Abbreviation nation
WTF. As a family newspaper, we won’t translate this acronym. I see it all too often in emails and texts. Let’s just say it expresses incredulity with an added hint of “U.”
Doing my best to be PC — a blessedly brief exemplar and culprit — I stumble over ChatGPT every time I say it, like Joe Biden on steroids. Generative something-or-other, whatever that means. When we say an occurrence was a real “snafu,” those not of the greatest generation may miss the G.I. Joe twist, as in “situation normal, all f — -ed up.”
Where once these were far and few, they have now taken over to the point where I am looking them up constantly to stay abreast.
Recently, in a board meeting in Boston, I was delighted when a senior attendee was unashamed to bare her unfamiliarity with Harvard Business School BS — P.S., we all know that one, synonymous with “business school” itself, just saying. This board member asked me the difference between an OKR and a KPI. This K-ration BS had been foisted on my PowerPoint presentation by a well-meaning member of our C-suite. Or is that our C-section?
Said I, for whom a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, an OKR is something an okra-loving prof cooked up by marrying Objectives with Key Results. On the other hand, a KPI is a Key Performance Indicator, similar to a Key Result but lacking an Objective. Confused yet? Whatever happened to goals and accomplishments? That’s why biz school professors get the big bucks.
It’s all out of Edward Lear or Tom Lehrer — not Jim Lehrer, the former being still alive — and it is all tiresome in the extreme, as well as confusing in the using.
Admittedly, I got off to a very bad start in the early days of email, when LOL crossed my desk. Whatever mood I was in or, more likely, whatever brew I was in, I came to the unenlightened conclusion that this meant “lots of love.” Maybe because the message had come from my old pal Maria, who likes to sign off with “Lotsa love.” However I derived it, I set about being as cool as a cuke with lotsa messages, signing off with LOL. This came to a cringe-worthy end when I expressed my condolences for the passing of a friend’s mother. The recipient of my misguided upper-case — note to self, snail mail a more appropriate medium — proceeded to unfriend me on FB, noting for all to see that “laughing out loud” was not appreciated in the context of condolences.
Thank goodness my iPhone — which Steve Jobs meant as internet phone but I always thought it meant me — now offers me an increasing number of emojis to choose from. Goodbye to acronym hell, welcome to visual shorthand that has gotten out of hand as well. I can’t even get this right. Upturned hands pressed together are my fave. I give these thanks all the time as a quick response. But one recipient, a dedicated atheist, objected to my offering him prayers. Ye old Rorschach. Thanks but “no thanks,” as e.e. cummings titled a self-published book of poetry. You see, it had been rejected by a bevy of publishers. On the dedication page, he listed all these publishers in an order which formed a funeral urn. That’s one guy who shaped his own emoji.
Since I seem to get in duck soup however I slice it — put that in your metaphorical mixer, shaken not stirred — I think it’s time to create my own acronym dictionary. Feel free to employ these as you see fit should any of them strike a familiar chord in key of G, the People’s Key. First off, I am FUCCSAICU, or fed up calling customer service agents I can’t understand. There must be an eighth circle of Dante’s hell for the purgatory of enduring an hour of yacht-rock on-hold music, after 100 phone-key prompts, only to land in the hands of an ESL dropout in a time zone far, far away, mumbling into a microphone, drowned out by call-center ambiance.
Then there is CWCMCAGMADLITBFMTHAM, for cashiers who can’t make change and give me a dirty look in the bargain for making them handle actual money. I realize this verges on Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, so let’s abbreviate it as IMADOLT, or individual missing a dose of learning time. Not to blame the victim, since the American school system is SIT, or stuck in time. I might have written “stuck here,” but that would have made a four-letter word and, as Steve Martin has said, this is neither the place nor the time. With that thought, I’m OOH, or out of here.
