LizzieMaine
Bartender
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- Location
- Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Denny's is the bunk. For a real, quality chain restaurant eating experience nothing could ever possibly beat the old Howard Johnson's.
Denny's is the bunk. For a real, quality chain restaurant eating experience nothing could ever possibly beat the old Howard Johnson's.
Denny's is the bunk. For a real, quality chain restaurant eating experience nothing could ever possibly beat the old Howard Johnson's.
Olsen Johnson is right about Howard Johnson being right...
In the old days, though, they had the best fried clams in the world. And their macaroni and cheese was the only restaurant m&c that was as good as homemade. Even their placemats were educational.
Olsen Johnson is right about Howard Johnson being right...
...
Who else has examples?
By the time any word filters down to the schoolyard, its value as a descriptor has been forever corrupted.
Not conjured to "take the sting out," but to aggrandize, or medicalize, or bureaucratize, or ...
The Hiring Hall became the Personnel Office became the Department of Human Resources.
Shell shock became battle fatigue became post-traumatic stress disorder.
In some cases, the neologisms truly are more accurately descriptive. In others, they're just pretentious.
It's the description of people as "resources" that rankes me, like they were a truckload of lumber or a load of coal. "Employment Office" or "Staffing Department" are good, solid descriptions of a basic process -- they handles the staffing of the business without a lot of ten-cent doubletalk. Calling employees "resources" is simply a euphemistic, depersonalized distortion of reality. If you want to make me feel like a respected and appreciated part of the company, don't call me a resource, give me a damn raise.
I don't get the hatred for the term "human resources". Most HR departments now do far more than hire and fire people, so I don't understand why someone would still want to refer to it as "hiring hall". As for "shell shocked" v. "PTSD", when you're speaking on a clinical level, I'm not sure the former is a better descriptor either. I don't get why colloquial terms are necessarily better.
No hatred in the statement at all. As I said, sometimes the newfangled terms are better. "[M]ore accurately descriptive," is how I put it. Often they are. And sometimes they aren't.
I'm sure I've made this observation before, but I think (in all false humility) that it bears repeating ...
"Political correctness" itself is often used as a putdown, a sort of rhetorical trump card.
If referring to people in ways they would prefer makes me politically correct, fine, I'm politically correct. Better to be politically correct than ill-mannered.
The reasonable objection to some newer terminology is to its coming across as being more for show than substance. I sometimes find myself saying things like "skill sets" when "skills" all on its lonesome would serve every bit as well, and perhaps better. I appreciate the subtle connotative distinction between the two, and I can imagine circumstances under which the former might be the better usage, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that the difference rarely occurs to the speakers.