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This is a question Corporate Idiocy

Comedian Al Murray recounts a run-in with industrial-scale stupidity: "Car insurance company rang, without having sent me a renewal letter, asking for money. Made them answer security questions." In the same vein, tell us your stories about pointless paperwork and corporate quarter-wits

(, Thu 23 Feb 2012, 12:13)
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Management speak 2.0
Also - managers who use technical, scientific terms in a very loose, non-technical sense to make themselves sound clever. Real examples and translations:

Cumulative Frequency = Sum total
Peer Review = Checking your colleague's work
Distribution Curve = Line chart
Margin of error = Doesn't matter if it's wrong (i.e., it's OK, it has a margin of error!)
Data Cleansing: Correcting typos in an Excel spreadsheet

Also - a bonus example of euphamism creep:
Right-sizing = downsizing = layoffs
(, Thu 23 Feb 2012, 14:02, 3 replies)
I have a similar dislike
of lawyer speak.

We find the response to be disingenuous = you're a fucking liar.
Whilst we appreciate the candour of your client = he's a rude bastard.
Inter alia = I can't be bothered to type all that shit out.

Lawyers love to sound like lawyers.
(, Thu 23 Feb 2012, 14:24, closed)
Sorry but...
Cumulative frequency: depends on context. More like 'sum of sums'.
Peer Review: ... Yeah, okay.
Distribution curve: technically a line graph but can also represent stacked trend values over time so somewhat more complex.
Margin of error: Of course it matters if it's wrong, just a measure of how much. Normally dictated by context and contributory factors. Your bank account has a zero margin of error. However the local bus timetable will. That's life.

And finally, data cleansing IS NOT correcting typos in Excel. I'm a data architect and DBA and this one really boils my piss. Go away and read some books on database administration, or Google 'Big Data' if you're lazy. Might as well denounce the discipline of mechanical engineering as being able to hold a spanner the right way up.
(, Fri 24 Feb 2012, 22:43, closed)
I bet you're a barrel of laughs
When they play bullshit bingo too.
(, Tue 28 Feb 2012, 15:31, closed)

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