Office jargon can be overwhelming,especially if you’ve been out of the office.Credit:
Got your unread emails down to zero? That’s a pro move. Opened a pack of Jatz without ripping the tab? Pro move. Emptied the tearoom dishwasher? Pro. Move.
Maybe it’s my little-sister tendencies coming out,but I love a good nickname or piece of office jargon. But can lingo be confusing,or even exclusionary? I once told a newbie to get ready for “the stand-up” and terror crossed his face. “Like,stand-up comedy?” he stammered.
Herein lies the rub. On the one hand,jargon can bind you together as a team. It says,“I speak the lingo and I belong.” But if you’re not in the clique,it’s isolating and can feel unfriendly.
Newresearch by LinkedIn and Duolingo found almost half of Aussie professionals believed workers with a better understanding of workplace jargon were able to get ahead at work. The research showed some of Australia’s best-loved jargon was lifted from cult shows likeKath and Kim and classic movies likeThe Castle. There’s nothing like dropping a well-timed “tell him he’s dreaming” in a meeting.
But not all jargon is going to make you friends. The research also found there was specific workplace jargon that Aussies found befuddling,with “boiling the ocean” taking the title of most confusing. (It’s actually a term that means undertaking an impossible task or making a task unnecessarily difficult.) The next most confusing terms were “noodling” (mulling over or thinking about something),“low-hanging fruit” (the most easily achieved tasks) and then there’s my personal least-favourite “is the juice worth the squeeze?” (knowing if something is worth the trouble).
Different industries have different jargon. My brother is a coastal engineer and I nearly spat my latte out laughing when he mentioned doing some work on “the discharge barge”.