TGIF

Have you noticed how many acronyms there are in your business world? I really hate them. It’s one thing to use them in technical terminology but when they are used even in the Human Resources department I just find it lazy and pretentious. I well remember walking into our company’s first HR session and the foreign manager kept using the term “KPI” which I had never heard before (as I am sure everyone else in the room had not either). I finally asked him what it meant since no one else was doing it. “Key Performance Indicator”. Hmmm, how hard is it to say that out loud instead of KPI. Lazy.

Things like that can really irritate me because I don’t see any reason to be stingy with one’s speech. If you want to use an acronym when you are repeatedly using it in a memo, that is all well and good if you define it the first time you use it. That’s standard practice. But one doesn’t do that in speech but instead assumes everyone knows what TFIM. Figure that one out folks.

When I watch movies from the ‘50’s and ‘60’s I notice how the women still wear hats and gloves and how everyone speaks graciously. I spoke about how cloddish people were on the C-train the other day but I can say the same for when people get on an elevator. Unless they are your friend, even though they know who you are and work with you, they don’t say good morning! Why is that? Has no one taught them any manners? I remember when I was a little girl my father taught me that one does not shout out a hello from the porch to someone walking on the street. The person “coming along” is the one who must initiate the greeting. So if one is sitting already in the bus, the person boarding the bus and walking down the aisle is the one who must first say hello. Those were things I learned before I was 10 years old. Apparently parents haven’t taught other people my age the same sort of manners or else they have just forgotten them.

Ah well, it’s Friday and I will be testing out my new parking spot today. Thankfully traffic is always lighter on Fridays. TGIF! J