low-hanging cliché

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Spoiler Alert: The laid-back nature boy is going to get peevish.

Someone asked me the other day did I have any pet peeves, i.e. minor annoyances. 

I said "No. Not really." And a day later one presented itself.

It irks me—like running out of ketchup when there's fries left on my plate—when corporate speak, Wall Street parlance, those catchy little coat-and-tie phrases, bounce out of the mahogany boardrooms and into our everyday vernacular. Phrases like: bottom line, outsourcing, value-added, need-to-know, out-of-the-loop, trending, proactive, core competency, branding (that's what you do to cattle), buy in, downsize, give 110% (not even possible), leverage position, touch base, visioning, outside the box, and that great abomination designed to make us all feel we need to be doing more: multitasking (Isn't it better to do one thing at a time and do it well? Call me old fashioned). 

I worked for years on the fringe of corporate America; I know these thing first hand. They may sound witty and glib in the office, in-the-know, but all too soon they become corporate clichés, tossed out at every committee meeting like confetti at New Years.

The newest, and I've already heard it twelve times too often is "low-hanging fruit," as in the easiest fun to pick and do away with. It has to do with budget matters and cutting expenses and employees and it's usually delivered with a self-assured, "We've already taken care of the low-hanging fruit." And it implies: I still have my job, so I'm the fruit that hangs higher.

Even though I like the nature metaphor, talk about a condescending low-hanging cliché. Clichés are just that, cliché. (I actually like the word cliché; it must be that tip of the hat accent mark, that diacritic acute.)

Forgive me. I needed to vent. My sunny disposition will return tomorrow. 

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