BusinessSpeak

My wife spent all day yesterday working on her review. Her self-review. It’s a couple of pages long, it addresses all her accomplishments over the past twelve months, it details her areas for improvement in the coming year. She forwards it to her bosses, who meet with her and arbitrate on the size of her bonus she’ll get the first week of March.

Anyway, I’m downstairs throwing a pile of laundry into the machine when she calls out, “What’s another word for opportunity?”

“I don’t know. Challenge.”

“Used it. Used opportunity and challenge too many times. I need a word to use in place of problem, and I can’t use that.”

I think for a minute. “How about this:

An item of bullsh*t that I have to somehow overcome to earn enough money to pay my bills.”

She shoots that down immediately, but I’m intensely satisfied with the real-world translation of the BusinessSpeak word opportunity.

Ah, BusinessSpeak! Where every reaches out to touch base and would love to discuss that further and there are no problems, only challenges and opportunities.