Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Work projects

I hate it when people use the term "project" at work.  Has anyone ever described legitimately important work as a "project?"  I doubt it.

Generally, you call something a "project" when you're trying to make the work sound better than it is.  For instance, if your boss wants you to organize all of the files in the office, he might come to you and say, "Hey, I've got a project for you to work on."  In this case, and most others, I feel like "project" was used just to avoid the term "bitch work."  That bothers me.

Alternatively, when you do have something important to work on, you never call it a "project."  Instead, you call it what it is.  Like, if you're doing work on an important case, you wouldn't tell someone that you're busy with a work project, you'd tell them that you're "busy preparing a brief for xyz case."

Because of this, I've noticed that I dread people coming into my office with "projects" for me and I completely stop paying attention to people when they start talking about some "project" their busy with at work. 

There's a chance my opinions on this are skewed because of how menial all of my jobs have been.  Thoughts?

1 comment:

  1. I usually reserve the word "project" for those work task that involve multiple parts, and numerous people doing tasks. If its just me completing a particular tasks, I would not consider that a "project" unless I'm using that word not so much to sound important, but to make others go away and not give me more to do.

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