Straight from the "only in America" file comes tales of 21st century political correctness in the workplace. No, I'm not talking about carefully choosing words that may be offensive to a particular group of people – I'm talking about stupidly chosen words that are used and should be offensive to everyone in the workplace!
As I read various site across the Internet, I see that I'm not alone. The working classes (yes, that's what we are no matter how we try to make it sound different) are tired of being called "human capital" (as I've already reported here) instead of personnel.
Of course, the biggest bone that people seem to have to pick with their management and their "vie en rose" vocabulary is with regards to how they jettison us. We "lose" our positions or are "let go" or "laid off".
Hrmp. Call it crap in the US or bollocks in the UK, but either way, it is rubbish. All of the aforementioned examples are nice words for being "fired" or "canned".
The funniest anecdote of such lunacy comes from a writer who had friends in California who were fired. During the meeting with the "human resource" official, the soon-to-be-ex-employees all received a copy of "How to Survive a Layoff". I'll let that gem speak for itself.