"reach out", "at this time", and self-loathing

HI!

"at this time" is not completely without use

i use it regarding product availability, e.g. for something that is currently out of stock but will be available again. "now" can carry a connotation of finality, "at this time" emphasizes a transitory condition.

"at this time" should only be used by police chiefs at press conferences in the wake of major crimes

I can easily quintuple the list of expressions that annoy me

last week an assistant vice president invited us "to dialogue" with him.

mr veg has TONS of these from his years working at int3l

i LOVE email speak.

ill touch base with this thread later to see how people are responding.

cheers,

I went ahead and voted.

BBC sports commentators ALWAYS say 'years of age' instead of 'years old'.

I hate myself every time I use "at this point in time" or any piece thereof, at this point in time, anyway.

yeah max otm, where is option "i hate myself for loving terrible people's terrible turns of phrase"

let's roundtable this going forward

I'm thinking it should be sunsetted.

i voted at a high rate of speed

please refer to the whitepaper on this matter

I'd check this thread on a daily basis.

is this an action item?

Please inbox me with your findings.

That being said, we may need to reforecast our forward planning.

guys I'd really like to put this to bed

i was JUST joking about this kind of thing with some colleagues. it was so funny!

circling back to see where we're at. thanks for input! :-)

best,

can you be more proactive about posting?

gonna incentivize the shit out of this poll

unrelated reasons, possibly including hating myself for hating on people who hate on other people's use of language

oh you -- just say "hating people." Submit.

Guys! This is mission-critical. I think we need to have a come-to-jesus moment.

I've greenlighted it.

Let's put a pin in this for now.

what are the deliverables in this scenario

I don't have the bandwidth to read this thread, can someone summarize?

cheers,

*kills self*

librarians get this way about "patrons." I SERVE PEOPLE!!!1

i hate myself for many reasons and occasionally talking like this is one of them

it's a minor but good one. you know what makes me hate myself a lot is writing cover letters.

WORD

not at this time, but at all times

I didn't answer because I notice and cringe at "reach out" but am fine with "at this time," no doubt because the former has only made itself frequent in my life in the last six months, while the latter is old hat. What's weird is that I heard people start complaining about / making fun of "reach out" a year ago, but thought "be serious, no one says that," but now, yep, I hear it.

my life has become a biz-jargon wonderland this year, I kind of love it

Guys! This is mission-critical. I think we need to have a come-to-jesus moment.

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, 9 August 2013 22:24 (Yesterday) Bookmark

haha i've never heard c-to-j before

REACH OUT AND TOUCH BASE
your own, personal, come-to-jesus.

cheers,
dave

"going forward"

great to liase with you all,

O.

REGARDS

if you get a serious illness, you hear "reach out" on the phone a lot.

my realtor is constantly leaving me voice mails telling me first that he just wanted to touch base with me. then telling me what he's touching base about.

He's just following up with you in order to close the loop.

guys i hope we can bottom this out in the next day or so

i just want to make sure we've looped in all the stakeholders?

i have an improv'ed kinda abstract bit in this play i'm currently doing based on the way people say "i am now out of the office" or "i am out of the office now"

like what purpose does the "now" serve?

If you put the emphasis on the "now" then it sort of implies that they're only sometimes out of the office; they'll be back in the office soon.

'Reach out' implies so much effort on the part of the one reaching out

I've caught myself using "reach out" a few times. I feel it implies the speaker's uncertainty of what the other person will FIND when they reach out, but you're telling them to try it anyway. As in, I can't definitely answer your question but you should develop a relationship w this other organization who may be able to help you.

makes me ia when I hear coworkers say 'just wanting to touch bases with you' - it's BASE singular, you can only touch one at a time

and then I remember how much I hate 'touch base' anyway and I shoot myself

Ha ha, I didn't realize "touch base" came from baseball. I thought it was like two plinths with their bottom edges touching.

haha

Noiseworks are on-message - this is our a-ha moment, everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8Vz9U5UXk0

"reach out" gains spiritual power if you're instructing somebody else to call somebody e.g. "let's reach out to ______"

HUH now that I think about it, I realize I always figured "touching base" was from an aircraft or space shuttle touching down and then contacting the base to let them know that they are okay. Or like a military person getting in contact with their base. I never ever thought it was baseball related.

i always assumed it was baseball related. maybe I'm wrong?

I have no reason to think you are wrong, or that I'm right. The multiple interpretations are interesting, though.

I have to stop myself from using "touch base" "reach out" and "in the loop" at work, full confession. I am pretty sure I have composed an email that said, "I just wanted to reach out and touch base with you to make sure we're on the same page" but I really really hope I edited it before I sent it.

me too

I used to get emails full of jargon from my customers and I'd have to catch myself before I replied in jargonese

ha, i forgot this thread. lol friday afternoon beers. the options were:

i notice and am annoyed by formulations like "to reach out" (contact) and "at this time" (now), and i think that's ok
i notice and am annoyed by "to reach out" and "at this time" (now), but then i hate myself
i hate myself, but for unrelated reasons
hi

cheers

caek you're no great shakes at making threads

i am frequently listening to AM radio and a call-in show on FM radio. i am sure that the only reason i listen to these things is so i can hear all of these kinds of phrases and hate myself.

If you put the emphasis on the "now" then it sort of implies that they're only sometimes out of the office; they'll be back in the office soon.

yeah but i mean when people say "i am now out of the office until 31 august" or whatever.

logically i get that "at this time" can be fine, but it grates

"reach out" is defensible in writing, but should never be spoken

i hate myself for unrelated reasons

cheers

in no way, shape, or form

i like this verb http://www.dict.cc/deutsch-englisch/ber%C3%BChren.html

I'm going to transition from one job to another.

one of the things i've been hearing more and more at work is "piece"

as in, "we've got the assessment piece in place but were still working on the community piece"

for some reason it bugs me

tlg's all "piece out yo"

do any americans hate "touch base"? it was only recently that i became aware that the phrase was an object of scorn :/

if you guys could work that into the next sprint that would be greaaaaaat

honestly, "touch base" is overused, and kind of grates, but I get why it's so overused at work (and I do it too). It just becomes an easy go-to word in a meeting, out of habit. cuz I'm just trying to get a simple point across, and if I'm nervous it keeps me from saying something awkward like "Let's partake in a mental drift, baby"

i hope when you accidentally say that you say it like Dr John, or Leon Redbone.

hi

still kinda unsure how to end "business" emails; I do the "best" thing & sign my name but even after all these years it feels tooly; it's an email, not a real letter, and anyway I don't always wish the person the best. "cheers" is obv worse, esp. for Americans.

Sent from my iPhone

I just end it with my name. only time I add a "Regards" or "Sincerely" is if it's some kind of mass announcement.

stay true,

fuckety-bye,

don't understand the cheers hate.

thanks all for driving this thread forward.

i suspect cheers may have an academic/nerd provenance outside the uk

Language like "chase you" and "grab you" and "push back" really annoy me. Another one that's always used in my office is "sanity check". Like "can you sanity check this?"

any variation on "in terms of" ("in regards to" "with respect to).

"I'd like to discuss your job in terms of your performance."

"an academic/nerd provenance outside the uk" -- not the worst thing, no? what would be better to sign off with? "peace be with you"?

i'm not sure sterl, i haven't been across that

i will chase it up though

i dunno sterl, just saying, i encountered 'cheers' in that context long before it seemed to me to have migrated into business. blame web 1.0 and web 2.0, i guess.

shanti,

"reach out": it's used to stress the communicator's agency in said communication; so that's what's being communicated is not only whatever topic is in question, but also *that* the communicator is communicating. locutions like this make sense to me in written text, esp email which take the place of verbal communication but lack the physical conventions of verbal communication.

e.g. "I'm reaching out to you to ask if you'd like to join us for the meeting on thursday": it's different than "would you like to join us for the meeting on thursday?" because it's stressing that I AM ASKING YOU THIS and maybe I didn't have to ask you this, or maybe I want you to remember that I asked you, as a courtesy, or to make up for some past grievance

anyway, fuck "cheers", it's total nerdorama

touch base is icky, tracer

presumably its function is to remind everyone of the imperative to constant motion in the form of as-continuous-as-possible contact between toucher and touchee, the absence of which in businessspeak-land might signify any number of fearful circumstances like client dissatisfaction or coworker ineptitude or the projection of an unprofessional slackitude or lack of 110% commitment to e.x.c.e.l.l.e.n.c.e. and growing yr business and yr circle and yr entrepreneurial impulse surging up from inside you looking for ways to monetize and innovate and cut costs and make big deals ugh

no it's just something i've said without ever thinking about it. exact synonym for "check in with" or "run this past", neither of which provoke this kind of opprobrium?!?

it is true, few are free of this sickness we harbor within us though we spit and curse and wish to cut out our tongues

once i was in asheville north carolina and this guy handed me a beer and I said "oh cheers" and he thought I was making a hilarious joke

"I'm writing to touch base about the N.A.D. project" seems gentler than "I'm writing to find out what's happening with the N.A.D. project" because the latter puts the person on the spot more, whereas "touch base" is more distanced, does not look annoyed. on the other hand we all know that "touch base" means the same as "what's happening" and so the distance isn't particularly effective anymore

I think he hadn't encountered cheers as anything other than a toast so when I said it kind of quietly he was like "oh man you brits, what dry humo[u]r"

inform me of your status, now

"how busy are you?"

"how hard will it be to (x)?"

"pretty easy. it will take about 3 months though"

euler i would't use reach out or touch base DIRECTLY to someone, but i would use them when referring to someone else, i.e. we should reach out to an exec on this, at least touch base to make sure we're doing things right. the actual touching base or reaching out comprises the actual
details of what you're trying to iron out - you don't need to label it as "touching base" or "reaching out"!! in fact it seems sort of icky. "hi, i'm just reaching out to you about that fucking report you said you'd do?"

you all hate me then, i sign all my emails cheers why because it's how i say goodbye gfy

i would like to touch your base

"hi - just touching base -"

i.e. delete this preamble nonsense and get to the point

"reach out": it's used to stress the communicator's agency in said communication; so that's what's being communicated is not only whatever topic is in question, but also *that* the communicator is communicating. locutions like this make sense to me in written text, esp email which take the place of verbal communication but lack the physical conventions of verbal communication.

As I hear it, though, it also has a slightly condescending effect of stressing the hearer's passivity. To say that you're reaching out to someone expresses a willingness to pass a barrier in order to engage with that person. It can seem to imply that the person is not willing or able to pass the barrier in the opposite direction, even though it would be for the best if they did.

Shouldn't have said "hearer": replace that with "person being reached out to"

the reachee

"hi - just giving you a reach-around here -"

From my experience in the electrical industry, I cant decide if annoying office speak is worse than the forthright, personalised abuse speak that is common on construction sites or from management in the trades.

Once I was working on a large industrial kitchen in a school rewire and didn't have a definitive kitchen plan. They kept changing where everything went and I was working around joiners, plasters, plumbers and the guys installing the PVC covering to the walls. I had a fresh out of school apprentice to help me and had to re-do most of his work. I was working from 8 am till between 9 + midnight and not getting overtime rates. I was fielding calls from my wife because she was concerned my son had banged his head and was worried he was going to have an epileptic fit again. They kept pulling me off the job leaving an apprentice there whilst I helped on the other side of the school which was struggling. When I returned all sorts of horrors needed to be corrected. And when it didn't get finished on time a contract manager called Adrian turned up to give me a corporate style bollocking. I can't remember exactly what he said because I was stressed and suffering from sleep deprivation, but it was like the type of speak in this thread. I was acting like a madman at the time and repeatedly shouted "Shut the fuck up you beetroot faced fucking wanker" until he shut up and walked out.

in my line of work "forthright, personalised abuse speak" is much more common than office speak. not sure how I feel about that. academics are poorly socialized and just go for the throat. until they become administrators...

our office is kinda Mayberry-ish, eschews most corporate jargon, but a lot of our larger customers use it

My pet peeve is "holistic view" and yet im guilty of it a lot. "big picture" too

"Piece" is the worst and seems to have really taken off this year. It's literally interchangeable with "thing". When a colleague says "we have to work on the marketing piece" they can mean anything from a single item of collateral to the structure of the whole division.

"Piece" seems to be big in education!! I notice it catching on even among my generally non-jargony mostly EFL coworkers.

I don't have a problem with any of these phrases/usages as long as all parties understand what's being communicated. It's when someone uses "touch base" and the receiver is like "touch what?" that would bother me because it's an insider/outsider issue. Otherwise, who cares.

Voted choice #3 btw.

fond of very blunt conversations behind people's backs regarding if they are at all competent or trustworthy followed up by emails to them in the most innocuous business-speak. "that's an interesting proposal, certainly well worth exploring. so glad you touched base with us. looping in a few more people so we can get a 360 view of the requirements."

motherfucking magic quadrants how do those work

Hi. Human flawedness is universal. This is proved by science. I have given up on perfecting myself and settle for a good BLT now and then.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I realize I always figured "touching base" was from an aircraft or space shuttle touching down and then contacting the base to let them know that they are okay. Or like a military person getting in contact with their base. I never ever thought it was baseball related.

This is what I thought, too.

From my experience in the electrical industry, I cant decide if annoying office speak is worse than the forthright, personalised abuse speak that is common on construction sites or from management in the trades.

Once I was working on a large industrial kitchen in a school rewire and didn't have a definitive kitchen plan. They kept changing where everything went and I was working around joiners, plasters, plumbers and the guys installing the PVC covering to the walls. I had a fresh out of school apprentice to help me and had to re-do most of his work. I was working from 8 am till between 9 + midnight and not getting overtime rates. I was fielding calls from my wife because she was concerned my son had banged his head and was worried he was going to have an epileptic fit again. They kept pulling me off the job leaving an apprentice there whilst I helped on the other side of the school which was struggling. When I returned all sorts of horrors needed to be corrected. And when it didn't get finished on time a contract manager called Adrian turned up to give me a corporate style bollocking. I can't remember exactly what he said because I was stressed and suffering from sleep deprivation, but it was like the type of speak in this thread. I was acting like a madman at the time and repeatedly shouted "Shut the fuck up you beetroot faced fucking wanker" until he shut up and walked out.

― Damo Suzuki's Parrot, Saturday, 10 August 2013 23:01 (5 days ago)

good work

in my line of work "forthright, personalised abuse speak" is much more common than office speak. not sure how I feel about that. academics are poorly socialized and just go for the throat. until they become administrators...

Really? Your department head would tell you you're a "fucking beetroot-faced jackoff"?

(Nilmar OTM btw).

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

poll results have formed a secret message about the power of focused self loathing

hi
i hate myself, but for unrelated reasons
i notice and am annoyed by formulations like "to reach out" (contact) and "at this time" (now), and
i notice and am annoyed by "to reach out" and "at this time" (now), but then i hate myself

ha good results

Also good is hearing people construct a sentence that is tending obviously and inevitably towards touch base or reach out or open kimono and the speaker realises that they are heading straight and at speed for management speak, so you get a half a beat of silence followed by some syntactical acrobatics - supported by crutch phrases a plenty - to allow the speaker to land on something other than action point.

open the kimono still makes me lol

what does that mean? i don't know open the kimono. if someone said that to me, they would have failed at communication.

from 'investopedia' (lolwtf)

There are conflicting etymologies for this phrase, but the one closest to its current business connotation is the idea of Japanese people loosening their kimonos to relax at home, much like loosening a tie. The term joined the business lexicon in the late 1980s during a period of increased global business interaction, most notably between Western and Japanese businesses.

dear 80's...thank you

a friend of mine kept insisting "open the kimono" was a real business-speak term and we have all been lolling at him and accusing him of making it up for several years now

if he works for Gordon Gekko then yes, it's a real business term

I can't imagine why anyone would use it NOW though

it's pretty on-the-nose

he does tech industry analysis

another friend of mine works with a dude who will intentionally slip the worst business-speak metaphors into meetings with the express intention of cracking my friend up; apparently they had a meeting where they needed to pick someone to do some task no one wanted to be bothered with and dude looked at my friend and said, "well, who's the shortest pygmy?" and my friend almost had to excuse himself from the meeting

open the kimono = let your hair down?

another friend of mine works with a dude who will intentionally slip the worst business-speak metaphors into meetings with the express intention of cracking my friend up

― OH MY GOD HE'S OOGLY (DJP), Friday, August 16, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

With regard to business-speak, I feel bad for using it, but I feel I need to in order to make these suits not think. When I substitute a normal, human phrase, they give me a puzzling look. I think it's their "Wait, you want me to think, right? Hold on," and it outputs as that face.

I notice I tend to do it more with suits I just met.

*When I substitute it with...

xp Thank you. I am reading this and I STILL don't know what it means. Frankly if someone told me they were about to open their kimono, I would think they were about to expose themselves to me and probably a little racist, too, unless they were actually wearing a kimono and then I would only assume the first.

it's business code for 'the rest of this meeting will be conducted pantsless'

Oh, well I'll be sure and use it the next time I'm working from home and call in for a virtual meeting. "Hold on, Jim, I'm going to get the documents together and open the kimono and they we'll discuss our settlement options."

*removes pants*
*turns on facetime*

We need a helicopter view of this thread.

^ basetoucher

can I put my pants back on now y/n

please allow the kimono to remain open until all action items have been leveraged

ok I'll table the pants for now

y/n/mare

p sure "open the kimono" means "expose all the secrets," like your Japanese prostitute does in the geisha-themed brothel you visit on your "business trip" to Tokyo.

!!!!!! Are you serious? That is really, really, really gross if so.

That was my understanding as well

Well, I guess it's a good indicator of who to completely write off as a racist/sexist piece of shit in the business world.

I would just like to share with you all some of the deliverables envisioned by our stakeholder-driven process.

i don't think it's supposed to imply a woman opening her kimono is it? it's usually used about the speaker's organization, i.e. "we won't open the kimono until they can assure us that blah blah blah". i.e. it's about the much more fraught - vis-a-vis male insecurity - situation of exposing one's WANG.

but none of that, you know, is going to help us with our cut-through this month

Jamie Dimon: "We are totally open kimono with regulators."

Let's just open the kimono and grasp that low-hanging fruit.

i wonder if "open the kimono" isn't a mistake based on the theatre term "drop the kabuki"? cos that means, you know, the sudden reveal of what you have prepared on stage -- but i don't put in past some tone-deaf businessman to have misapprehended it in this delightfully racist fashion.

no, it is quite obviously the geisha thing

;_; ppl are so gross

i find it hilarious tbh ;_;

me too ;_;

if you guys could draw that up into a MOSCOW that would be greaaaaaat

wait what is a MOSCOW

Musts (O) Shoulds Coulds (O) and Won'ts

jesus christ

is that what your tattoo looks like when you open yr kimono

in my head this thread was about "at this time" and "reach out", which i feel like are special cases of business speak that have jumped across the species barrier and are now heard in everyday conversation.

Also because they're used more often in the USA right?

yes, certainly. matter of time though i think. i'm bringing back "reach out" at christmas. gonna make it happen by seeding it at carefully chosen bars.

first you really need to define your MVP

i am "on point" and "on message"

thank you for picking up the ball of this thread and running with it

can we put a pin in that?

are there other options? please advise.

Two favourites from a recent meeting with a senior manager: "I don't want you guys to have to drink from the firehose on this one" and "We're not trying to start up a science fair here". Also, I realise "onboarding" has a specific business meaning but I still gag when I hear it.

lol drink from the firehose waht

I can only laugh.

^^ I suppose there's no chance they're consciously referring to UHF?

i say drinking from a firehose. it's useful. although it's probably passing into cliche through overuse.

Possibly a ref to UHF. I had to look it up. My 50-something American colleague may be a fan.

what is drinking from a firehose?!

= wasting?

in my experience, means that you need a bit of information and someone is giving you a tremendous amount of information, at a much lower level than you can/need to follow.

(the please advise thing is so weird because i only started seeing it in business-speak recently, and now i've noticed it passing to everyday life.)

it's faintly reminiscent of cop-talk

"we have a seven two in progress on the corner of buena vista and larchmont, two suspects, please advise"

Yep, firehose = too much info at once. I guess the "science fair" thing is "we don't need to get too technical about this".

drink from a firehose to is getting so much information, so quickly that you can't even extract a tiny little bit of useful stuff.

not just more information than you need, but so much information that it harms your ability to make use of anything.

apologies in advance for what i am about to do...

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd020507s.gif

the purpose of this thread has been refreshed

i've heard 'science fair' as a description of a project descending into pure research instead of having some definite end goal.

Was expecting fieri gif

i've heard 'science fair' as a description of a project descending into pure research instead of having some definite end goal.

Right, that makes more sense. I can't recall the context in which these phrases were used now because the only things I retained from that meeting were these phrases.

i thought science fair was an obligatory investigation into something that didn't matter at all, like "does my cat have a daily routine and if so, what is it?"
that's what my science fair projects were like

"how long can i make this finger weaving?" (not very long, apparently)
"can i make a miniature jamestown wall out of popsicle sticks and styrofoam?" (yes)

i did get an award one year but it wasn't for the above projects

we called it the scholastic fair

i'm putting out some feelers

ew

more than the catholic church did with them tbf

omg

(the please advise thing is so weird because i only started seeing it in business-speak recently, and now i've noticed it passing to everyday life.)
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7246/8163703463_73e31117c3_o.jpg

teotm

man there is something so seductive about touch base, you hear it & it is obviously just enormously inappropriate, a kind of messy deluxe business class mangling of language, a detour, & yet at the very same moment you realise that you too could say it, could just drop it into a conversation like it's no big deal, could somehow sever all of your ties mid-sentence & just start touching base, practically catching people on the flipsdie, almost saluting & intoning STAY GOLD everytime you leave a room. it's what makes it so spicy to say, this immediate transference, the promise of a double life, knowing you can without consequence start talking this way & not be called on it, it's a legal loophole, touch base, there's precedent, there is no turning back now.

i LOVE email speak.

ill touch base with this thread later to see how people are responding.

cheers,

― max, Friday, August 9, 2013 5:26 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Gene Wilder tells the warden in Stir Crazy that he wants to touch base with him on some ideas to make prison life better. I didn't realize "touch base" was in use that long, but it was clearly meant to suggest that the character was priggish and way out of his element.

Touch base is fine. It's a useful figure of speech and I don't see it as similar to the meaningless office phrases in this thread. It carries a particular meaning. "Reach out" is more prone to abuse, but it's often OK, too.

I've come to like "deliverables" too.

"Granular" was a revelation.

that's too much of an ask

http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=inappropriate

http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=self-loathing

http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Potentially