STEREOTYPING – MNCs (MEAN NASTY COMPANIES) – OFFICE JARGONS

This is a post on which I have been working on for a long time. This is about the stereotypical office jargons we come across every day of our lives at workplace. I have also included some of the thoughts which have crossed my mind whenever I have come across these jargons.

A massive word of caution here these reactions most of the times have been contained in my head only as a result of which I still have my job (I have bills to pay, obvioulsy)…... I would seriously recommend the readers to do the same

At the same time I am no exception, I myself use a lot of them in my day to day work. Infact after a lot of introspection I have realized that the lesser I know about the subject I am talking about, the more frequent are the use of these jargons by me.

1)      “I can really see the value added with that” – No you can’t see shit, it’s just the way I explained stuff to you that you got convinced that you see value addition

2)       “It’s a win-win situation.” – Dumb fucks, there is never a win win situation, the only actual true meaning is that someone wins and the other one did not realize what they lost

3)      “Take one for the team.” – If it is a bonus or a pay hike I will take it, if it is criticism then get the fuck out of here

4)      “Let’s push back on this one.” – Oh Yeah if I could I would push every piece of work so far back that it would not be able to catch up with me till I retire

5)      “Let’s find a window of opportunity.” – If that window is anywhere higher than 3^rd floor, I would fucking shove you right through it

6)      “Let’s touch base on that” – So if you are trying to get a girl, does this mean reaching the first  base, second base or going the entire stretch (Credits: An office colleague of mine who wants to remain anonymous - he honestly believes a lot of people read my blog)

7)      “Going forward.” – Once this sentence finishes, we turn back and walk to our desks

8)      “Taking candy from a baby.” – Try this one if you have the balls to, can you imagine the embarrassment once the baby starts crying its lungs out, I would use the phrase “Taking candy from a baby after strangling it”

9)      “It is what it is.” – Yeah moron if you have not have said that I would have never realized it, what do you think I am on crack in the middle of the day and suffering from hallucinations

10)  “In the current climate.” – Technically there is nothing which is current climate, climate is a long term phenomenon, what is current is only weather, were you smoking weed during your geography class?

11)  “It’s a no brainer.” – No wonder your brain cannot interpret it

12)  “110%.” – Why 110% lets accommodate some discount and settle for 104.398465636532652%

13)  “It’s on my radar.” – So what’s between your legs is the antenna and anyway your head looks like an out of shape satellite dish

14)  “Flagging it up.” – No thanks, I will wait till the Independence Day or Republic Day

15)  “Let’s just blue sky it.” – (1) No wonder such few good ideas ever come out of Britain, those fuckers never see the blue sky.  (2) Why don’t I beat you up so bad that your entire body looks like blue?

16)  “I’m a customer what would I do.” – You would whine, cry, shout, complain, create problems due to which I will keep my job & get paid.... pls keep doing whatever the fuck you do

17)  “Let’s put it on the back-burner.” – How about I put your interfering ass on the sizzling hot barbecue grill

18)  “Let’s find a window in your diary.” – Lets burn your diary in the middle to make a hole then make you hold it up against your face so that I can put my hands through the window and poke your eyeballs out

19)  “From the get go.” – (1) Have you ever heard of the phrase “slow and steady wins the race”!!!! (2) For a change can we just let go……

20)  “Just giving you the heads up.” – I give you a middle finger up straight

21)  “Pick the low hanging fruit.” – I so hope it turns out to be rotten and infected

22)  “What’s our USP.” – U Suck, Period!!!!!

23)  “Let’s circle back.” – Were you serving a prison sentence when the geometry class was going on?

24)  “We need to hit the ground running.” – Do you think my head is a battering ram… you son of a bitch

25)  “Hit me with it.” – Boy my imagination runs wild just thinking about what all can that lead to… rest I will leave if for you all to imagine

26)  “Let’s circle the wagons.” – I will do that if there are a bunch of girls inside

27)  “Let’s talk about this offline.” – Do you see a network chord coming out of my ass and a light blinking on the top of my nose like Rudolph the reindeer which makes you think I am online?

28)  “Hold that thought.” – Now can I say that I have my hands full with holding on to thoughts and I can’t take any more work?

29)  “Drilling down.” – Where am I, after all the qualifications which I acquired, I really end up with people who speak language of a construction site

30)  “Get all our ducks in a row.” – Yeah then the minimum number of bullets will do the maximum work for me. Shoot them.

31)  “Let’s run it up the flagpole.” – And let’s run the flagpole up your ass

32)  “Shoot me an email.” – Where can I get custom bullets made, can anyone help?

33)  “Guesstimate.” – Sounds as sensible as the term “fucked up virgin”.

34)  “We need more carrots on sticks.” – We need a more competent recruitment team

35)  “It’s a game changer.” – No most likely it’s just a cheat code

36)  “Moving the goal posts.” – Lets them right next to one another facing each other and make a goal box

37)  “On the same page.” – Yeah only the books are different

38)  “Brain Storming.” – Do we really need to associate a part of human anatomy with a natural calamity to coin a phrase for an exercise used to generate ideas? So how would you coin a phrase which can be used to implement those ideas – “Pancreas Typhoon”

39)  “In essence.” – So you yourself are admitting that whatever crap you said in the last 1 hour could have been summarized in a few minutes!!!!

40)  “What’s my ROI.” – You are a “ridiculously overpaid idiot”

41)  “Let’s deliver on our deliverables.” – Is there anything else can be done with deliverables other than delivering them; can we put them in the incubator?

42)  “Tell me the bottom line.” – (1) Are you illiterate, can’t you fucking read it? (2) Do you suffer from some kind of special visual impairment condition that you can only read the top line?

43)  “Ideas on the table.” – Yeah right, Ideas on the table, marijuana under the table, revolver in the drawer, body bag in the cabinet – done, I am ready for the meeting.

44)  “Let’s put our thinking caps on.” – Why bother ideas will not fucking rain through the roof!!!!

45)  “Let’s Raise the bar” – So instead of having drinks on the floor should we start dancing on the tables? Why don’t you take a bar and shove it where the sun does not shine?

46)  “We have an Open Door Policy” – (1) Why in the hell do you have doors if you never intend to close them in the first place? See I already gave you a cost cutting idea. (2) Yeah the moment we don’t need you we shove you right out through the open door.

47)  “Let’s not put all our eggs in one basket” – For so long I was under the impression that we are mammals and don’t lay eggs

48)  “Think out of the box” – (1) You don’t pay me enough out of your vault for me to think out of the box. (2) If I think out of the box then you will be out of business!!!!

49)  “Be Proactive” – Absolutely, I started thinking about how I would screw my boss even before I got the appointment letter

This was the list which I could compile and thought it’s long enough for it to be published now. Perhaps now you would see the funnier side of the office jargons which you hear every single day at workplace.

Let me know if there are any further which you come across frequently and I would add the same and expand this post to include more.

In the meanwhile till next time Happy Stereotyping!!!!!

THIS IS THE LAST DANCE

It’s Friday night, and it’s time to dance, in a club on Sesame Street
You & me, our eyes meet, I don’t know about you but I feel the heat
Without you floor feels incomplete, this is not the time to be discreet
Me & you, we won’t miss a beat. This is how we were meant to meet 

How can you be so beautiful? A look at you and I lose my stance
Your moves get me in a hypnotic trance…… This is the last dance

Trying not to be wise, ask you for a dance, under the starry skies
Take your soft hand, lead you to the floor, and look into those eyes
My arms around your waist and music on the floor hits a new high
Waited for someone like you my whole life, why should I lie? 
Can’t find someone like you be it Shanghai, Germany or France
I don’t wanna play a game of chance……. This is the last dance

We paint the floor without ink, would you like me to get you a drink
With you & me the heat won’t sink, our moves are in a perfect sync
You look at me and your eyes blink, you were my life’s missing link
Hey girl, you push me to the brink, a life without you I cannot think 
I don’t feel like this every day, this is not a patterned advance
You took my heart away at first glance…. This is the last dance

Being with you is so much fun, your face shines like the glowing sun
Ready to be a hired gun, you will be mine everything said & done
All the evil in the world we will outrun, face our troubles one by one
You are definitely the best, my loved one. Better then you there is none 
My love for you is gonna be unending just like nature’s expanse
Neither Moulin rouge nor gothic romance….. This is the last dance

STEREOTYPING – LET THE SHOPPING CARTS ROLL – SUPERMARKETS

With urban India progressing rapidly everyone is struggling to find time for themselves, family & friends. Working couples, young kids, hectic schedules, long working hours – all lead to a continuous struggle to save time in every activity possible. Arrive, SUPERMARKETS to the rescue. Under one roof, spread across a few floors one can get everything – fruits, vegetables, other provisions, groceries, toiletries, cosmetics, pretty much everything which we use in our day to day lives. An hour or two over the weekend and you are done for the week at least… dump the stuff in the boot of the car and drive home – one major problem resolved.

Due to the reasons above urban India at least has whole heartedly embraced these supermarkets with open arms and they have become an integral part of all of our lives. Yeah!!! perhaps the freshness of the vegetables & fruits has been compromised a bit when we compare to buying them every day from street side vendors as our parents use to. But in today’s busy lives whenever there is a face-off between convenience & comfort against slightly better quality of anything, convenience & comfort wins almost every time.

This post talks about the stereotypes which I came across at these supermarkets. I have tried to arrange them in order of one’s journey right from entry to exit – the entire experience.

1)      Charlie to Bravo, Perimeter Secure, Proceed with caution – The fun actually starts even before you enter the market, right at the gate itself. Have you ever seen a bunch of more uninterested group of people then the security guards at the main gate – there will be two, one which will have a mirror and look under the front of your car and the other would ask you to open the boot and check it for explosives. Now here is the amusing part – first the check thru mirror under the front of the car. Now I don’t know the story behind this but really the cars today have such low ground clearance that it is literally impossible to carry a bomb underneath the front of the car. I myself drive a sedan with a very low ground clearance, if I ever place a bomb underneath the front, at the very first speed breaker that I drive on in the city of Bangalore, the bomb will explode in my face and involuntarily I will become a suicide bomber. The guard who inspects the boot, he is a bigger idiot – now I can never understand what is he trying to find with a metal detector when the entire God damn car is made of metal, honestly he should be concerned if the detector does not beep rather than when it does. Perhaps they are demotivated as they are still awaiting the performance bonus which they were promised at the time of hiring that they would be paid once they detect a bomb, poor misled fellows!!!!!!

2)      OED (Obsessive Elevator Disorder) – This condition is found among many who shop at these stores. You have just entered the premises you take the elevator to the supermarket floor, the moment the door opens even before you have stepped out someone shoves/ or try to shove their shopping carts into the elevator right thru your midsection, completely ignoring the fact as to who or how many are inside. These folks stand right in front of the elevator with their trolleys and leave no space for people to get out of the elevator also. Now if you would say that I am so thin that you can’t see me I can think of taking that as a compliment but I would not like to assume that my head also falls in this condition. Did all these dumb fucks see “Hollowman” or “Mr. India” right before they come for their shopping?

3)      Aisle Tetris – I come across a lot of people whose sense of space & positioning seems to be seriously impaired, consistently we see people standing right in front of elevator doors, having conversations on staircases making movement for others very difficult, same with escalators and security gates, food counters, the list can go on & on. Space in India at least is a luxury, most of the supermarkets are pretty cramped and very little space is left as aisles where customers can traverse through different sections to pick whatever they want to buy. Then are these stereotypes it almost looks like with their own bodies and their shopping carts they want to make every shape of block which appears in Tetris, they would move across the aisles at odd angles, leave their trolleys right in the middle of aisle in an awkward way and disappear to pick up stuff from the nearby sections. It’s almost like they are playing tetris in the market. Sometimes my demented mind takes over and just for the fun of it, I start picking stuff from these unattended trolleys, within 3 to 4 second the rightful owner of the stuff in the cart appears and then drives his/her trolley away close to where they are shopping….. Problem Solved!!!!!!

4)      The Cryst(aisle) maze – More than a decade back there used to be a game show on TV titled “The Crystal Maze”, it was one of my favorite ones for quite some time. There are some folks at these supermarkets which almost find the market layout to be a maze of sorts; they never have a clue of where to go to get what they want. But the worst part is they stand right in the middle of aisles and have extended discussions around the layout and where they should go to find what which make them fall in category 3 as people obstructing the aisles traffic. My solution for this is a simple one “Excuse me, Can you let the cart pass please!!!” but the trick does not lie in the phrase, it’s in the loudness with which it is said, practice makes you perfect be loud enough so that people in the near periphery also hears but don’t shout and look at the couple or group of people to whom this is said, it almost gives me the sarcastic pleasure and the voice inside me says “See I made you famous, you JERKS!!!!!”

5)      Hyper Enthused & Ready to Confuse – These are over enthusiastic sales staff, they are generally only found in sections where stuff life home décor, bed sheets, curtains and similar stuff are sold, kind of makes sense to have them at these counters, at the end of the day can you think of any way in which a sales assistant will be able to convince someone to buy 2 kgs of a vegetable instead of 1 or 2 boxes of breakfast cereal instead of 1, most likely not. Although the number of these kinds of hyper energetic sales people is dwindling yet whatever specimens of this species nearing extinction remains can sometimes be a real nuisance. A couple of weeks back when the same sales person asked me for the third time “Sir!! What are you looking for?” I got pissed and I replied “A Soul mate!!! Do you honestly think you will have everything I am looking for in my life in your stinking store?” Another instance was at a market which also stocked some basic garments again a sales rep got on my nerves first he said “What would you like to try out today?” then after 30 seconds “Sir!!! You can try anything out and see if you like it”, this again bought my evil side to life and I replied “How about the girl at the perfume counter, she looks like she would be worth a try? And does the 30 day return policy also applies” – let me admit upfront I am not proud of that statement as I have deepest respect & gratitude for female sex and I thoroughly despise any statement which objectifies them but some people just have the God gifted ability to get on your nerves this statement was just an outcome of such an encounter.

6)      Over confused & Not Amused – These are more prominent in numbers these days and are the exact opposites of the above stereotype of over enthusiastic sales staff. These folks have no clue about the layout of the store or how different sections are arranged. They are just there either to keep a watch or arrange stuff on shelves & most likely trainee staff who are paid on a daily contract basis. You ask them anything they would say that they would find out where whatever you are asking is stored and come back to you and then they disappear, never to be seen or heard from again. For obvious reasons they also look uninterested in their jobs. One day on my visit to a supermarket I decided to have fun and with malicious intent I asked the staff at the cosmetic counter where can I find Aniseed and the standard answer followed that he would figure it out and come back to me, but since I was out to have fun I said that I will follow him to whoever he is going to ask and I am not kidding you this was my journey to find aniseed – from the cosmetic counter staff to a staff at the breakfast cereal section, from the breakfast cereal section staff to the staff in the section where rice, oil, flour etc. were available, from that provisions section to the dry fruits section, and a staff from dry fruits section took me finally to the condiments section where while he was still trying to hunt for aniseed. I found it and declared how elated I was to discover it finally. Well that was one hell of a roller coaster ride across the store.

7)      CTC (Coupons, Tokens & Cards) – Well we have reached the billing counter and then when you eagerly want to get the billing done so that you can get out of the market for doing better things in life (yeah right like checking gmail for new emails, Facebook for notifications and whatsapp for messages… really how desperate we all have become!!!!), at this exact moment these stereotypes will emerge and out comes their grand collection of coupons, tokens & various cards in the smallest fractional denomination possible and then they stand at the counter and count them for ages feels like eternity. In addition to all this, these are some of the most hilarious stereotypical statements I come across:

                                             i.            This coupon has expired can we still use it? (yeah right how will you like it if you expire and then your kids on your dead body says can he/she still make dinner for us at least)

                                           ii.            Last time you said that this coupon is not acceptable here, can you check again (it is a supermarket not a Indian Politician who will change statements every second)

                                          iii.            Can you exchange these coupons in lower denominations? (What the FUCK, is it food coupons or foreign currency, and what do you think the staff at the billing counter is running a forex exchange scheme, morons!!!!)

8)      Uncle Scrooge lost in cash – These are the staff at the billing counter, for some reason these are the most incompetent people you will ever come across when dealing with numbers & calculations. They have been given a billing machine/cash register, a software installed on their billing machines with the sole purpose of doing billing calculations, most of them even keep a calculator yet with all this infrastructure they perpetually struggle to identify the amount of change they need to return. I almost wonder if there was a mathematics exam for selection of these folks and marks were mistaken for grades.

Supermarkets have their importance in our lives however shopping for basic provisions and other day to day used stuff still remains one of the most boring activities to be done over the weekends, but perhaps if you start identifying stereotypes it may become a bit more entertaining. This concludes my post for stereotypes which I have observed while shopping in supermarkets. So how many of them you can identify once you go for your regular visit with the list of thing to buy in your pockets, feel free to let me know if there are more and I would expand this post to include more.

In the meanwhile till next time Happy Stereotyping!!!!!