MIDOriginal workplace satire. The emails below are invented examples, not leaked messages or accounts of a real employer.
Welcome to the translation desk. Place your email in the tray marked STRATEGIC NARRATIVE. Collect it from the tray marked PLEASE SEND THE FILE. There is a small handling fee, payable in the courage to name what you want.
Corporate jargon is useful camouflage. A request can enter a sentence, put on a blazer, and disappear behind “cross-functional alignment.” By the time anyone notices, the request has become a working group. The working group has a logo. Nobody has sent the file.
Our translator does not ban long words. Sometimes a specialist term is the shortest accurate description. The machine only asks whether the reader can identify the action, the person responsible, and the relevant time. If not, a little orange light comes on. The light is labeled THOUGHT LEADERSHIP.
Before: “Team, can we align on the narrative ahead of the next stakeholder touchpoint? Keen to ensure we're telling a cohesive story and bringing everyone on the journey.”
After: “Please review the two-sentence project summary in the draft. Reply by 2 p.m. Wednesday if either sentence is inaccurate, and suggest replacement wording. I'll send the final version to the project team at 3 p.m.”
The original email offers a journey without a destination, departure time, or obvious reason to pack. The revision names the material, the kind of feedback, and what happens afterward. Agreement is no longer an atmosphere everyone must stand inside. It is a review someone can finish.
Before: “Given current bandwidth constraints, let's explore opportunities to optimize capacity while maintaining momentum across our key priorities.”
After: “We have time to finish either the help page or the reporting template this week. I recommend the help page because customers are waiting for those instructions. Please choose by noon Tuesday; the other item will move to next week.”
Translation reveals an unpleasant object: a choice. The first version hopes capacity will materialize if enough people pronounce it professionally. The second admits that work takes time and asks someone to decide which work gets that time. This may feel alarmingly close to management.
Before: “Before we lock anything in, let's socialize the proposal and pressure-test the approach with the relevant folks.”
After: “Please ask the support and delivery teams to review the proposed handoff. We need to know whether they can meet the two-day response window. Collect their comments in the draft by Friday; don't announce the change yet.”
Here, “socialize” was carrying three different jobs in a coat: consult, test, and announce. Splitting them matters. Someone who thinks they are requesting feedback should not accidentally send a victory announcement. The proposal has not won anything. It has merely learned where support sits.
Before: “Great discussion. Let's take this offline and circle back once we've had a chance to digest.”
After: “This question only needs the two people maintaining the export. They'll compare the file formats after this meeting and post a recommendation in the project thread by 4 p.m. Thursday. Everyone else can leave it with them.”
There is a perfectly good reason to move a detailed discussion out of a larger meeting. The problem begins when “offline” becomes a forwarding address for abandoned thoughts. Give the smaller conversation an owner and a place to return its result. Otherwise it will live beside the spare HDMI cables, waiting for a purpose.
Before: “Just checking in to see where we're at on this. Any thoughts?”
After: “Is the revised diagram ready for review? If so, please send the link. If not, please tell me the expected date so I can update the publication schedule.”
Politeness survives translation. You can still say please. You can even wish someone a pleasant Thursday. What disappears is the requirement that the recipient excavate a six-message thread to discover which “this” has entered the room.
Before sending, read only the request aloud. Could a colleague act on it without guessing? Is the deadline real, or did “urgent” arrive as decorative trim? Have you asked for a decision from someone who can make it?
The translator returns your email. It is shorter. It contains a verb. The little orange light goes dark. Somewhere, a working group quietly loses its logo.