Whip out your thesaurus and never use these three words again
Overheard in the office #1*
Let’s call him Adam** (he does behave at times as if he were the first and only man in the world).
On arrival in the office, Adam puts his jacket on the back of the chair, and then sits his laptop on the next desk along. Double territory marked.
He goes right into a meeting, but you can always find Adam because of the volume.
His voice resonates through the walls of the conference room where he’s dictating a job description and, buzzing out through the cracks in the doors to thwack his colleagues in the ears, come the words…
“Opinionated.”
“Passionate.”
“Disruptive.”
Yes. Let’s talk about those three zingers.
Why do people keep putting ‘opinionated’ on their CVs and twitter bios? Which dictionaries are they using? All the ones I’ve consulted suggest this isn’t a quality to shout about, unless you’re proud of your tendency to “hold on stubbornly and unreasonably to your own ideas” or are “characterised by conceited assertiveness and dogmatism”.
If I were paranoid, as well as an introvert and over-thinker, I might wonder if the blithe overuse of this word is evidence of a widespread belief that those who speak longest and loudest must have the best wisdom to offer… thank goodness I’m not.
Call me a pedant if you like, I’ll only argue a little. But there are juicier words I think you can use to give the sense that you express your opinions well:
Expressive, articulate, forthright, strident, outspoken, knowledgeable…
…but I wouldn’t necessarily go with passionate. I don’t want to upset anyone but don’t you think this one has been done now?
Beyond the sheer everywhereness of it, the fashion for passion bothers me because I think it’s been used as a sort of prescription for personality.
Job ads everywhere – at all levels but especially for junior/low-paid posts – seem to demand passion. They want you to live and breathe the job. Even if you’re just starting out.
Call me a cynic, I won’t argue for long, but it sounds like code for ‘we’ll expect you to work long hours for not much in return and pity your passionless soul when you get tired of it’. And everyone needs a life beyond their work.
Here’s what I think. It’s OK if you haven’t found your passion yet. It’s OK if you go your whole life just enjoying stuff and being good as stuff without being consumed by it.
Here’s a quick counterpoint:
Dispassionate /dɪsˈpaʃ(ə)nət/
adjective.
Not influenced by strong emotion, and so able to be rational and impartial.
Yes please.
Which brings me to disruptive. Sigh. Just when we were getting along so well.
I get it. If you’re going to be creative and original it pays to question the rules. Throw out everything that’s gone before. Look at it from a different viewpoint. But is it really disruptive if that’s your job?
Call me a party-pooper and I’ll get my coat. But isn’t he a bit of a try-hard cool kid this ‘disruptive’ fella? Suddenly he’s everywhere rubbishing all your research, verbing all your nouns and gerunding all your verbs. Don’t you sort of wish he’d drop the ego and haul his double denim over to his desk and just get on with it? No? Just me then?
*This is my first blog in a series of #Write52 weekly blogs for a year (eek***). A wonderful, friendly-kick-in-the-backside kind of idea from writer @EdCallow. Thanks, Ed, for the nudge and inspiration.
Sorry this one’s a bit ranty. And yes, I know, ‘overheard in the office’ is a weird title for a freelancer’s blog. Actually I have been in offices a fair bit, and still work in them sometimes. But to be honest, ‘overheard in the office’ could just as well mean me at home, listening to the voices in my head.
**Any similarity to any actual, non-stereotyped, three-dimensional persons is entirely coincidental.
***A daunting prospect, as much for you, reader, as for me, but don’t worry, I won’t ramble on pointlessly if I actually have nothing to say… oh, wait...
I saw this in a pub and thought “ooh, lovely, unusual, creative.”
Then I turned it over and strained my eye-roll muscles. “We are driven by our passion for innovation…” “our core range…” “creative and innovative” (so innovative we had to say it twice) and it made me a bit sad that the copywriter probably didn’t have as much fun as the designer on this one, this roll-call of corporate-values buzz words. Call me mean, I don’t mean to be, honestly, I’m just saying you don’t stop something being boring by adding the word “passion”. I want more about taste, tang and bubbles and less about the values.