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Who Touched Base in My Thought Shower?: A Treasury of Unbearable Office Jargon
Do you hate going forward? Do you shudder when a colleague wants to reach out? Are you disgusted by low-hanging fruit, sick of being on the team, and reluctant to open the kimono? If modern business-speak makes you want to throw up, then this book is for you. It’s both a satirical deep dive and a come to Jesus moment for verbally downtrodden workers everywhere.
- GenresNonfictionHumorLanguage
212 pages, Hardcover
First published October 31, 2013
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110 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
May 18, 2014
This book is for all those who have had to sit through a meeting where some management whizz kid is spouting forth the latest acronyms and buzz words and not only do you have no idea what he is talking about, but you are not sure if he is even referring the the same things that you are.
Poole has taken the brave step of listing these words, and trying to make some sense of their meaning, which frankly in some cases there isn't any sense behind them. A number of them are borrowed from military vernacular, and as you can imagine make the transfer to the language of a middle ranking executive dealing with stationary...
He has written it with a healthy dollop of cynicism, and really does not hold back on the sarcasm either! There are some laugh out loud moments too.
Next time a road warrior gives you a cold eye view and asks you to hit the ground running you might, just might, know what he is talking about.
Poole has taken the brave step of listing these words, and trying to make some sense of their meaning, which frankly in some cases there isn't any sense behind them. A number of them are borrowed from military vernacular, and as you can imagine make the transfer to the language of a middle ranking executive dealing with stationary...
He has written it with a healthy dollop of cynicism, and really does not hold back on the sarcasm either! There are some laugh out loud moments too.
Next time a road warrior gives you a cold eye view and asks you to hit the ground running you might, just might, know what he is talking about.
May 31, 2015
The ability, or rather desire, to speak clearly seems to have decreased substantially in recent years. Office jargon emerged across the UK and the USA in the late 20th century, but it has grown more meaningless and, frankly, perverse as time has progressed.
Author, journalist and cultural critic Steven Poole attempts to chase the roots of some of the more common and obscure examples of modern day office jargon in Who touched base in my thought shower?. Poole gives examples of office jargon ranging from “across the piece” to “zerotasking”, giving hilarious literal deconstructions, before exploring the origin and development of each phrase.
The book appeals for individuals to simply say what they mean, rather than subjecting workers to the horrors of jargon, which he refers to as one of the most “spirit sapping indignities of modern life”. There is nothing more frustrating than obscuring meaning through the use of meaningless terminology, which presents itself as “a kind of cheap competence that often marks a lack of competence in anything that matters”.
Poole writes of how he became extremely popular upon first writing about jargon for the Guardian in 2013. Commenters on the Guardian website’s network related to Poole’s fury by saying that office jargon made them want to “stab someone in the eye with a pen”, and even admitting to engaging in “Bullshit bingo” during meetings, by picking out how many times bosses used ridiculous terms.
Nowadays jargon is extensively used within the workplace and by those in the public sphere, and has proved particularly popular among politicians. Poole points out that Margaret Thatcher was one of the few politicians who refused to use jargon, referring to it as “all this guffy stuff”.
Speaking about his book on Radio 4’s Today programme, Poole emphasised that office jargon often has far more sinister undertones than just being annoying, and is frequently used by bosses in an attempt to obscure what is actually going on. Examples include referring to the need for staff cutbacks as “resizing” the company, rather than simply saying that people will be laid off – resizing would never be used if a company was being expanded.
Poole’s message is on the importance of clarity of communication. In a world where offices and organisations are increasingly interacting with people for whom English is not a first language, it is important, now more than ever before, to communicate clearly and without all the ‘guff’ that office jargon encompasses. Meaning is so easily lost when tied up within jargon, if indeed a meaning ever existed in the first place. To give a famous example, Kevin Rudd told an interviewer back in 2008 when asked a question about Asian security “I’ll reverse engineer and start at the third and move back to the first”. Frankly, your guess is as good as mine – and presumably his.
Poole’s concise jargon dictionary is a hilarious look at modern office jargon and the perceived need to obscure all meaning. A phrase which stands out as perhaps the most memorable: “As the astronaut Jack Swigert famously said during the near catastrophic Apollo 13 mission: “Houston, we have a solution opportunity”, because of course, it would be wrong to ever admit to there being a problem.
Originally posted on Jade the Obscure
Author, journalist and cultural critic Steven Poole attempts to chase the roots of some of the more common and obscure examples of modern day office jargon in Who touched base in my thought shower?. Poole gives examples of office jargon ranging from “across the piece” to “zerotasking”, giving hilarious literal deconstructions, before exploring the origin and development of each phrase.
The book appeals for individuals to simply say what they mean, rather than subjecting workers to the horrors of jargon, which he refers to as one of the most “spirit sapping indignities of modern life”. There is nothing more frustrating than obscuring meaning through the use of meaningless terminology, which presents itself as “a kind of cheap competence that often marks a lack of competence in anything that matters”.
Poole writes of how he became extremely popular upon first writing about jargon for the Guardian in 2013. Commenters on the Guardian website’s network related to Poole’s fury by saying that office jargon made them want to “stab someone in the eye with a pen”, and even admitting to engaging in “Bullshit bingo” during meetings, by picking out how many times bosses used ridiculous terms.
Nowadays jargon is extensively used within the workplace and by those in the public sphere, and has proved particularly popular among politicians. Poole points out that Margaret Thatcher was one of the few politicians who refused to use jargon, referring to it as “all this guffy stuff”.
Speaking about his book on Radio 4’s Today programme, Poole emphasised that office jargon often has far more sinister undertones than just being annoying, and is frequently used by bosses in an attempt to obscure what is actually going on. Examples include referring to the need for staff cutbacks as “resizing” the company, rather than simply saying that people will be laid off – resizing would never be used if a company was being expanded.
Poole’s message is on the importance of clarity of communication. In a world where offices and organisations are increasingly interacting with people for whom English is not a first language, it is important, now more than ever before, to communicate clearly and without all the ‘guff’ that office jargon encompasses. Meaning is so easily lost when tied up within jargon, if indeed a meaning ever existed in the first place. To give a famous example, Kevin Rudd told an interviewer back in 2008 when asked a question about Asian security “I’ll reverse engineer and start at the third and move back to the first”. Frankly, your guess is as good as mine – and presumably his.
Poole’s concise jargon dictionary is a hilarious look at modern office jargon and the perceived need to obscure all meaning. A phrase which stands out as perhaps the most memorable: “As the astronaut Jack Swigert famously said during the near catastrophic Apollo 13 mission: “Houston, we have a solution opportunity”, because of course, it would be wrong to ever admit to there being a problem.
Originally posted on Jade the Obscure
August 6, 2020
Review #13 of my 52 week book challenge: Who Touched Base in My Thought Shower?
It's a no-brainer. We're all likely singing from the same hymn sheet when it comes to the scope creep with office jargon these days. As a thought leader in the vertical, Poole offers a bleeding edge, soup-to-nuts repurposing that pushes the envelope and gets readers thinking outside the box. It's a come to Jesus moment that defines a new North Star for the business world. I've drunk the Kool-Aid. Now it's your turn to get your ducks in a row.
Seriously, though, my personal favorite piece has to be the bio-break. Maybe I've been out of the U.S. for too long, but some of these were new to me. Poole's "treasury of unbearable office jargon" is a must-read to show just how silly office life has become.
To find out why I started my 52 week book challenge, what I've been reading, and how you can get involved, check out my original LinkedIn Publisher article or follow me.
It's a no-brainer. We're all likely singing from the same hymn sheet when it comes to the scope creep with office jargon these days. As a thought leader in the vertical, Poole offers a bleeding edge, soup-to-nuts repurposing that pushes the envelope and gets readers thinking outside the box. It's a come to Jesus moment that defines a new North Star for the business world. I've drunk the Kool-Aid. Now it's your turn to get your ducks in a row.
Seriously, though, my personal favorite piece has to be the bio-break. Maybe I've been out of the U.S. for too long, but some of these were new to me. Poole's "treasury of unbearable office jargon" is a must-read to show just how silly office life has become.
To find out why I started my 52 week book challenge, what I've been reading, and how you can get involved, check out my original LinkedIn Publisher article or follow me.
August 21, 2017
Laughed continuosly. Good depiction of a dystopian corporate world
This book has a great set of corporate buzzwords, and gives fun explanations of their use in context. If you're interested, just read a sample and the style will be clear enough. This book is probably only interesting to people who live in a world where they suffer from the use of said jargon.
This book has a great set of corporate buzzwords, and gives fun explanations of their use in context. If you're interested, just read a sample and the style will be clear enough. This book is probably only interesting to people who live in a world where they suffer from the use of said jargon.
April 1, 2019
Poole is one of the Guardian's sharpest knives. Like Zizek or Debord if they were funny and could write. This is kind of phoned-in though, because the language described is self-defeating, self-ridiculing. For anyone outside it, anyway.
April 16, 2020
Save your money. Stand in the shop and read pages 186, 167, 146 and 38. You’ve now read the only decent bits in the whole book. The rest is pointless, boring ranting with some history -also boring - of the words.
April 18, 2018
Funny, something to dip in and out of
February 11, 2023
A Guardian Comment thread stretched very thin, with plenty of absurdity and hand-wringing about jargon. But you'll never run anything up a flagpole going forward.
February 1, 2015
Oh the comfort of knowing that I am not alone in my hatred of absurd "office speak"!
Steven Poole does a brilliant job in explaining the origins of many "management expressions" and in making fun of them. I was constantly laughing out loud.
So grateful to be forewarned not to be disappointed next time, when mention of a "takeaway" during a presentation, does not materialise in free pizza for all.
Oh dear and to "hit the ground running" is actually a very bad idea. Apparently it will almost certainly lead to broken bones. And thanks to Steven I now cannot help giggling every time I hear someone say he wants to go after the "low hanging fruit".
A book I now very reluctantly need to return to the library but I feel like I want to go out and buy half a dozen copies and scatter them around the office.
Steven Poole does a brilliant job in explaining the origins of many "management expressions" and in making fun of them. I was constantly laughing out loud.
So grateful to be forewarned not to be disappointed next time, when mention of a "takeaway" during a presentation, does not materialise in free pizza for all.
Oh dear and to "hit the ground running" is actually a very bad idea. Apparently it will almost certainly lead to broken bones. And thanks to Steven I now cannot help giggling every time I hear someone say he wants to go after the "low hanging fruit".
A book I now very reluctantly need to return to the library but I feel like I want to go out and buy half a dozen copies and scatter them around the office.
November 11, 2013
For anyone who would like a quick and lighthearted read about the Western corporate universe. I kept hearing people 'reaching out' and had no idea what it meant. (Yes, I am totally out of touch with modern American lingo.) And then this popped up. It was funny enough that I ended up reading it out loud to my husband and we both had a good laugh (and he confirmed that 98% of what I read, he heard in everyday corporate parlance). It is frankly amazing how people can take this language so seriously. Or maybe the appropriate word would be nauseating. I use a lot of acronyms, slang and euphemisms, but this stuff takes the cake :).
Mr Poole, you missed an opportunity with Indian-Anglo slang: look at some of the other fun ones like to de-grow revenues....
Mr Poole, you missed an opportunity with Indian-Anglo slang: look at some of the other fun ones like to de-grow revenues....
August 2, 2014
An entertaining lexicon of the ridiculous language that pervades working. Would be funnier if it wasn't true!
Read
November 7, 2014Disappointing. Too much ranting. I wanted to know what all those terms meant but sometimes the author is so busy having a rant he does not explain what the term he is covering means
April 13, 2016
Very entertaining. A nice collection of bloomers from management talk you're likely hear in the office on an everyday basis.
January 15, 2017
Fairly clichéd and unimaginative but still worth reading treatment of clichéd, unimaginative but still sometime useful office jargon.
May 23, 2018
Very entertaining in places with a few dubious entries. One almost certainly deliberately so.
On a fair number I am guilty as charged by the author. On many others one of the mentioned sufferers.
Worth a read if you wanted something where you could read a paragraph or page or two then put down for a while.
On a fair number I am guilty as charged by the author. On many others one of the mentioned sufferers.
Worth a read if you wanted something where you could read a paragraph or page or two then put down for a while.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews