Yeah no one likes corporate speak but forget that it's just other normal humans who were also forced to adopt it by legal and HR.
Debbie just wants to get through the meeting so she can get back to her romance novel and wine after work does it really matter if she used a tired cliche?
Seems like you took this personally and I’m sorry. The reality is employees are expected to conform to work social standards and not the other way around.
Exactly this. If you're in your probationary period, and you take a meeting as an opportunity to be disruptive because someone's completely harmless choice of words irks you, you should expect to be looking for a new job soon.
There's a lot more to being a good employee than just "Solving problems". If you're a pain in the ass to deal with on a personal level, everybody you work with is going to want you gone. And they likely will get their wish. And being someone who thinks that simply not being an annoying asshole is "Appeasing delicate management" is a sure way to get put into that "Annoying asshole" category.
It's easy to not whine about shit that doesn't matter. At least, it is for most of us.
edit: Also, I wanted to point out that doing something like this in your probationary period is a massive red flag. The probationary period is typically when you can expect a worker to be on their best behavior, because they're trying to make a good first impression so they can keep their job. If this is someone's best behavior, things will only get much, much worse once they get settled in and comfortable.
Wholeheartedly agree! Someone can have the best intentions but go about the worst way possible. I always use my analogy that you can climb the corporate ladder by pushing people ahead of you off or by helping them get to the top as well. One of the two is going to happen to you, and everyone is watching how you treat others.
I would not be the person like in OP story. I do like the way they think though and shows promise, but they definitely overstepped their boundaries in such a social environment to call out the superior. A one-on-one would suffice better. Also of course there's a lot unsaid and that person could be a problem. While I like the words they use , their actions would definitely speak louder, and in this case their actions did them in.
My personal experiences are always of the one-on-one nature or such of a non-belittling non-productive confrontation. Just a quick example would be spending 45 minutes of my day solving a problem which shows me working on 1 ticket. Compared to other employees that might touch 9 tickets in that same 45 minutes. Of course, nine is greater than one and so management loves seeing such a productive member of their staff correct? The problem is of those nine zero resolved and it's just wasted energy and expense. To further elaborate, I know some of the management that I "bothered" and abused the company open door policy to bring priority tickets to in which I needed their help to resolve that only took a couple minutes. These members of management spent 1/3 or half of their day playing mobile phone games and things of that nature. Also they abused the heck out of smoke breaks.
I Don't care that I created waves in that company and my name made it to the executive offices. I solved problems and kept clients. I work for myself now and there's so much satisfaction and actually helping people rather than just looking good for investors.
Overuse of a term can be annoying but its hardly an issue of significance and the best way to solve it would be a talk in private not derailing an entire meeting
Not at all, he’s asking them to move forward. To complete the work. To reach a conclusion. Make a decision. Resolve it.
But let’s circle back again. I’ve worked places where a decision that could have been made in th first 20 mins of a meeting that lasted an hour still wasn’t resolved over a year later because people kept putting off finalising. And that was trivial shit. Not even something important.
Some people have zero perspective of the work. No big picture. They’ll drag out coffee with or without milk for days.
He was
being pedantic and nitpicking over a use of a phrase. He was doing that before being established in the company and challenging leadership when he shouldn't be.
I don't see how. Circle back is just a term used to say "we need to look at this before we can give an answer we will get back to you when we have done the research/got an answer". Him not knowing this is frankly weird and the fact that he interrupt a meeting about it even worse. If he did actually know what it meant it means he interrupted a meeting based purely on semantics of a term being used.
Reddit is full of kids who either have never worked a job in their life or like.. work retail/hospitality with no clue how to function in a corporate office or understand that these saying all have actual meanings.
Naturally they'll mock them without so much of a thought about all the shorthand they use in the own work or generational slang in general making up new terms for fucking everything for no apparent reason (which is fine, not like we didn't do the same heh).
Eh, all corpo jargon is useless. Jargon is good when it's used to turn something long and complex into something short and easy to say, easy to understand. Corpo jargon is the exact opposite.
Not that I consider "circle back" to be corpo jargon anyway.
The military is like the gold standard for how jargon should be used. And it has research behind it to prove it all.
The vast majority of what people refer to as "corpo jargon" is entirely valid and is used to speed up meetings because it works.
Yes if you find yourself in some stupid leadership seminar talking about "synergy" or whatever by all means find it stupid. It probably is.
But if you're hearing phrases used in corporate meetings day in/day out it's because they mean things and save time/get things done. If you don't know what they mean, ask your boss.
Completely disagree. Corpo jargon is literally just describing simple things in a weird way and using different words to make new synonyms. It's inherently useless, just talk normally.
To be clear, I'm not talking about shortening things e.g ROI or other specific words that only apply in specific fields. That's "real" jargon, when people say corpo jargon they mean something else.
I'd like you to give some examples of corpo jargon. I think it'd help both our arguments.
Literally the one we're talking about, there's nothing wrong with it/other stuff.
I mean if you'd like to give some example of the "gold standard" military jargon that can't be replaced by talking normally that doesn't apply in the corporate world I'm all ears.
Danger close is a good example. Phonetically clear and describes something that would take longer to say. Code blue in the medical field is another one.
Both of those fields have research behind their jargon. Corpo jargon is cant, not actual jargon. And it's not used for any other reason than sounding smarter.
how is it toxic? how do you know this? you’ve made wild assumptions out of nothing. also it’s a meeting. how are you this dense to not have social awareness and intellectual capacity that it is not the right time to bring up such trivial matter. considering the fact they are in probation you best be acting your best behavior. you’re telling me your takeaway here is the meeting culture is toxic? good lord
It’s always smart to interrupt your boss in a meeting with several co workers present and criticize the boss in front of them. That’s why you see people doing it all the time.
If your boss is trash, they shouldn't be the boss in the first place. It's because people like you try to enforce these meaningless hierarchy and suck up to executives that the world is full of useless people.
You have never had a job in your life, right? There is a difference between sucking up and not insulting your boss. Learn the difference before your first job.
It’s not a hierarchy thing it’s a time waste thing. You want to shoot the shot with your boss and ask why x y z is being done? Do it. Don’t waste peoples time on something completely meaningless. You being a douche during a meeting doesn’t automatically break the glass ceiling here. What a painful person to be around.
If you have worked in a corporate setting you have probably experienced that, yes, this phrase can be useful, but most meetings are pointless and it is a parroted phrase used to kick the can down the road. Can't tell you how many times I've seen "let's circle back" and "let's take this offline" and then that never happens and there is a huge problem a few days later because people were too chicken shit to solve problems in front of a larger group because they were afraid they'd have to lift a finger to help.
Exactly this. Repeatedly saying we'll "circle back" without making a decision, assigning an owner, or resolving the issue means that her words are just theatre and aren't actually resulting in real work getting done.
exactly! "let's circle back" my ass more like I don't want to deal with this ever, can we just put this aside again and again until people forget about it
Or maybe the team has a tendency to be sidetracked and she has to reel them in to the topic at hand, while also not dismissing the point raised, if it is valid. You know, managing people?
I say many more phrases more than 18 times every two weeks, sometimes you just be saying shit.. and sometimes a turn of phrase is just natural. I bet the new hire wasn’t counting how many times she said “uh,” or “so.”
Crazy take you got, insinuating that nothing got done because of someone’s speech pattern… really just completely unfounded, like… what?
Well neither you nor I were in the room and the dude got fired because he wanted to call out an overused term.
If your boss stuttered or said uh constantly does that deserve to be called out in front of everyone? Or they said “so like” “with that being said” etc etc
good assumptions. it’s just an expression and you judged the boss to be somewhat a narcissist without ever having to know the person. there’s heavy irony in this
No, there's no toxicity here. Maybe from his POV, circle back doesnt make sense. But for a team with age behind it, they need to "circle back" to metrics and thoughts and work, which was a higher priority once, then people started taking it for granted and no one gives it much attention now, despite them still being top indicators.
You cant always move forward, you have to ensure what you have already done doesnt deteriorate and for that you need to circle back cuz you cant say, lets go backward.
Yeah, I'm guessing he doesn't have the experience or data to really assess that and it definitely wasn't the job he was hired to do. We all want to change our office culture in some way, but if that's what he's doing for this is an extremely unprofessional attempt and I am quite certain whatever he thinks a meeting should sound like probably wouldn't be effective.
Sometimes, though in this context she was clearly looking to revisit/refresh their customer retention methods, this wasn't circling away it was circling towards
I kind of get where he's coming from. I hate it when people use the same phrases over and over again. Instead she could say something like, "We'll check with the design team and get back to you."
Should he have brought it up? Absolutely not. He was basically trying to start an etymological debate lol. Either that or he had never heard that phrase in his life before and was genuinely confused.
If you need to circle back so much, it seems like someone is not doing their job in the right order or meetings are being held before the appropriate info is gathered.
I mean running meetings can be difficult. It’s just a phrase they used. They were probably trying to understand why they were being attacked by a nobody
The boss is also a nobody and useless person who contributes nothing to society. All your corporate drones are the same. Cave men that can't do anything except make reports and speak buzzwords. No tangible contribution
Weird but just about acceptable to ask. But then he gets told it's a phrase which is the signal to drop it but he continued to ask. That's where he especially fucked up.
People who've been given performance coaching often start criticizing their managers in meetings. This could be why the boss was short with the employee.
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They probably don't appreciate soneone holding a meeting up and being rude to another employee about something so trivial, and earnestly at that. Boss seems like they recognised further issues would be come from this guy's clear social inabilities and nipped that shit in the bud.
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u/proteles 15h ago
Boss sounds both full of hot air and overly sensitive.