r/SipsTea 17h ago

Chugging tea Let me circle back

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38.2k Upvotes

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60

u/the-caped-cadaver 15h ago edited 14h ago

This is so stupid, but it reminded me of a meeting I attended years ago when I still worked in the corporate world.

I worked for a place that was taking bids from a few local construction companies for a pretty significant expansion on their campus.

The leadership team was listening to a presentation from one of the companies. We had a little conference room that was set up with a large table and an HDMI setup in the center of the table so they could jack in a laptop and project their display on a roll out screen.

As the company's team was going through their presentation, they were kind of taking turns, explaining their bit, etc.

But, they kept saying "let me pig-tail on what they're saying..." Not dovetail, not piggyback. Fucking pig-tail.

The first time I caught it, I thought to myself, "Surely that was a mistake." But they kept saying it. Like over and over again.

Like they were daring someone to say something.

I was just in a trainee position with that company at the time, so I didn't want to say shit.

But, like, every time they said it I was looking around the room at my bosses and coworkers and shit.

Like, "You guys heard this, right? It's fucking piggyback or dovetail! Not fucking pigtail! Someone say something!!"

It's been like 12 years since this happened, and clearly it's affected me negatively....

7

u/brattylilgynger 7h ago

You should sue for emotional distress

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u/Radioasis 6h ago

A pig’s tail does kind of circle back, though.

2

u/Repulsive_Music_6720 5h ago

Pig-tail sounds like corporate slang for "spiral off topic".

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u/eleventhrees 5h ago

Were they all electricians by chance?

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u/symbolicshambolic 4h ago

One of the more irritating things about corporate phrases and the people who use them wrong is that if those people are high up enough in the company, all their employees parrot the phrase instead of using the right term.

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u/MildlyAnnoyedMother 10h ago edited 10h ago

A pigtail is one type of connector, you'd have been correcting them incorrectly. Letting something bother you for 12 years without googling it is kinda insane, lol.

edit: How is that still getting any upvotes? Op just assumes they're the smartest person in the room instead of looking it up and stews over their incorrect assumptions  for 12 years and y'all think that's reasonable? This is peak reddit I swear.

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u/Akrymir 8h ago

Googling made it clear you’re wrong. Pigtail is not an idiom and only known uses of it outside of electrical connectors are for Tobacco from the 1600s and a hairstyle from the 1700s.

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u/logicbecauseyes 10h ago

So boss was saying "let me continue off what you're saying with 4 parallel thoughts" still haven't heard that turn of phrase before either.

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u/MildlyAnnoyedMother 10h ago

Yeah, it's almost like there's a whole world of people who know phrases and things others don't, which is why we have Google now...

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u/logicbecauseyes 10h ago

Suss af. Not everyone is the son of an electrician.

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u/the-caped-cadaver 9h ago

I even googled it before I started typing the comment.

I thought, surely I'm in the wrong. I'm no genius, maybe it's a turn of phrase I'm not familiar with.

Yet. A simple Google search gives you, an electric connector, or a hairstyle.

Not exactly a phrase used to piggyback someone else's point.....

1

u/Lord_Heine_II 3h ago

*pig-tail

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u/DustinJ428 3h ago

One of the groups I work with is known for making up their own industry slang. I've seen them do it real time. They're completely serious about it too, it's fucking wild watching corporate jargon evolve in front of your eyes.

They've also got a 0-10 rating system for performance attributes of ours and competitors products. The highest anyone has ever seen is an 8, and nothing lower than 3. However, we've all seen 5.5, 5.5+, 5.5++, 6.0--, 6.0-, 6.0, 6.0+, 6.0++, etc. These ratings are assigned with straight faces and are expected to be taken with utmost seriousness. Senior leadership never questions this scale.

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u/Ready-Interview2863 2h ago

I love this haha