Bullshit word of the Week: Generation
Back to our regularly scheduled Bullshit word of the week: Generation.
Generation X, Generation Y, the Net Generation, Next Generation – oh, how we love to categorize ourselves!
But is this the best way to do it? Really? Grouping people by year was an excellent way to organize classes in grade school, but there comes a point when way more damage is going to be done by over-generalization than can be justified by expediency.
There are members of each generation who empathize with members of the other – but they are all too rare. Because we find ourselves categorized in this way, ideological differences that are perfectly understandable become a matter of “us” vs “them,” an attitude that has never served anyone.
I Want to Be Just Like eHarmony! But I Don’t Want to Pay For… Anything.
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“You see – there’s a whole bunch of websites out there already offering what I want to sell – so make me a website like one of those – only not exactly the same, in two weeks, and I’ll pay you as little as possible.”
Bullshit Language Bonanza
Bullshit photo courtesy of Guiseppe Bognanni
I know I’m not the only one who hates insipid jargon, and I’ve noticed a few most-hated buzzwords lists floating around the internet lately, the best of which, I think is courtesy of the Meeting Boy. He actually conducted a survey and compiled the results, the reading of which will absolutely make your skin crawl.
I was inspired by their list to see if I could come up with a %100 buzzword statement that included all (most, which a few substitutions) of the offenders. Read more 
Unsung Heroes
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Is there any professional in our society so overlooked as the dishwasher?
This is a pretty standard ad in Montreal for a Dishwasher or Plongeur; 10 bucks and hour, no actual information.
It takes for granted two things that many of us assume: a dishwashers job is so simple that no explanation is needed, and a dishwasher is in such need of a job that they won’t or can’t care about things like hours, or type of establishment either because they’re desperate for any job or because they can’t do anything else.
Bullshit.
Being a dishwasher is hard fucking work. Read more
The Personal Interview
Don't worry - you only have to actually fight to the death in group interviews.
So you got to the interview. Congratulations. Welcome to Thunderdome.
The Personal Interview. The one-on-one, the one you think of when you think “interview.” This is the one you learn about in high school ‘careers’ classes and practice for with your deskmate. This is where you learned to “spin your negatives into positives,” and the difference between a chronological and skills based resume.
Who actually interviews you depends on the company you’re getting to know. Larger organizations have specific hiring managers, whereas smaller ones (as well as branches) will have a general manager or owner do the job.
Interviewing a person is a skill that is as hard to do well as being interviewed – and lots of the time the person conducting your interview won’t have any idea what they’re doing. This would be comforting except they hold the keys to your employment. Read more
Bullshit Word of the Week: Friend
Let me start off with a disclaimer:
I have mixed feelings about nouns that become verbs.
One the one hand, I absolutely respect the right of a language to evolve through usage over time, and readily acknowledge that one of the methods by which the English language develops is by “verbing,”* or “verbification.”
On the other hand it’s annoying, makes the verber-er sound like an ass, and changes meaning in a way that we might not intend it to.
Verbing is when you take a noun and start to use it as a verb. Read more
Thank You, O Champion for the Overworked and Underpaid
Click to Enlarge the Offending Prose
See above a want add for a bilingual, multi-talented, hard working, dedicated, young go-getter with no living expenses.
Anyone who has even a portion of the skills listed will be offended by the hours, the tone and most importantly, the compensation.
But there’s someone looking out for them. I found this reply to the above ad posted in the same job section of Craigslist: Read more
Bullshit Word of the Week: Engage
There’s a lot of talk about “engaging” these days.
The key to online success is engaging your audience.
To do a good job you must be engaged in your work.
No problems so far. There are going to be plenty of times in the average week where you “engage” in some way with the wider world.
For fun, when you get on Twitter, Facebook, Fark, Reddit or Digg, WoW, Poker, Email, Flicker or anything else where you might conceivably interact with another human being – picture the following before you post anything.
A Plague of Opportunities
This is an MLM offer. Click to Enlarge.
This an MLM “business opportunity” offer.
It is deserving of pity – not scorn.
Sometimes, I forget what it’s like to be new to the world of internet marketing. Things seem obvious to me now, that weren’t obvious to me a few years ago, so when I see an ad like this, I’m torn. On the one hand, I’m angry at the poster for trying to rope more poor fools into the scam. On the other – falling for one of these things is totally understandable.
Once.
