‘What are your favourite passive aggressive corporate phrases and what do they actually mean?’ – 23 translations necessary to navigate work

Working in an office in the days before the internet must have been great. If your line manager wanted to tell you to pull for your finger out and do some work, they’d have to physically come and speak to you.

Which means, often, they wouldn’t have bothered, and you could have frittered away the day to your heart’s content.

But that’s not so anymore. If you don’t move your mouse for as much as 30 seconds they’ll know, even if you’re at home, and tell you off via email, Teams, Slack, WhatsApp, or one of a myriad other methods.

And they’ll use some ridiculous jargon to do it.

Over on the AskUK subreddit, user Empty_Estus asked this:

‘What are your favourite passive-aggressive corporate phrases and what do they actually mean?

‘I’ll start. “Just a gentle reminder.” Means “Fucking hurry up and do what I’ve asked you for.”’

And there were plenty of other examples of this type of faux-professional phrasing. Take a look at these…

1.

‘”Including [name of person] into the discussion as they may be able to assist” means “why are you coming to me, it’s obviously not my job”.’
–Makkel

2.

‘Including ‘x’ for awareness. If you won’t do what I’m asking, maybe you’ll listen to ‘x’.’
–ThatGuyWired

3.

‘Starting an email like this….

‘Dave,

‘Feels really twatty and passive aggressive to me.’
–TheDawiWhisperer

4.

‘Thanks in advance! translates to, I’ve decided you’re doing this task for me and I’m giving you zero room to say no.’
–Pixeko

5.

‘Please be mindful that others have to use the bathroom after you = Someone here is an absolute animal.’
–nikkijxd

6.

‘When people Slack you “Do you wanna quickly hop on a call and we can discuss this?”

‘No, I do not, it’s 9:30 am and I’m not a morning person. I’m also not a people person and need at least 20 mins to mentally prepare for human interaction.’
–Icy_Mixture1482

7.

‘Flip side: it’s 4:15 on a Friday, there is 0 point of “hopping on a call” because I am mentally done for the week and don’t care about any of the information you’re about to give me.’
–Successful_Buy3825

8.

‘Any manager who says “can we” rather than “can you” gets my goat. Just grow a pair and fucking tell me to do it rather than pretend that somehow it’s a team effort and you’ll be involved in doing any of the work.’
–Ok-Parfait9826

9.

‘“Let’s take this offline” aka “let’s get into a verbal slanging match without everybody else listening”.’
–JBB2002902

10.

‘I don’t use it for that. I use it for “shut up now, and send me an email later if you care enough”. They almost never do.’
–Banes_Addiction

11.

‘No, it means stop wasting everyone else’s time, they have no interest in what you’re banging on about.’
–Ok_Advantage_8153

12.

‘”As per my last email” makes me want to punch people.’
–TapeDeckSlick