43% of New Yorkers Are Confused by Workplace Jargon

According to a recent survey, 43% of workers in New York feel that corporate jargon can alienate those who don’t understand it. It's really not a huge surprise! You walk into the office and hear phrases like “boil the ocean,” “COP,” and “idea shower” thrown around.

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It can leave you feeling like you’ve landed in the middle of a very strange conversation. WHAT IS THAT ALL ABOUT?  The confusion doesn’t stop there. VoiceNation looked into New York’s search data to find out the most confusing corporate jargon terms. Be ready, because some of these phrase are kind of weird.

In New York, corporate jargon terms leave many employees scratching their heads. Topping the list is "Cop" with 118,800 searches per year, followed by "Deck" and "Game Changer" each with 64,800 searches.

Terms like "Touch Base," "Apples To Apples," and "Low Hanging Fruit" also rank high on the confusion scale, getting thousands of searches annually. Not too far behind are phrases like "Bite The Bullet," "Idea Shower," "Moving Forward," and "Circle Back."

Hearing all those phrases at the same time, makes me want to lay down and put an icepack on my head. If these terms also leave you scratching your head, welcome to the club of perplexed New Yorkers who are trying to figure out all of this corporate jargon.

For a deeper look into this linguistic labyrinth, you can find more insights from the survey run by VoiceNation. Maybe do this in its place: Instead of using confusing words to try to sound important bigger, just stop it and start making workplace communication a whole lot clearer. To find other types of jargon and phrases, check out our list below.