unsuck

As it usually happens with these hip cool geeky things, I got a bunch of emails from different people telling me to check out Unsuck It. And so I did and being the corporate drone I am, I quite liked it the idea of a business-speak (or - in their words - "terrible business jargon") to English translator. Having tried a few terms randomly culled from my Outlook inbox, I found the tool not only informative (action item = Goal or to do), but also funny (rock star = adequate programmer) and I literally lolled at the idea of e-mailing the douchebag who used it (too bad they're all on holiday this month). But then I tried the "I'm feeling douchey" button and got this:

Drink the Kool-Aid
Unsucked: Follow blindly.

Really? 'Drink the kool-aid' is a standard US English idiom and is used by all kinds of people, not just pointy-haired bosses. Same applies to 'dog and pony show', 'in spades', 'low-hanging fruit' or 'on the same page' and even phrasal verbs like 'drill down'. I'm all for desucking managerialese, but painting everyday idioms like 'win-win' (which, in case you didn't know, means 'good for everyone') with the same brush as buzzwords like 'holistic' or 'synergy' smells a lot like something you would find in Strunk and White: "Don't use adjectives, adverbs and idioms." Well, they would probably called them 'clichés', but it would be just as stupid.