'Actioning', and other bullshit office jargon you hate

WORK in an office? Surrounded by wankers desperate to make themselves sound important? Then you’ll be sick of these irritating terms:

‘Actioning’

At some stage in the last ten years, some bastard decided the word ‘doing’ was too straightforward and took it upon themselves to invent this pointless verb, and people like your boss love it because it makes them feel powerful. When he tells Dave in Operations to ‘action’ getting more paper from the photocopier, you will want to shoot him, and rightly so.

‘Touch base’

Has Kerry from Accounts ignored your emails even though you’ve contacted her multiple times? Apparently you can’t just say that, and instead need to laboriously explain that you and she have yet to ‘touch base on the issue’, even though the issue is her nicking your Fruit Corners from the fridge on a daily basis.

‘Add value’

When a manager suggests that you need to ‘add value’ to this latest pitch, what they mean is you need to ‘make it less shit’, but why say something insulting but useful when they could come out with some vague and annoying jargon? Maybe because when you don’t win the contract, they can ‘transition’ you to being unemployed without having to say ‘you’re fired’.

‘Reach out’

Having wormed its way in through celebrity pop culture, ‘reaching out’ is a phenomenon that has touched everyone from Beyoncé all the way down to Gavin in Sales. Apparently it’s now the proper terminology for when you call someone, send them an email, or even just walk up to them in the f**king corridor.

‘Taskforce’

‘Team’ just wasn’t cutting it, so now every little problem needs to be solved by an official taskforce. It may be just you and the Annette from reception taking the recycling out, but ‘Sustainability Taskforce’ certainly sounds less obviously shit on your CV.

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Five destinations that always have cheap flights because they're shit

LOOKING for a budget holiday this year? Here are five places you hypothetically could fly to on the cheap, though f**k knows why you’d want to:

Knock

Desperate to visit the Emerald Isle but only have a tenner to spend? Then take a flight to Knock at the arse-end of Ireland. All the suspiciously cheap Irish airlines travel there, so you’ll be spoilt for choice when it comes to finding a flight offering a whole 500g of baggage allowance and 10cm of leg room.

Aberdeen

If Ireland is a little too exotic for your taste, you’ll simply love Aberdeen. It’s cold, miserable, ugly and weirdly expensive because of all the oil money, and you’ll feel guilty because a domestic flight adds considerable weight to your carbon footprint. It also means you don’t get the benefit of driving through any nice bits of Scotland.

Pisa

Apart from the Leaning Tower (which is rammed full of tourists trying to get the same stupid photo for their social media) there’s f**k all happening in Pisa, meaning you’ll be bored shitless after about three hours. However, if you’re too stingy to spend an extra £20 to visit somewhere stunningly beautiful like Florence, you deserve all you get.

Malaga

If your dream when hopping on a plane is to arrive in a place with lots of angry, sunburnt British people, then fly straight into Malaga. The airport will be swarming with tourists and the bleak sight of a thousand identical holiday apartments as you drive along the coast will make you wish you’d stayed at home, where the temperature is about the same and you don’t have to visit an Irish bar.

Krakow

Poland’s reputation as the ideal destination for dodgy stag-dos has made getting there on a shoestring easier than ever, meaning it’s now even worse than Amsterdam or Prague. Enjoy sharing your aisle with Gazza, Bazza, Steve and a blow-up doll the air stewards refuse to confiscate because it’s not worth getting punched over.