on the prize!" or "We can do this! Let's close out the year strong" for literally doing what we do every day... And we're not in sales, and if we don't get this done, we'll get fired. So it isn't competitive, the cheerleading isn't helping, it just annoys me. Oh, and it is always "We" or "Us" even though 90% of it is an individual effort.
You want to cheer me on, pay me more. And that isn't to say words of encouragement are bad - but the stupid enthusiasm makes me think it is all fake. Telling me "Hey, thanks for the quick turnaround" is far more effective than the "We can do this" BS.
Not a saying, but a phrase I hear here all the time. Using the words feel like when you really mean think.
Aside from it not making any sense, it just drives me nuts reading it, and hearing it's even worse. And now it's migrating north.
So please, do me this one favour, the next time you think you want to say I feel like, just say what you really mean, I think.
In reply to mtn :
Speaking of cheering, I used to do door repairs for the local T-Mobile call center. 5 floors of cubicles around a central atrium. Every morning at 9:30, many of the cubicles would empty onto the balconies around the atrium and they would have a Yay Team!!! moment for 10 minutes and competitions by floor to see who was the loudest. The only part that really bothered me was the sheer amount of noise that many people can make in that small of a space. With the majority of them being women the screams were almost painful. I would stop work, step to the quiet side of whatever door I was working on, and close the door until they were done.
/threadjack
spitfirebill said:"I could care less". No stupid, it's I could NOT care less. Literally!
I used this once with someone who corrected me immediately, as I knew they would, I then proceeded to tell them
"no, you don't understand........I could care even less than I do now"
It was a very effective way of conveying my indifference to someone who was having a meltdown because I wasn't panicking.
TIL many of my pet sayings are annoying to folks. Good to know.
Another one I hate: "Grow" your business.
Not tongue in cheek:
"God won't give you more than you can handle"
So much hate for this.
In reply to mtn :
Agreed. One hundred percent. No one outside of sales cares or needs a cheer leader. They just need adequate leaders and sufficient pay.
I find the positive usage of anymore a little jarring and odd, but it doesn't annoy me.
E.G.- "Anymore we go to the beach for vacation." Where the meaning is: We're going to the beach for our vacations from now on.
As others have said, I find most of the empty positive cheering that happens in workplaces to be profoundly annoying.
Tom1200 said:As a supervisor the "it's not my job" is particularly annoying. With that said all of our job descriptions say "other duties as assigned"
Other duties as assigned has limits. If I'm a software developer and you tell me to fix a forklift in the warehouse, you're going to hear "that's not my job" out of me, even if I'm capable of doing it.
That's an extreme example, obviously. My professional response to any added work is to ask my director how they'd like to prioritize the new assignment. In other words, what am I going to stop working on in order to get the new thing done?
KyAllroad said:Mine is a verbal tic that seems endemic to my region. Hanging "at" on the end of questions that don't need it.
"Where did you park at?"
"where did you go to lunch at?"
Say the same sentence without the "at" and it's perfectly coherent. Leave it off.
My Mother's pat answer for any question that ended in at was, "behind the at."
Then I did it to my kids.
Now my kids are doing it to theirs.
It worked.
When the server asks me "how is everything tasting?" I bite my tongue instead of explaining active versus passive.
From the forums:
Learn me.
Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) said:Tom1200 said:As a supervisor the "it's not my job" is particularly annoying. With that said all of our job descriptions say "other duties as assigned"
Other duties as assigned has limits. If I'm a software developer and you tell me to fix a forklift in the warehouse, you're going to hear "that's not my job" out of me, even if I'm capable of doing it.
That's an extreme example, obviously. My professional response to any added work is to ask my director how they'd like to prioritize the new assignment. In other words, what am I going to stop working on in order to get the new thing done?
Actually the fork lift repair is not an extreme example; my boss being in a bind and knowing I have the ability has asked me to repair stuff before.
As for prioritizing; if I ask someone to take care of something extra I fully expect that something else will get pushed further out. We seldom do overtime, as this is viewed as not a good use of taxpayer funds so I can only expect some much to get done in a day.
stan said:In (some) corporate conference calls with the main office we had a white board that we would write the dumb (in our opinion) expressions some managers would come up with (what book did you read this week??). My favorite that had us all shaking our heads was, "pillow comfortable".
Since leaving the corporate-world, I have yet to hear it again. Thankfully.
My team and I used to do this regularly until we had to use the boardroom for our meeting - got the levity out of the way and went on to serious matters but when I cleaned off the multi segment whiteboard only erased 6 of the 7 segments. CEO and the Executive were up next morning amid modest consternation when they rolled to our contributions ... CEO thought it was a hell of a joke but the HR exec and the one I reported to were not amused.
"No brainer"
"Good enough for Government Work"
one I hear a bit and do like though is "any better and it will get worse"
Hater. You're just a hater.
It's a cop out. means of dismissing criticism without examining it first. A blanket ad hominim defense to prevent people from ever having to look at themselves or their actions.
In defense of "It is what it is" this is contextual. I use it in the sense of it is a situation beyond our control and we can either like it or not like it. But we cannot change it.
Seems appropriate here
In reply to RichardNZ :
Oh god I hated when those posters were hung on every office wall. I greatly preferred the "de-motivators" spoofs that arrived shortly afterwards.
Datsun310Guy said:Work smarter, not harder. I've heard that since 1985.
This one gets me as its often said by those that do neither.
RichardNZ said:Seems appropriate here
To bad the guy out of fame to the right ordered cubes, not spheres.
lrrs said:RichardNZ said:Seems appropriate here
To bad the guy out of fame to the right ordered cubes, not spheres.
Shouldn't that be "work intelligently "? Sweet irony.
Unless I'm wrong. Then double sweet irony.
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:When the server asks me "how is everything tasting?" I bite my tongue instead of explaining active versus passive.
I want to say, "Everyone is tasting as God intended" but I just know that will make it far weirder.
codrus (Forum Supporter) said:Keith Tanner said:I'll defend NASA, though. Nominal may be what you want to be normal, but it's not :) Ideal might be better.
Nominal means "in name only" -- hopefully a phrase that never applies to any rocket with people on it! :)
"normal" may not be the right word for all of these situations, but from what I've read the use of "nominal" started out by people misusing it to mean that.
I've understood it to mean that things are going according to plan/results are as expected.
Like, if there was a failure where you could expect your car to run 20 degrees hotter as a result, and it was indeed running 20 degrees hotter, conditions would be nominal. They aren't normal, but they are what you would expect for what you know of what's going on. If coolant temps suddenly dropped, that would be cause for alarm.
Toyman01 + Sized and said:KyAllroad said:Mine is a verbal tic that seems endemic to my region. Hanging "at" on the end of questions that don't need it.
"Where did you park at?"
"where did you go to lunch at?"
Say the same sentence without the "at" and it's perfectly coherent. Leave it off.
My Mother's pat answer for any question that ended in at was, "behind the at."
Then I did it to my kids.
Now my kids are doing it to theirs.
It worked.
Like mtn said, don't come to Chicagoland. Your head will explode.
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