16 Most Annoying Business Phrases and Buzzwords

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If you manage to restrain yourself from poking the eyes of a person who uses one of these 16 most annoying business phrases and buzzwords, you have reached a new level of Zen tranquility.

We get it. The language is a living thing, and it keeps changing and evolving as new concepts and ideas are introduced into human society. But the only thing more annoying than grammar Nazis who try to keep English as pure as it was during the Queen Victoria’s reign, God bless her soul, are the people who try to inflate their ego by inventing new phrases and buzzwords as if their lives depend on it. Truth be told, business isn’t the only field of human endeavor where this happens, but somehow their jargon is the most annoying. If you ever feel a need to act like a complete moron, just drop few of this in a meeting and see where it takes you.

16 Most Annoying Business Phrases and Buzzwords

Some of these annoying phrases and buzzwords are racist, some are sexists, or insulting or just plain stupid. What they all have in common is the fact that people around you will want to kill you in most painful way possible when you use them. Or at least never take you seriously again. For the most part, people who use them are trying to hide the fact that they have absolutely no idea what are they talking about. That is why you will seldom hear these phrases in any of the Most Profitable Businesses with Low Startup Cost.

Some of these are so rage-inducing that caution is advised before proceeding. Ever heard a CEO uttering a phrase:” I’ll send my SWAT team to deal with that.”? The team in question represents experts in given field who have gained a reputation of quickly and efficiently solving problems thrown at them. In reality, it’s just a bunch of fat, middle-aged guys in suits which would be the first ones eaten in a Zombie apocalypse. Calling them SWAT is an insult not just to real SWAT members, but for every intelligent being on the planet.

Even worse than SWAT teams are Tiger Teams. These are a bit more specialized, as they tend to only deal with computer issues. If your online sales are experiencing an unacceptable downtime, you’d call one of these and watch in horror as a group of bearded individuals in jeans and T-shirts starts spreading their body odors all over your server room. Calling these keyboard warriors tigers should be punishable by lashing.

And these two didn’t even make it into top 16 most annoying business phrases and buzzwords, so try to imagine what linguistic horrors did. In order to create the list, we consulted the experts on business, Forbes. They conducted a competition in which their readers voted via Tweeter for the most make-your-blood-boil annoying phrase ever used in the business world. Business Insider also made their list, which we shamelessly plundered and to confirm that our cousins across the pond suffer from the same issue, we took a few business jargon phrases from the Guardian’s list. Here are the combined results.

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