Words are like clothes - the go in and out of style. At first they're great and then they're just overdone, overused and utterly annoying. Here are few that bothering me right now.
"circle back"
There must be a lot of dizzy people in this city because everybody I know is promising to "circle back" with someone on some issue. This phrase exploded onto the meeting scene in early fall 2011 and hasn't lost any speed since.
It is most often used to close out each agenda item in a meeting where an update at some point in the future is implied. For example, one might say- "I'll talk to the governor's staff when he's in town next week and circle back with you." Is it necessary to state anything after the word "week" in that sentence? If you're doing something of interest to your colleagues, they assume you'll report what you hear on that subject. No need to state the obvious.
I have found a good way to combat the use of the annoying term. When someone promises to "circle back" with me, I ask them not to. I tell them "no need to walk around in circles, a straight line is the shortest distance between two points."
"buckets"
This buzzword comes from the movie "The Bucket List" and grew slowly as people realized that the word "bucket" was a down-market term one could use to abate the confusion of what they thought were "high concept" ideas. The use of the word in the movie is actually referring to "kicking the bucket," but that didn't really matter once it was stuck in the mind of blabbermouths everywhere.
Blue-collar folks may separate objects related to their job by placing them in separate buckets. White-collar professionals have file cabinets. The blue-collar term for separation of items provides a delightfully simple single word metaphor for people who think they are saying important shit to ignorant audiences.
When a subject has more than a few parts to its whole it is broken up into "buckets." My HR department loves "buckets" and they have all kinds of performance and goal "buckets" and they even send us little infographics with little buckets that hold the different keys to a positive work environment. This is why we hate them.
I combat the bucket trend by reminding people what homeless people use them for every chance I get. If you don't know what that means - just take my word for it and never touch a bucket you see on a sidewalk in DC.
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