“Choose a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”
– Confucius

“How the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6.30am by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress... and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you make lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
– Charles Bukowski

I’ve mentioned the crazy, fast-moving office environment previously (I know, more than once); how office jargon changes on such a regular basis, it’s hard to keep track of the hackneyed buzz phrases and clichéd idioms. Last year it was literally all about ‘in terms of’ and ‘literally’.

But ‘literally’ has, literally, been tied up, shoved into a van in a grey sack weighed down with bricks and chucked into South End pier. Literally. Tellingly, the ‘in terms of’ sales guy has left, and the phrase died almost instantly. In its place, thanks to the new marketing girl, ground-breaking new phrases were ushered in, and took over the office like ebola within a matter of days: ‘moving forwards’, ‘happy with that’ and ‘keen to catch up’ (notice lack of pronoun text speak with the latter two).

Old ones were still heard from time to time: ‘touching base’ even made an appearance late on a Monday afternoon. ‘Historically’ and ‘Oh right’ reared their ugly heads from time to time. I can’t be sure if I really did hear this smorgasbord of office speak in the same sentence: ‘In terms of moving forward I’m literally happy with that’, but I like to think that I did. Like Sherlock Holmes never actually uttering ‘Elementary, my dear Watson’, it feels like he should have.

Previously on Barnflakes
Wasting time
Just a quick one
Four-day working week
Introverts vs extroverts
‘In terms of’ overtakes ‘literally’
London Bridge Lunches
The Metros
Email étiquette
I’m literally not being funny but let me ask you a question
The Offensive Office