microsoft office for federal employees 9.99

ExpectationsĮxpectations are flexible things, and people will no doubt carry on having them even if the lingo surrounding them is logically complete nonsense. In accounting software, not only can you drill down, drill up and drill in, but you can even drill around, much as a disturbingly incompetent dentist might, or as old-school Texas oil speculators used to do. Drill downįar be it from me to suggest that managers prefer metaphors that evoke huge pieces of phallic machinery, but why else say drill down if you just mean 'look at in detail'? Like many examples of bureaucratese, drill down has a specific sense in information technology: to follow the hierarchical ladder of a data-analysis menu down through to the individual datum. A day can be an awfully long time in office politics. End of whose day, exactly? Perhaps the boss is swanning off at 3pm while everyone else will have to stay till 8pm in order to get it done. Synonymous with asking for something by close of play is requesting it by the end of the day.

Though, actually, it appears that the phrase originates from the genteel confines of the British civil service, when there might well have been cricket, or at least a very long lunch, on the day's agenda. A manager who tells you to do something by end of play or by close of play – in other words, today – is trying to hypnotise you into thinking you are having fun. The curious strain of kiddy-talk in bureaucratese perhaps stems from a hope that infantilised workers are more docile. Now it means 'replacement' or 'replace', eg: 'We are recruiting for Tom's backfill' or 'We will have to backfill Richard.' Meanwhile, a job vacancy that exists to replace an ex-employee, as opposed to a newly created role, is called a backfill position, even if that sounds more like something an adventurous type might adopt at an S&M club.

Originally, backfill was an engineering term, meaning to fill a hole or trench with excavated earth, gravel, sand or other material. What do you do with a hole, especially a person-shaped one that reminds you a bit of a hastily dug grave? You fill it in – in other words, you backfill (verb), or address the backfill (noun). After someone has been sacked – sorry, 'transitioned' – they tend to leave a person-shaped hole in the landscape.

Microsoft office for federal employees 9.99