The original way the first person asked was polite, if intoned gently.
The recommended response is corpospeak.
Corpospeak is never polite.
It just pretends to be.
Like a sociopath.
Corpospeak […] Like a sociopath.
And this is why LLMs are so well suited for the task! People get genuinely excited by the prospect of using AI to read/reply email… because they don’t mean actual thoughtful email written with intent, maybe even emotions or even reasoning. No… no they mean corpospeak that is entirely pointless, empty of meaning and definitely written for a human by human, but rather for a cog, to another lifeless cog in the corporation.
This is why people are investing tons of money and expending tons of CO2.
What a fucking farce of a species we are.
All things considered our species is doing relatively well. Having the ability to assign purpose and use tools does cause us to get stuck in a stupid rut all too often, though.
I can’t fathom why a person would willingly use corpospeak. I can’t imagine anyone actually likes to speak that way.
I would invite the reader to always call it out when it occurs, and call for all involved parties to speak plain.
Bullshit corpospeak tasks is pretty much the only time I use LLMs. You want us to come up with a paragraph long department motto? Could someone ask ChatGPT and put all of our names under it so none of us waste time from our lives on such a retarded task.
True but that seems to be what she was actually asking for. Her question would be too straightforward, she wanted to get out of the meeting without even hinting at that
The corpospeak way to ask for how to say something in corpospeak would be more like…
I want to say/ask “…”, what would be an appropriate way to phrase this in a professional setting?
But yes, phrasing corpospeak is almost always designed such that someone not well versed in it would believe that what is being said is not extremely direct, is not extremely clear, is somewhat ambiguous, a bit more verbose than is necesarry to be concise.
However, if you have worked in a lot of corpojobs… you fairly rapidly learn what phrases actually mean. It just requires some familiarity with the specific situational context, and the way corpo business structure/culture works in general.
Direct Corporate speak would be.
“Do you need me in this meeting?”
I would argue that isn’t corpospeak.
It is just normal speech.
Which would essentially be a faux pas for anyone other than C suite to do, to drop the dialect.
Only those that are very powerful/respected within the org can get away with dropping the dialect, there has to be a power disparity.
Like, a VP could say that in an internal check up meeting on some team or project.
But they could not say that in a quarterly earnings report in front of investors, it would be a faux pas to drop the dialect because the power/respect differential is less.
Nah, fuck this lickspittle corpo speak!
“What is the purpose of this meeting and why do I need to be included?” is a perfectly polite sentence appropriate in any work environment consisting of mature and distinguished adults.
Do not enslave yourself to the machine, because the people running it will treat you like a slave.
consisting of mature and distinguished adults
That part can actually be problematic in many places in my experience.
I often find that misappropriating an out of context Paul Rudd quote arguably condoning sexual harassment works perfectly to describe the level of effort one should put in;
“Work 60% of the time, Alllll the time”
Any more than 60% effort and it becomes a drain, any less and management will look to replace. 60% effort is the sweet spot for surviving corporate life rather than succumbing to it.
Meetings are the viable alternative to work. Meetings that you don’t need to contribute to are even better. Take a break. Catch some zees.
go to meetings to avoid other meetings
I go to meetings so I don’t have to work
I’m in a meeting right now. Yeah, I don’t have anything to contribute to it, so I’m browsing.
I’m going to need to pull you into a meeting real quick so we can discuss this attitude.
It’s meetings all the way down. And if they make you watch training videos…
Problem is, that the work is still there after the meeting
This is definitely a difference between people that believe the work they do is important and people just punching a clock.
I teach at a community college (salaried) and my partner works as staff in the same school (hourly). She works her ass off, but when she gets to the end of the day, she is done and leaves work at the office, so attending meetings is no big deal to her. Meanwhile, I’ve gotten involved enough in peripheral committee work that I regularly stay up working until 1AM because there are literally not enough hours in the day to get done what needs to get done. I could try to leave work at work, but I’d be hanging students and fellow instructors out to dry, so that’s not always an option.
I could try to leave work at work, but I’d be hanging students and fellow instructors out to dry, so that’s not always an option.
Not your problem that your college hasn’t decided to fund enough positions to get things done within the workday.
It’s not my fault, but it is definitely my problem if I’m in a position to help people and decide not to. Make no mistake, I raise holy hell while I’m doing it, but the lack of workers doesn’t lessen the amount of work that needs to get done. Maybe it’s just naivete, but I’m idealistic enough to believe that helping students is the most important thing I can do, so I only say yes to things that are directly helping students, faculty, and staff (admin and their busy work can fuck right off with their bloated salaries and support staff)
One thing I’ve learned is that sometimes you need to let the problems happen. You can raise hell and keep talking about how more hands are needed, but unless issues actually start coming up and affecting people, then no one is going to care/listen.
I had a job in the past that was vastly understaffed. I kept getting more and more, and working longer hours. I brought this up with management many times but nothing was happening. “Not in the budget to hire more” is what I kept getting.
When it got to be too much, I decided I would only work 40 hours, and whatever happens, happens. Our lives are too short to be wasted away at work.
So tasks started to take longer, and whenever something needed doing, it was added to the queue and prioritized appropriately. Sometimes that meant I couldn’t get to it in weeks. At first, I came under fire. “Why haven’t you done this yet??” But each time I explained my situation. “There’s not enough hands and I am doing the best I can with the resources given to me”. And guess what? Most people empathized and understood my predicament. So now I have an army of colleagues who understand the issue here, and now the issue gets more visibility with management as more people rally to my side.
A few months of this, and they decide to hire two more positions to help with the overload of work.
It’s a risky move for sure. They could just fire you and dig themselves into a deeper hole. But then if they do that, is that really the type of environment you’d want to work in anyway?
People are surprisingly understanding when you explain yourself. You don’t need to fix everything and everyone’s problems. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to let the problems happen and observe how others deal with it.
The biggest part of the issue in state-run higher-ed is the glacial pace at which hiring happens vs. how fast the works shows up. My organization is legitimately trying to hire appropriately (I believe), but we can’t allocate resources until the students show up, and then it’s an 18 month turn around between filing a faculty hiring request and the person starting work due to the standard academic hiring cycle and state-mandated EEO requirements (and that’s assuming that admin approve the hiring request the first time you ask for it, which they do as often as they can). On the other hand, it only takes 2 weeks for people to resign and move on, so we’re losing people as fast as we can hire them. We could to try to hire faster, but it’s a tiny school with a tiny HR (so we’re capped at hiring about 4-5 faculty positions per year) and a small number of faculty (so it’s hard getting enough people to volunteer when you need to fill a hiring committee).
Honestly, I really like the organization and think admin are making good choices, but we legally can’t turn students away, so when more people enroll, there’s more work with the same number of workers for at least a year. It’s honestly a good problem to have, and they do a decent job at compensating me for my extra work, but I’d rather have more help and less OT as soon as we can manage it.
All that said, working in private industry or in an organization that doesn’t have as many restrictions, I would absolutely be saying “no” a lot more. As it is, when I say no, it’s my colleagues and the students that feel the repercussions, not admin, and I have a hard time being OK with that.
The phrase ‘act your wage’ springs to mind. I realised you probably care deeply about the students, but it sounds like you need to care a little bit more deeply about yourself and stop letting them exploit you. Understaffing is management’s problem, not yours.
This is very true. The manager is also overworked and busy, and they hear a lot of complaints from their team. People are very different, some complain all the time for nothing, but others stay silent while their back is on fire. It takes a long time to get to know somebody, so you can confidently tell the difference. But if issues start showing up, they know there is a real problem, and they can allocate resources to fix it.
Never do more than what is in your contract.
It is not like the company is going to pay you more than what is written in there. So why should you compensate when they clearly wouldn’t?
It is not your job to get everything done. But it is their job to make sure there are enough people for the work available.
The university is exploiting your idealism to get you to work without being paid enough. You aren’t “in a position to help people”, you are doing a job for an organization with revenues. They could allocate more revenue to accomplish this work without forcing you to work until 1 AM, but they have made the choice that the work is not worth paying for.
That being said, most good people will go the extra mile if they think it can make a difference, but I see too many who take full responsibility on themselves and “cover” for financially-motivated organizational decisions, which in turn encourages the people who make those decisions to cut even more.
So? Not your fault you had to go to a pointless meeting. Leave at the normal time.
Yeah I’ll tell that to HR when I’m getting laid off again, I’m sure they will totally get it and reconsider
If HR can’t understand that, then it isn’t a decent work environment to begin with.
You can always try to explain it by calculating the cost of you sitting uselessly in meetings. Your hourly wage X amount of hours in meetings. I’m sure they will take your side.
Are you paid by how much work you get done or by the hour?
That’s how I look at it. You want to pay me to go to a meeting that could’ve been an email? Ok! Bet!
Someone after my own heart.
yeah what the fuck; when you’re asked to do nothing on company time, you take it!
I work on the floor in a pretty specialized role, so I can always just use the excuse of having to attend to any given machine coincidentally whenever they want to have a meeting I don’t feel like attending.
None of the managers really understand what we do, so they don’t challenge the excuses ever.
You’d be promoted to ‘hated manager’ soon
When I started my career I quickly became convinced that meetings are the opposite of work. Now a large part of my career is hosting meetings. 😬
My biggest piece of advice to junior staff is: if you’re not provided an agenda prior to a meeting, your attendance is not required. RSVP with Yes if it sounds interesting/beneficial and you have the time, otherwise Nope (or Tentative) your way out of it.
The obvious caveat is if that meeting is called by someone with role power over you. In which case: as they clearly don’t respect your time, it’s on you to (politely) ask them to provide an agenda. It may also indirectly train them to be less shit.
When I started my career I quickly became convinced that meetings are the opposite of work. Now a large part of my career is hosting meetings. 😬
I feel/felt similarly but I am now calling for meetings because it seems to be the easiest way to get my peers and superiors to do their fucking job so that I’m not stuck in limbo waiting for their parts to be finished. It seems like they only respond to slack mentions / emails / task assignments at random which leaves important, unanswered requests/questions just sitting there.
Sorry, this past year I’ve been working with another department for a project that, due to aforementioned woes, has run about 6-12 months more than it needs to.
I’m in the public sector and everyone is very busy and pulled in many directions so I kind of get it… but I want to be done with this thing.
You don’t need to set meetings. You need to set deadlines.
I’ve tried deadlines. I’ve asked for things to be done before our next meeting with the vendor we’re working with. Hell, almost everything I need done is clearly conveyed as “I cannot proceed to move your project forward until you perform X task that I don’t have the rights to perform or make a decision regarding your department’s policy on X.” In fact, I’ve shown up at the meetings with them and the vendor and literally told them the situation - they do everything that’s piled up in like 5-10 minutes and are apologetic. Then two days later I need another small thing and it begins again. So now I call for a meeting to “go over the project days the next vendor meeting.” I really just have a list of shit I can’t work on for the next vendor meeting because ya’ll don’t respond to all my requests otherwise.
Also remember, some of these are directed at my superiors - like the boss of the department I’m working with. It’s their project so it’s not like I’m getting in trouble or missing my deadlines. It just murders my flow state and frustrates me to no end when it can take days or weeks to get a response.
Ah, so you’ve been given responsibility without power (renumeration).
Meeting host here too Agenda : defective thingamajig from supplier
- agenda Hello everu one we suspect that some mcguffins have been shipped with defectives turbo-encubalators. We have 24h to decide if we need to informed government agency
Inventory people - please identify origine of the turbo-encubalators and deliveries Engineers -please make risk assessment form, we strongly suspect defective product are in service.
Providing agenda is only useful if people fucking read it and inform themselves on the subject before coming in. Hi everybody why am I here? - you were supposed to evaluate the safety risk for customer using this defective component we discovered. - oh Why me? -you are the engineer that designed the part Can’t the supplier do the investigation, I have to make a report to my boss to identify where we can cut support
I used to work at this company where like 3 guys took care of basically everything. All but one of them, let’s call him Rob, eventually left to better companies. About a month after that, my team had to deal with a pretty big issue and we were having trouble coming up with a solution so this idiot had the brilliant idea to page Rob. As if the poor guy hadn’t spent the last month doing the job of 3 people who were already doing the job of a 5 people each. Rob got online, said “Why did you page me?” and immediately left before getting a response. I liked Rob.
‘Do you really need me? I still have a lot on my desk and would like to get to work on it, if you don’t mind.’
Never did anyone have an issue with that, including my boss.
The beauty of this is its not using brainrot LinkedIn language
I told my team to decline meetings they don’t think they should be in. If they’re really needed, they can be added - everyone is supposed to be available/reachable during the day anyway. I told them that this includes meetings that I invite them to.
Had a manager saying that. Declined meeting. Manager: Pikachu-face.
Had to attend anyways ofc. Wasted my time 100% + the time the manager “explained” why I couldn’t just decline a meeting.
Yeah, that’s not cool at all. Gotta mean it if you’re gonna say it.
Corpospeak. Never a clearer way to be sure that someone or something doesn’t give a fuck about you as a human being.
Y’all are invited to optional meetings??? Lol
Email recap never comes. Miss out on key decision points. Attend next meeting. Nothing is agreed just talk for the sake of talking. Objections disregarded. Side meeting happens without you. Key points agreed with management in your absence. You’re just a cog in a giant hamster wheel. Not even the hamster. Cry at night.
Cry at night.
That would imply that I care. I wouldn’t recommend caring.
I’m here for the income, not the outcome. You want to pay me then disregard my advice? That’s cool. Check still clears.
I think I’ve been “management” in this scenario… Not intentionally, I’ve just been on so many shit ass working groups where our meetings were just political grandstanding that I feel we had to “get work done” in the off hours.
“Other duties as assigned” of course. 🙄
Some meetings, I wish I’d bought a steamdeck.
Meeting summary:
- Synergy promoted by Gerald
- Fourth quarter prediction estimate forecasts brainstormed by Jeremy.
- Coffee situation update from Mark.
- Level 4 agility in KCD reached by GreatAlbatross
#Corpo-Pro-Tips
“What is the purpose of this meeting and why do I need to be included” is a perfectly polite series of words to use. The wording matters far less than the tone of voice.
I vastly prefer clear and direct questions over the reply that sounds passive aggressive from the very beginning.
I think you underestimate how thin the skin of the professional managerial class is. It’s not about the tone of voice it’s about the directness and how that’s facilitating “conflict”.
I do understand and it does not matter how you phrase it for those types of people. Pretending that it could have been said the ‘right’ way is a waste of time because, as you said, they consider even asking to be facilitating conflict.
There are also good managers out there, they just aren’t as memorable as the ones who make everything into drama. The good ones also tend to be driven to other jobs because of the jerk managers…
Yep, clear & direct is kindness.
I like to insist on basic standards: “Please provide an agenda that explains why we’re needed. Otherwise, I’ll have to turn down this meeting. Thanks.” and reply all. Often, others will agree the lack of written preparation is a problem & follow suit.
If the agenda is simple & clear enough, I’ll just answer in writing so we can cancel the meeting.
I wouldn’t say “perfectly” polite, but it’s definitely not offensive.
The response in the OP definitely doesn’t need further tonal clarification, though. It’s tough for anyone to classify that response as hostile.
Tf am I doing here?
Eh, useless meetings are great for timesheet filler while playing Pokemon Go.
Sometimes my wife says she doesn’t like so much downtime at work. I understand her frustration, but I don’t empathize.
Pay me to slack off, that’s the life.
When I first started my job, I was really anxious about being seen as “slacking off” whenever there was downtime (which is pretty frequent and can range from 10 minutes to two hours). That made it pretty exhausting, which in turn fed the anxiety because “how can doing nothing wear you out?”
Luckily my colleagues and leads were great people and helped me get more comfortable with it, and I’m really grateful for that.
