As a bona fide grumpy old man finding 5 phrases that annoy me is a piece of cake, in fact the challenge is picking just 5. If any of you work in an office you will no doubt be familiar with office language, words and phrases that don’t get used anywhere else. In fact if you use them outside the office people will look at you like you are mental. But I have resisted the urge to include all of them here to leave room for some other pet hates.
So here’s my top 5
- Give me a ballpark number; what exactly does this mean? If you are using the metaphor of a ballpark is that supposed to mean it’s close to the real number? I’m no expert but I reckon a ballpark is probably pretty big
- Lets take it offline; a common phrase during a meeting but just makes me imagine the people being powered down like robots and then discussing it via brain waves as they are plugged in to charge overnight
- Any sentence that ends in ‘yeah‘; you know how young people (told you I was an old man) talk and always end in year. WTF is that all about? Honestly we don’t need to give our agreement with every single thing you say.
- Where’s it to?; this is a Bristolian classic, instead of saying where is it, they say where’s it to. Drives. Me. Mental.
- I didn’t do nothing; so you did something then did you? Morons. Seriously, I’m not expecting the queens English but let’s try and at least speak in proper sentences that actually make sense.
That felt pretty good. If you want to see more pop over to Kate Takes 5.
February 4, 2012 at 3:31 pm
You shall now forever me known as Victor, as in Meldrew, grumpy git 🙂
February 5, 2012 at 8:38 pm
yep, pretty much 🙂
February 4, 2012 at 4:21 pm
The ‘Take it off line’ one drives me mad too! The ballpark one is also annoying, made even more so by a colleague I have who says ‘ballpart’ – pardon?
February 5, 2012 at 8:41 pm
I want to know who invented these stupid words
February 4, 2012 at 4:28 pm
Can I add another to the list? My teens say ‘like’ in the middle of every sentence and it drives me insane! “It is, like, so annoying”!!!!!!
And I’m not usually a pedant, and I know you’re probably freezing your ****’s off (seeing as you naked-blog) and therefore distracted but your last sentence on number 5 about sentences making sense did make me laugh. Read it back to yourself 😉
February 5, 2012 at 8:42 pm
A sentence that doesn’t make sense? Me? Don’t know what you’re talking about *whistles nonchalantly*
February 6, 2012 at 12:00 pm
I’m having fun winding my kids up with that one.
Them: “We had, like, toast for lunch.”
Me: “So you had something like toast but not actually toast, then?”
Brings a smile to my face, anyway.
February 7, 2012 at 9:10 pm
I like your style my man, how else are these kids going to learn eh?
February 4, 2012 at 6:11 pm
Great list but I like the use of the word ‘morons’ even more 🙂
February 5, 2012 at 8:43 pm
its a good word isn’t it? I also like muppet
February 4, 2012 at 7:10 pm
I might never return to work after reading this.
February 5, 2012 at 8:59 pm
Yeah I wouldnt
February 4, 2012 at 7:18 pm
I think office jargon will be making an appearance in my list. And anything which is grammatically incorrect or in text speak…urghhh!
February 5, 2012 at 9:02 pm
I’m with you on the text speak
February 5, 2012 at 11:16 am
Where’s it to? Never heard that but I love everything about the Bristolian accent language so will have to forgive them this 🙂
February 5, 2012 at 9:02 pm
they really do have their own language, like calling people ‘lover’
February 6, 2012 at 11:42 am
In Berkshire they have a strange habit of saying ‘can your learn me….’ rather than teach – grrrr!
February 7, 2012 at 9:09 pm
oh that would piss me right off
February 8, 2012 at 4:21 pm
Wonderful grumpy post.
Not heard that about Bristol before so that was interesting.
Love the tone of this post.
February 8, 2012 at 9:11 pm
cheers and Bristol has plenty of very odd sayings!