PeevePile • A Pet Peeve Archive

Corporate Words

"Grow" is not a transitive verb, unless it's referring to horticulture. For some reason, in my office you don't call someone, you "reach out" to them. "Stuart, could you reach out to Glen about this?" Why? Did we have a fight? Did his dad just die? Does Glen have a drinking problem and need an intervention??

— Stuart from Boston | Language | 5.3.2009 | Comments (3)

Here here. Another one that annoys me is, "going forward". As in, "Going forward, we'll be focusing on customer acquisition." For some reason, the term "from now on" has completely forsaken the corporate community.

— Emily

I was literally laughing out loud over the "reach out" comment. "Touch base" is another great alternative to "reach out." I just love when I have to "touch base" with someone. Once I was told that we should "sunset" a program. That one still has me shaking my head to this day.

— jixi

ahaha..reach out..in my office you are never asked to "tell bob about this issue", you're asked to "flag this issue to bob".. and when my boss is to busy to talk on the phone, rather than saying "mate, i'm busy, i've gotta go" he says "mate, i'm gonna keep flying" I also love how "dynamic" "synergy" and "scope" mannage to wiggle their way into every conversation

— Olivia posted 6/26/2009

Strangers who tell me to smile because "it can't be that bad" or because I'm too pretty not to. » I'm a female with a long face. I *cannot* smile on command. And my normal expression is not a smile either. It's not my fault you feel uncomfortable. – 9/5

Being obnoxiously wide on public transportation. » You never know when someone is actually needs the space. Some people could be suffering from something not visible to the naked eye. Like if someone blocks off the seat next the them, they could be having impending diarrhea cramps and really not want to deal with someone sitting so close next to them. That being said, I KNOW that some people just feel entitled to a huge amount of space and that pisses me off so much, since I am so anal about taking up a fair amount of room. – 9/5

When you are driving and the person in shotgun holds on to the door or the dash or fucking tries to press their foot down on an invisible brake as if I don't know what I'm doing or how fast I'm driving. » It's totally instinctual for me. I wish I could stop. The "holy shit" handle holding is not quite a reflex. I am not passive aggressive about it, I usually tell the person their driving scares me as well. – 9/5

People who deliberately pronounce words incorrectly and repeatedly. » I greatly dislike when people pronounce 'shrimp' as 'scrimps' or 'strawberries' as 'scrawberries'. Come on! I've never heard that before. odd. – 9/5

Escalator as ride. » Yea I have no problem if they just keep to the right. – 9/5

People saying "we got the memo?" (or such) when two or more people are wearing similar outfits or colors. » I'd never heard that before. I think it's cute. – 9/5

02.11.10

Send in your mobile phone pet peeves for the week of February 15th! Perhaps the simplest and most common generator of peeves, the mobile phone prods and pricks us in all places, public and private. With skull phones just around the corner, it’s likely these peeves will soon become irrelevant—so let’s spray them across the galaxy while we still can.

01.18.10

For the next week or so, the pictures for peeves will be of Peeve Pile’s national spokesperson, Rob Grace, and his special person, Shana, enacting various peeves. Please feel free to make such pictures yourself. Just include a link to them when submitting a peeve.

01.02.10

Hello. I’ve added a voting feature, so you can vote as you assume that you would – just click on a one-to-five star rating (it will tell you your vote has been recorded); five indicating that you completely agree with, or find the peeve amusing, one meaning the opposite.

Once a bunch of ratings are in, I’ll add a worst, and best rated area to the right column.