At the end of the day, we are just blathering idiots
I work in corporate America, a company that operates multiple lines of business with locations across the globe. While the idea of having a job and going to it is as accepted as eating and having sex, the experience of working in an organization that big can be quite unnatural. To compensate (maybe veil is a better word) the unnatural aspect of working in a large business, corporations create concepts, programs, and words that attempt to humanize a cubed-up work environment that is more akin to a milking barn than an interactive collaborative.
None of this is ultimately new, surprising or interesting. What I do find interesting is corporate employees’ lack of awareness around the cattle like conditions and the strong sense of identity we (I am including myself) derive from lining up to be milked of our time and energy everyday.
Most of the time these concerns float below my consciousness and I am happy to amble in and out everyday. However, there are those moments or events that yank me out of my sleepwalk. Usually these realizations are brought on by petty, yet unavoidable, irritations. One such irritation is the evolution of corporate “language viruses.” Every so often a phrase will pop up in the corporate environment that gains wide spread overuse. Currently, that phrase is “at the end of the day”.
• At the end of the day we will have to answer to the CEO.
• At the end of the day we have an obligation to the broader enterprise.
• At the end of the day, we will have to pull together an estimate.
It is a closing phrase not only meant to summarize a set of items but to add significance to those items. It is the latter point that drives me crazy. “At the end of the day” has become a crutch, a sort of corporate “uhm” that has replaced clear thinking and subverts the need for well thought out statements. There is a guy I work with who will literally say “at the end of the day” every 10 or 15 sentences—easily saying it six or seven times in a five minute conversation. Honest.
This may sound like a small rant, but I think it points to a bigger issue in corporate America. We are dumb. We lack creativity. We have stopped thinking. For whatever reason this phrase has stuck in the head of a number of corporate workers in the same way the song “Top of World” (The Carpenters) gets stuck in mine. It has caught their imagination. Maybe they feel important when they use it. Maybe they think it adds some significance to what they have to say. To me it is simply a cliché. And clichés are things people says when they can’t or don’t have the ability to rely on their own thoughts or experiences. In fact, it is a well known convention for fiction writers to fill a character’s mind and mouth with clichés to convey that character as a fool. In that light, one should regard words that follow “at the end of the day” with suspicion—a sign post that the speaker is a fool and concepts concocted. So as a favor to friends and loved ones, who use the phrase, ask them to stop. As a favor to me, interim host Erik, make fun of your nemesis at work (behind his/her back) should the phrase slip out.
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