When I'm up before noon, I often walk around the corner to eat lunch with the “corporate crowd” downtown. It's sort of a restaurant alley with a bunch of tables set up on the sidewalks outside. And of course, since it's something utterly ridiculous like 65 degrees outside (thanks nearby volcanic eruption), most people are crowded around each table sweating in their suits over competing sub-$5 plates of Chinese food.
I took a seat on one side of a slightly-separated 4-person table and started eating my sub-$5 gyro wrap combo plate (lesson here: never lose your student ID after you graduate…it'll cost you a lot of money over a period of about 8 years). Then next to me sat two middle-aged, middle-thinking, middle-manager types—a man and a woman from the same office. The woman brought up a co-worker who apparently regularly gets to work 10-30 minutes late, but NEVER STAYS THE EXTRA TIME AT THE END OF THE DAY TO MAKE UP FOR IT. Why is that in all caps? Because I had to hear basically the same conversation paraphrased over 500 different ways in the course of 20 minutes. AND THAT MAKES YOU WANT TO CAP SOMEBODY IN THE HEAD.
I heard so much corporate lingo, my brain almost formed a limited liability company to keep from losing everything in the event of a Chapter 11 reorganization. Since I don't have even 1/100th of the power of Nate's snippet recollection, I decided it was time to pull out a pen and paper and start jotting down some key over-used phrases. I filled a solid 30 or so annoying terms, expressions, and transitions which I'd like to present to you in one condensed, all-American, corporate paragraph:
“Listen Larry, the early bird gets the worm, don't make me reissue the memo. You are obligated to stay until 7:30pm if you can't touch base with our team by 9am. Start towing the line because we're sick and tired of pulling your weight. The fact of the matter is, if you don't reign in your behavior, we're going to throw you out of the 1 hour lunch window, which you've also shown blatant disregard for. If you want to pull in line with the group, you've got to leave it all on the table because we're under the impression you're about to get canned. We've got rules, follow them—you're taxing everyone's nerves.”