I Need You to Speak English

It's Monday and dontcha know, that means a series of meetings must take place. It's almost as if one could settle their ass in a conference room and stay there all day going from one meeting to another. It's no wonder that I spend the evenings and weekends actually doing work, usually the tasks that are the outcome of these meetings.

If you read this blog (and thanks for the indulgence, if you actually do), you're familiar with my utter distaste of buzzwords in business parlance. I recognize that I am distinctly uncool in my failure to embrace this current patois of business speak. Truth is, when I hear it dribbling from the mouths of my colleagues like natural language, it sort of freaks me out. It seems cyborg-like. I'm actually waiting for someone to utter in the course of a meeting, "I will break you." That would actually be cool. But I digress.

What is interesting is the viral adaptation of these expressions. The term "special sauce" was trotted out a few weeks ago; when first utilized, the intent was to describe the unique characteristics of our product model. I hadn't heard it used before and when it was first employed, it was done so euphemistically. Over the next few weeks, I started to hear it pouring out of people's mouths--in sales pitches, in project meetings, in regular collegial dialogues. Someone initially used it in context of establishing our particular "X" factor and suddenly, it was the "it" expression. Baffling and fascinating.

I was in a meeting this evening and someone employed it again. Exasperated I blurted out, "Please--what the hell does that actually mean?" Silence ensued and then one person in the room started singing the old MacDonald's jingle: "Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun."

Yeah, that helps.