All right, I have been forcing myself to deal with little poops in my work inbox, and I have my follow-up doctor's appointment scheduled for next week. I think this means I've earned myself at least 15 minutes of slacking off time.

Oh I had what I didn't think was a Buffy type dream last night, but when I told my son about it he said it sounded like Buffy to him.

So somewhere about 4am my husband said something to me in my half asleep state about one of our customers having virus issues. I went back to sleep and all hell broke loose. I was battling viruses like a superhero. As in the viruses were people, either 2 or 3 per workstation. They were all interesting characters too. There were pirates, cowboys, and some saucy bar maids too. (I don't remember them all) So to kill the viruses I had to douse the computers with some spray disinfectant of some kind so with one arm I was spraying the computers like mad, and with the other arm I am fending off these viruses. They were jumping on me and trying to hold my arm back. None of us seemed very strong, but it was exhausting. I must have disinfected about a dozen machines before I awoke at my usual 6 or so. I woke up so tired.

That sounds exhausting. But heroic!

Whoa, our Winter Party has a waiting list. More people RSVP's than are allowed in the space by the fire dept, apparently. Weirdorama.

These are people who know what I do for a living AND who read other, presumably intelligible, posts I make. That they jump to thinking I made an error, rather than I was just goofing around -- well, that's hurtful, man.

I'm going to show my own ass by saying that this sort of behavior absolutely burns me amongst my own people.

I get stuff like, "Ooooh. I thought you were a therapist. You can't be very good if you are going to get upset about [fill in the blank]."

It just bothers me when people think faux language is real language.

After this hellish work deadline is done (supposed to be today, has been pushed to Thursday), I'm instituting a buzzword swear jar policy for the next release. Any time a PM sends me documentation info that contains marketing buzzwords OR "leverages", they owe me a dollar.

Nobody's going to stand up for descriptivism here? (I can't, I'm leaving work in 5 minutes, but someone should.)

I don't think anyone agrees with me, but the use of "reach[ed/ing] out to" in place of "contact[ed/ing]" strikes me as a pretentious way of phrasing something that already had a word (i.e., "contact"). It just gets used so much by PR/media-facing people ("We reached out to the company, but there was no reply.") and really irritates me. "Contact" is a perfectly good word AND is more succinct!

So when people use "reach out" in personal conversation, it makes me twitch because of my own bias. (I emailed a friend last year who I had lost touch with, and when she replied, she said "Thanks for reaching out." And I just thought, wow, that comes off as so jargon-y and impersonal. But the thing is, I'm sure she didn't mean it as jargon-y and impersonal; she's just very uber-corporate and seems to have taken on some of the current communication patterns.)

And, like I said, I don't actually know anyone else who gets annoyed by "reach out" in place of "contact," so in this, I am well aware that I am a crackpot with very particular preferences.

And, like I said, I don't actually know anyone else who gets annoyed by "reach out" in place of "contact," so in this, I am well aware that I am a crackpot with very particular preferences.

sidles over to Teppy

I'm with you on this. Probably because the only people I've dealt with who have used "reach out" instead of "contact" are also the type who spout whatever management-flavor-of-the-month jargon is trendy. Like "Thanks for leaning in", which is a phrase that will send me into eye-rolling rage.

Really? I would think "thanks for reaching out" predates the use in the business context.

But I'm a fan of reach out. Contacted to me implies there has been some sort of interaction, while reached out could mean sent an email or vm but have not necessarily interacted yet.

Wait! I'm right about reach out. Proof [link]

Thanks for leaning in

The what now?