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@confederatehobo >In the U.S., the most confusing phrases at work are:
“Boiling the ocean”
What it means: “Undertaking an impossible task”
“Herding cats”
What it means: “Attempting to organize a difficult group of people”
“Ducks in a row”
What it means: “Planning”
“Move the needle”
What it means: “Making progress on something”
“Run it up the flagpole”
What it means: “Testing the popularity of an idea”
“Drinking the Kool-Aid”
What it means: “Demonstrating blind loyalty”
“Out of pocket”
What it means: “Unavailable or unreachable”
“Building the plane while flying it”
What it means: “Taking on a project with a lot of risks and uncertainty”
“Throwing spaghetti at the wall”
What it means: “Testing a variety of solutions or ideas in order to identify what works”
“Juice worth the squeeze”
What it means: “Deciding if something is worth the trouble of getting it or not”
Try to use these phrases more often. It's time for young working folks to hear real English and learn how to use it. Not only that, use more aggressive language. Instead of saying someone is honest, say they're a straight shooter.
Instead of saying make a decision, say pull the trigger.
If there's a happy accident, say the person dodged a bullet.
If the person did really well in a presentation, say they killed it.
If they accomplished two things at the same time, say they killed two birds with one stone.
If there's no point in trying to do something, say that you can't squeeze blood from a stone.
If you want them to contact you via email, ask them to shoot you an email.
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@heavens_feel @confederatehobo I've heard at least half of these this week and it's only Wednesday.
One that I didn't hear until I started working was that delivering data between computers using removable media is called "sneakernet".