But Lord, how I do hate officespeak! You know, that office lingo that doesn’t say anything at all but keeps plowing its way into office conversations to make the speaker sound as if he’s plugged in, hip to what’s going on, a happening and influential corporate powerhouse. Every office or business has its own jargon and you get sucked into using it. Cut it out. For real. Get your ass back in the box and, stop living 24/7, put out the fire in your shorts, and yes, we know that you don’t know what you don’t know.

Here's my list of 20 buzz words/phrases that you must stop using immediately and a handy translation of what they really mean, used in actual professional sentences:

Out of the box: “Our current plan sucks and we need to find another way immediately or the boss will toast our ass for breakfast. We must think out of the box.”

Boil the ocean/reinvent the wheel (synonymous): “I’m too lazy to come up with something new and original so how about we just re-use the same idea we had big success with last month. I don’t want to have to boil the ocean/reinvent the wheel here.”

24/7: “Buddy, I’m here for you 24/7, anything you need, you just call…except mornings, evenings, weekends, lunchtime, gymtime, when I’m on a date, when I’m in the shower, when I’m at the ballgame, and when I hit “ignore” when I see your number on my phone.”

At the end of the day (synonymous with  “when all is said and done”):  “I love to use this filler saying because it conveys that I am a man of authority, intelligence, and power, and that I am keenly aware that every day, will, in fact, end. So at the end of the day, we must remember to blah blah blah blah…”

Put the sizzle in the steak: “Our current presentation is boring and will put the audience to sleep within four minutes. We need something exciting to keep them awake. How about we put some sizzle in the steak and get the hot chick from marketing to deliver it topless?”

Net-net: “So how much are we going to lose on this project?  Just the facts.  Give me the net-net so I can prepare for my beatings early.”

Win-win: “I’ve had such fun saying “net-net” that I’ve found another way to say the same word two times in a row! That’s a win-win for me!”

We (don’t) know what we don’t know: “Yes, we can admit it:  We’re dumbasses and we need help.  We just don’t know what we don’t know.”

Spin cycles:  “I’m tired of wasting time, I have better things to do and I don’t want to spin any cycles on this project if I don’t have to.”

Deep dive: “I’m in way over my head and need to bring in someone who really knows this subject way better than my incapable mind can. Let’s call that guy in the cube down the hall and have him do a  deep dive for us.”

Fifty-thousand foot view (opposite of “deep dive”): “I’m so mired down in the details of what you’re saying that let’s just stop (because you’re confusing the living crap out of me) and take a fifty-thousand foot view of the matter.”

Dual-hatted/I wear two (three, four) hats: “I am extremely, extremely important. I perform many functions here. I wear at least three or four hats every day around this place.”

Blue sky:  “Ok, if we took away every notion of reality and were to pretend we had all the money in the world, let’s blue sky this concept, think about what it could be in a perfect world, and maybe we can wish away all of the actual, real-world problems we’re having.”

Eat our own dog food: “We often test our own products on ourselves first before we subject our customers to all of the flaws that they’ll soon be overwhelmed with.  Because we eat our own dog food, we can use officespeak to soften the blow to our customers!”

Reverse-engineer: “Oops! We just did this deal completely out of order.  In order to make it right, we must now work backwards. I’ll be in charge of reverse-engineering this and I’ll get all of our asses out of the skillet. I’ll be a hero!”

Crawl, walk, run: “You guys are nimrods and you’re trying to do something too advanced for your feeble intellect.  You need to crawl, walk, run and not try to get too far ahead of yourself.”

Singing off the same page of the hymnal/paddling in the same direction: “We’re all discombobulated and we’re not acting like a team. Tell the boss that we need some more guidance from him/her so we can all be singing off the same page of the hymnal.”

Show me the money: “Show me the money! Show me the money! Show me the money!” Thank you. . . .

Up to my shorts in alligators/My (his, her) shorts are on fire: “Omigod, I’m late!  I’ve missed yesterday’s deadline, I’ve got more work than Simon Cowell’s t-shirt ironer and I am up to my shorts in alligators/my shorts are on fire!”