Rosebud

When you’re a corporate shill, your duties may include finding new ways to sell the same old thing and making it sound new and improved. From time to time, you may be forced to think up new ways to use old words to do this. You may then promote the use of these words until everyone has adopted them and then find new ones to push.

For the record, I am not a shill nor a lackey and this leaves me squarely in the centre of things.

A few years ago, the word in the halls here was pushback. Say it with me boys and girls – pushback.

Our company was going through some changes and pushback entered the local lexicon through a particularly impassioned speech given by our CEO.

Pushback, rather than feedback, allowed us the impression that not only could we provide ideas but that they now might actually be considered before being deemed too logical and thrown out in favour of setting up a committee to study the problem.

Within moments of this word having been uttered by such an enlightened being, it seemed everyone found a way to work it into conversation. That scared me a little.

It still gets bandied on occasion although we’ve since realized that our pushback is in fact going straight to a suggestion box that someone long ago lost the key to. That’s okay, I Am Joe’s Apathy.

Following a recent regime change, there has been a spate of new terms provided for everyday consumption, digestion and general pot lucking.

One such example is that the division I once worked in has been rezoned into a cluster. When I think of cluster, candy comes to mind but sometimes also, clusterfuck pops into my head. I don’t know if this is a real or imagined word but I plan to look it up.

Another choice example is now, rather than simply forwarding important email communiqués to others, we are encouraged to cascade them. I’ll get right on that chief.

I would cascade my fear and disappointment in this useless behaviour to senior management but I’m afraid they’d find a job for me as a reimagineer.