For the first time in my life, I'm working for a company that I really like. I won't print their name here because not only would they be embarrassed by my political and philosophical beliefs, they might very well fire me for them. Still, I whole-heartedly believe the company is full of good intentions. They make a damn fine product, market it shrewdly and still manage to show a genuine concern for their employees.

However, they are not without problems. One annoying habit they have, like many other large corporations, is they apparently feel the need to constantly change the company's vocabulary. They don't seem to be able to settle on what we should call things. They routinely change the names of products, services, job descriptions, departments and processes. They are now doing this often enough to almost totally destroy communications within the company. At any given point in time, no one is really sure they know just what the hell anyone else is talking about.

I'll give you an example. Two years ago, when I came to work for this company, the building we all work in was called a “Distribution Center.” That name made sense to me because what we do there is “distribute” the product to our customers. The place had been doing well with that name for about 15 years. Then, upper-management decided that we should all become more “customer service oriented.” At that point, they started calling the building a “Customer Service Center.” We didn't offer any more customer services -- we just changed the name. The only real change this brought about was to confuse our customers when they tried to find the phone number for the distribution center.

As if that weren't bad enough, they changed the name again in less than a year! Hoping to further enhance the illusion of customer service, we now refer to the place as a “Customer Fulfillment Center.” Come on; we load boxes onto trucks at this place. Customer Fulfillment Center? If I didn't already know what we do there, that name would leave me wondering if the place was (A) a metaphysical therapy workshop conducted by Shirley MacLaine or (B) a whorehouse. Not only is the term “Customer Fulfillment Center” confusing but the acronym for it is “CFC.” That's also the acronym for chlorofluorocarbon -- the stuff that's supposedly ruining the ozone layer. I think this is a major faux pas.

Language can be used positively and I suppose changing the name of something could change the way you think about it. I think this was the initial purpose of all this gibberish. It was an attempt to change our habits by changing our language. But all too often these days, a change in terminology seems to come from the need to make some ineffectual middle-management suckup feel smart. By inventing and using terms that no one else understands, they hope to trick us all into believing that they are thinking on some mysterious lofty plateau that we're too dumb to understand. It's not working.

It's not just the company I work for either; the whole nation seems to be caught up in this, double-talk word game. The government doesn't raise taxes -- it “enhances revenues.” Companies don't fire people -- they “downsize.” Husbands don't beat their wives -- they “engage in spousal abuse.” No one is a wino or dope addict anymore -- they're “chemically dependent.”

Let me lend credence to the supposition that when verbalizing ones cogitations, a positive disclosure yield might best be realized by avoiding a linguistic precept which utilizes thrasonical bombast or diffuse verbiage. In other words, if you want to be understood, simply speak simply.

Technical jargon and cool-sounding, neo-nomenclature is just confusing. I really believe all this “newspeak” is hurting productivity. Constantly changing newspeak has to be doubly harmful. Pick a name that sounds like what it is and stick with it. Dynamic Ostentatious Phraseological Euphemisms -- why do you think they call it DOPE?

Just say “no.”

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