A Guide to Understanding Corporate Employee Jargon (For Bosses!)
How to decipher your inferiors' confusing shorthand.
If your underlings ask for hazard pay during a hurricane or a pandemic or whatever the trendy complaint is these days, what they really want is a pizza party (after closing time on a Friday, once everyone is off the clock).
If they mention a holiday bonus, what they would truly prefer is a company-monogrammed blanket stuffed in a too-small gift bag.
If they talk of accountability and listening to ideas from the common horde, they are actually requesting a town hall meeting in which three audience questions will be accepted from a pool of fifty inquirers, so that only the very best and brightest will be showcased.
If they grumble about stress at work, this is a plea for a lunch-hour chair yoga class that will be benevolently offered free of charge, but must be taken during an unpaid break and cannot conflict with normal working hours.
If they submit papers to the complaint box, this is a subtle way of indicating that removing the complaint box altogether would boost general morale and positivity.
If they request a specific block of PTO at the beginning of the year, this is a cry for help regarding work-life balance and priorities, and really requires a helpful refusal with eight days’ notice.
On the topic of work-life balance, if this comes up during a town hall meeting, it is a perfect opportunity for a reminder that overtime is forbidden and all work must be completed within 8 hours or go unpaid.
If mention is made of hiring a new employee to replace Marge from HR who quit after her third week, this is best interpreted as a need for consolidation of responsibilities among the remaining team.
If complaints are heard about a lack of DEI, this is simply a request that Doug from Accounting, who is 1/32nd Cherokee according to his late grandmother, should be prominently featured on the “About Us” page of the website for the next month, or until the topic comes up again.
Any talk of raises or merit increases is a broad hint that this particular employee is stealing company time on Indeed.com and feels the need to come clean about it.
Scuttlebutt around the water cooler about a possible snack bar in the break room is a plug for a rotating chore wheel to make coffee for the entire office every morning (a task that should be evenly divided between all women below a certain pay grade.)
If they talk about the lengthy trek time involved in getting to the main building from the faraway parking lot, take them up on this idea for team-building physical fitness, and set a step-counting incentive (winner at the end of the year gets a $5 Starbucks card!)
If they suggest that the wait times in the hold queue for IT may be too long, they are simply looking for reasons to multitask and should be assigned more busywork.
It should be noted that mass resignations are not technically “employee jargon,” but we will include them on this list anyway, and note that they should be interpreted as an unspoken statement that the perpetrators simply felt unworthy of working for such a brilliant corporation and wanted to open up the playing field to other hopefuls.
This piece originally appeared in The Belladonna Comedy in January 2023.