Do your eyes glaze over with the vacant stare of a dairy cow when reading most company websites, brochures, case studies, and white papers? Once I interviewed with a company whose tag line was Trust. Value. Integrity. It took me forever to figure out what their business was. After scouring their site and search engines, I deduced they were loan origination technology developers. Can you imagine what this does to potential business? Their website was jargon-jammed with corporate speak and communicated nothing.  The powers-that-be who insist on cliché, jargon and words with no marketplace meaning undermine their own profit potential and branding power. As E.B. White wrote in  The Elements of Style, these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words. Let’s take a look at a few of the offenders.

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Got a job? Great! The layoff sword spared and screwed you at the same time. Just because your co-workers went away doesn’t mean their workloads did. On top of your own responsibilities, you’re now wearing many hats, possibly a few wigs, and hopefully hip, sensible shoes that say, “I’m sassy, yet you’ll respect me in the morning.”

In any other circumstance, this would give you just cause to march into your boss’s office and ask for a compensation adjustment. The reality breakdown: for most organizations, the money isn’t there. Cash may be king, but it’s currently a king in exile. Ok, hold on. It’s not all bad news. Don’t leave and start Googling the next random thought that pops into your head. There are other things you can request in lieu of a raise.

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I met my friend, Melody Abella, over ten years ago when we worked in the marketing department of a dot com near Washington, D.C. It was a good job. Great benefits. Couldn’t complain, except I could’ve cared less—about the company, my work or where my career was going. Don’t get me wrong. I performed my job duties, got a couple big promotions, bonuses and pay hikes. Parents were proud and relieved.

Every day I dragged myself into the office, I was playing the role of someone who cared. They could’ve tripled my salary and the sentiment would have been the same. Melody and I both had the benefits of education and lucrative employment, but our passions weren’t stoked by corporate power or ladder-climbing.

Sometimes I’d look around the office and wonder if everyone was as “into it” as they appeared. Even my boss, who is a fantastic writer, would talk about her book ideas that were going on paper once the kids graduated college (the boys were in grammar school). Melody began practicing yoga in college and the love affair continued into her corporate years.

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