![\"Grind\"](\"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Grind1.jpg\")
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It started with a call from the temp agency. I had a telephone interview the next day and the recruiter recommended I do some research about the company beforehand. However, looking at the firm\u2019s website left me puzzled. I found familiar words, twisted into vague and baffling new combinations. The company professed to provide services including \u2018single customer view and customer segmentation\u2019. There were sections dedicated to \u2018Industry Solutions\u2019 and the somewhat sinister sounding \u2018Thought Leadership\u2019. Bewildered by the unfamiliar dialect, I resolved to try and bluff it out. Happily I wasn\u2019t found out and headed in on my first day less than certain what to expect.<\/p>\n
As it turned out, the firm was one of the world\u2019s biggest marketing companies, with its fingers stuck in a variety of data-related pies. My role in this vast global machinery was to be managing email campaigns for an academic publisher. Day-to-day, I found I was able to communicate more than adequately with those around me in plain English. But communication from the top came exclusively in the company\u2019s own specialised brand of corporate Klingon, and often contained examples from the very top drawer of management drivel. A laminated piece of paper arrived on my desk listing the company\u2019s \u2018strategic imperatives\u2019. The second of these was to: \u2018MANIACALLY FOCUS ON THE NEEDS OF OUR LARGEST CLIENTS\u2019. I pictured myself on the phone with a client, wide-eyed and frothing at the mouth and wondered how exactly this would help anyone.<\/p>\n
Then there were the acronyms. They, too, came thick and fast from the beginning. Most days I\u2019d receive at least one email with some unfamiliar combination of initials. One day, I received a group email from a colleague in the US asking all users of a particular piece of software to provide a GL# or face having the software removed. I emailed back saying I wasn\u2019t familiar with the abbreviation and asked where I might find this number. A one-line email came back: \u201cAsk your UL.\u201d I quizzed those around me, eliciting an array of shrugs. I tracked down the most experienced person I could find, a company veteran of 13 years. He contemplated the question for a moment, before answering: \u201cA GL number? It\u2019s a \u2026well\u2026It\u2019s a GL number. Ask someone in accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n
After some more unsuccessful enquiries, I made a discovery that would change everything. Trawling deep in the company\u2019s online archive, I came across an in-house acronym dictionary. Combined with the knowledge I had picked up over my stay, I began to feel like I had gained membership to some exclusive sect. I went back and deciphered the old correspondence (General Ledger Number & Unit Leader, in case you were wondering) and passed my Rosetta Stone on to grateful colleagues. Now that I spoke their language, the top brass aura of bureaucratic mysticism receded. I was on their level.<\/p>\n
But with all this newly found knowledge came a less savoury revelation. At several points throughout my stay, various colleagues – including a guy who shared my desk – had mentioned they worked on the \u2018PMI\u2019 account. PMI? It had just been another set of letters that meant sweet FA to me. I was taken aback (to say the least) to learn that these letters stood for Phillip Morris International, the world\u2019s biggest tobacco conglomerate. To be honest, it was no surprise that the company would be involved in such nefarious activities, in fact that was entirely in keeping with what I had come to expect. My plain-speaking colleagues, though \u2013 they just didn\u2019t seem like the type.<\/p>\n
I was left thinking how handy it must have been to all involved to have a repertoire of acronyms to fall back on. After all, it would have been awkward to call a spade a spade when promoting the largest cause of preventable death in the world. It\u2019s far easier to talk it all away in a harmless sounding array of jargon and acronyms. Bullshit in anyone\u2019s language, if you ask me.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By Nat Lentell<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Communication from the top came exclusively in the company\u2019s own specialised brand of corporate Klingon, and often contained examples from the very top drawer of management drivel” It started with a call from the temp agency. I had a telephone interview the next day and the recruiter recommended I do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7876,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31],"tags":[50,192,346,630,651,1166],"class_list":["post-7660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tales-from-the-grind","tag-acronyms","tag-corporate","tag-grindpiece","tag-philip-morris","tag-pr-2","tag-tales-from-the-grind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Grind.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7660"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14426,"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7660\/revisions\/14426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}