Clueless in Corporate — Close Karo (Close it)
I have noticed a ridiculous trend due to my professional life. I tend to adopt phrases that would be going around the company at that time. I don’t know about you, but I have this idiotic tendency of inculcating the quirks of the company I work in at the time. I will give you a taste —
Working the front desk in a bank? Any personal calls would be answered with “Hello, Clueless Bugger from Late Bank of India!”
Working in a Shitty service-based tech company? Talk about Billing and US Visa.
The worst part came some 4 odd years ago, when I was working in a Bank, this Bank let’s call it “YCYCY” bank is considered to be the biggest private Bank in India and it is built on the back of poor sales staff pushing shitty insurance products and the corporate sales staff pushing unnecessary products to companies. In the midst of all of this, I was working in the most boring team of a supposedly exciting vertical of the bank. This was where I heard the words that haunt me to this day!
CLOSE KARO
Which roughly translates to “Close the issue” or “Close it”. These words made life hell for me for almost 3 years! My major gripe was these so-called “Mid Management” buggers who had no clue about timelines, complexity or risks yelling “CLOSE KARO”, “CLOSE KARO”.
Stakeholders being difficult? Close Karo!
Project too complex? Close Karo!
Technology not up to it? Close Karo!
The worst part of it was that this phrase wasn’t uttered by some run of the mill management executives but by these supposed premier B school and premier tech school graduates and you know what? It didn’t even work! What a stupid joke! Nothing ever got done in time because the people in management were incompetent nincompoops that only knew how to hawk shitty products to somewhat gullible customers.
I am proud to say though that during the final days of my stint with the Bank my manager (ugh!) again uttered “Close Karo”, this time I just said “Yeah, no… Close it yourself”
So what were some of the office lingos that you hated or adopted?
