At The End of The Day I Go to Sleep

As I was driving up to San Francisco yesterday I remembered something else that really bothers me: people who use buzzwords/phrases that really don't mean anything. There is easily one expression that has become the most over-used and aggravating expression on the planet -- "at the end of the day". If you're unfamiliar with the usage, it's commonly used to emphasize the importance of something. For instance, "At the end of the day we're in the business to make money." Another great one is, "At the end of the day we're going to have to tell the customer that this solution just won't work."

Now my problem isn't just that the phrase addds no additional meaning to whatever was said. That's an issue, but it's not the primary one. I think the primary issue is the way that people hear an expression and decide that they need to use it at naseum to sound important/intelligent. What's truly amazing is that I hear really articulate and intelligent people do this all the time, and all it does is make them sound like everyone else. Going back to the meaning, I don't even understand why that emphasizes anything. Why don't we have an expression like "When you get up in the morning"? That would work too, wouldn't it? Couldn't you say "When you get up in the morning you have to remember you're in this business to make money"? I think I'm going to start that instead so that if it takes hold at least I'll feel like I created the expression.

This leads me to an interesting point. I think it's fascinating how quickly an expression can spread through society. It has a multiplicative affect, infecting anyone that it touches. Think of a word like "proactive". Did you ever hear that 10-15 years ago? Now everyone says it. I don't even understand what "proactive" means. How are you proactive? Isn't the word "active" active enough? The opposite of "active" is "reactive"isn't it? So isn't the prefix "pro" superfluous? I mean, what's the difference between saying:

"We have to proactively engage with the customer to make sure they know this is an issue."
&
"We have to actively engage with the customer to make sure they know this is an issue."

The reason you use the word "active" in this example is to make sure that people know that you don't want to be reactive, but the "pro" prefix is useless. Now it's to the point that if I use the word active, people will actually correct me and tell me that I really mean proactive.