Book Review: A Dictionary of Bull****

20 Apr

Book Review: A Dictionary of Bull****

Posted in books by Roger, the Amateur Financier 1 Comment

(Warning: This article (and for that matter, the book it’s reviewing) makes fairly frequent use of the word bull**** (without the apostrophes) as well as other terminology that you may find offensive. If you would be offended by such terms, I suggest you vacate the blog entry now. If not, then welcome! Please feel free to read on.)

Office speak, corporatese, and other forms of weasel-words are prevalent in the modern office environment. Whether to spare feelings (see ‘downsizing’ as opposed to ‘firing’), to disguise true intentions (again, see ‘downsizing’), or simply the result of trying to keep up with the company down the street in terms of utter incomprehensibility to outsiders or other plain thinking people (did I mention ‘downsizing’?), an unusual vocabulary dominates the modern corporate landscape. How can you even figure out if you’re being insulted or complimented with all the slang being tossed around?

Enter The Dictionary of Bull****. A compendium of useful (and too often over-used words) for surviving in the modern corporation, there’s plenty of information to be found. Just about every word you’ve heard hurled around by a middle manager (or mentioned in a Dilbert (c) strip, if you’re lucky enough to not be a cog in a large corporate machine) is included, complete with a snarky definition. Is it a useful resource or just a waste of time? Let’s read on and see!

Summary

Most of the book is laid out in dictionary style, covering various buzzwords in alphabetical order. While fitting for a book with ‘dictionary’ in the title, it makes for a rather boring chapter by chapter summary (‘After the As, the next chapter covered words that begin with a B’), instead we’re going to look at several example definitions to show you what sort of snarky (that’s snide and sarcastic, by the way) definitions you’re going to encounter:

Accountancy: the art of lying, in a dull manner, using lots of numbers and charts

Blog: 1. an acronym for Boring Loser Of Grand-design

Customer: 1. pleb, idiot

E-tailer: 2. a cutesy reworking of ‘retailer’ in time honored e-fashion

Guesstimate: 1. a half-assed estimate

Homer, to pull a: to succeed in spite of being a complete idiot, derived from the exploits of animated TV star Homer Simpson.

Key: 2. of a person or element of a project or process: eminently dispensable, often forgotten.

Layoff: 2. firing people

Out of the Loop: 1. uninvolved 2. shut out 3. excluded 4. shunned 5. unloved

Quality Control: The process of ensuring that all products are manufactured to an acceptable standard; the process of filtering out obvious errors of judgment (rarely successful).

Runaround: See Wild Goose Chase

Staff Reduction: mass firing

User-centric: Impossible to use

Wild Goose Chase: See Runaround

Zoo, the: 1. What the sales team call the creative team, 2. What the creative team call the sales team, 3. What the production department call the entire company

Alright, that’s enough to give you a good taste. Scattered throughout the definitions are a few boxes allowing you to create your own Bullshit Job Titles by choosing one word from each of three columns (giving results like ‘Principle Quality Liaison’). Immediately after the definitions are a series of Bullshit Builders, which allow you to build your own bullshit sentences in much the same way.

The book ends with a series of short essays (no longer than five pages, at most) about different areas of bullshit. There’s a chapter on sales bullshit, designed to help you thwart those people trying to sell you the latest and greatest devices. There’s an example of mission statement bullshit that manages to use almost every buzzword from the dictionary part of the book.

The chapter on interviewing manages to mix some helpful advice in with the humor(good for anyone who actually intends to go on an interview). There’s a chapter on how people bullshit with their bodies (and how you can bullshit back), and the book concludes with a chapter about how retailers attempt to bullshit you.

Pros

-Pretty Darn Funny: Most of the entries in this ‘dictionary’ are pretty hilarious, and it’s great fun to read through them, seeing which you’ve heard before and what they mean. (Hopefully, you heard them through comics or stories, rather than through your boss…)

-Decent Definitions: Once you get done having a chuckle at the definitions, you can stop and realize that it’s actually pretty accurate. Most of the entries, while aiming to be funny first and foremost, give you a good idea of what the term actually means. For terms with multiple definitions, there’s a tendency to give a straight definition for number 1 and joking definitions for the subsequent numbers.

Cons

-Pretty Offensive: Even getting aside the frequent use of the term ‘bullshit’ (and similar words), many of the definitions and other material ends up being rather derogatory to one group or another. Just in the ones I provided, there are insults to accountants, bloggers (over two full pages of blog related terms are mocked), QC workers, salespeople, and retailers. If you have a thin skin and an office job, there’s a good chance you’ll be offended before the book is over.

-Somewhat Soul-crushing: I’ll be completely up front: this is a very dark humor book. If you are in a job where these terms are tossed around regularly, this book is a bit like salt for the wound. Even if you aren’t in such a job, it’s still a bit depressing to think about how many people have to deal with the stuff mentioned in this book everyday.

Conclusion

The Dictionary of Bull**** could be a good book for you if you don’t mind a bit of dark, dry British humor to go with your job. It provides some fairly solid definitions with plenty of laughs (hopefully, not at your own expense) along the way. Just one last thing: if your job sounds too much like this book, you might want to consider a career change.