In addition to writing this blog I’ve been working on writing a novel.  The first draft is close to completion (!!).  As we start to work back out of this summer into the meat of the fall, it got me thinking about acronyms.  You’re like ‘What the hell suddenly got you thinking about acronyms?’ Well, they’re everywhere.  Being able to write out words and not use them in the regular degree gave me a chance to do some analysis.

When I was a kid there were a few acronyms floating out there.  You had the old reliable RADAR.  It was good to use IQ to belittle the other kids on the bus.  There were a couple others, but, for the most part, you were forced to write out everything…in cursive!  In fact, acronyms look weird in cursive.  We didn’t bend the rules.  Then you got to be a teenager and you knew about SATs and maybe RBIs if you were a baseball fan.  Hey, we got a vernacular – that’s pretty cool.  In health class they told you about AIDs and STDs.  If you were real smart you knew Lou Gehrig’s disease was ALS.  Still, you remained unfettered by adding too much to remember and decode to your already busy schedule of being a jerkwad teenager.  Even in college maybe you added on GPA or DPS.  It didn’t stop anyone from having a few beers.

Suddenly your bright eyes brought you into your first office job.  For me I was working for the CPAs.  We were battling against the IRS.  Did we ever call it the Internal Revenue Service?  Have you ever called it the Internal Revenue Service?  No?  Well, there’s your answer.  We used more form numbers than acronyms, but it’s still speaking in a language normal people consider…well, they wisely walk away.  If you learned how to say ‘I need to go to the bathroom’ in French you will probably get to go to the bathroom.  If you learn ‘I’ve got a section 1231 loss that probably needs to be put on a 4797 with possible section 179 implications’ you will never get to go to the bathroom and you might just get a wedgie for old time’s sake.

Many accountants get burned out by form numbers and move on (actually we get burned out trying to magically turn boxes of faded receipts into something approximating a tax return while the owners keep calling us asking how it’s going).  The corporate world is a slushpile of acronyms.  You thought you were the North America Accounting Manager, but suddenly you’re anointed the NAAM by the GAM.  You look across the table at the guy who washes his hands before he pees and he’s giving you the once over.  ‘I’m the VeepSO, bitch!’  And the other Knights of the Round Table (or misshapen table that your PS (Purchasing Specialist) bought when HP went out of business) sit stoicly with their awkward acronym armor protecting them from people trying to logically connect how the Director of Program Development (DPD) being a jackass has helped program development in your company.

Close your eyes.  Well, open your eyes because you have to read this.  Imagine if you read these two sentences:  Marty Richter is the DPD for 123 Systems and he’s here today to talk about why the company struggles with Program Development.  Marty Richter is the jackass Director of Program Development for 123 Systems and he’s here today to talk about why the company struggles with Program Development.  Wouldn’t you surmise from the spelling out of his title in number 2 that Marty is the reason they struggle, whereas he remains more anonymous when he has his acronym?

I knew for me it was time to return to the forest of tall, well grown words when I started using sentences with three acronyms or more.  “How can you be sure the TBL revenue is hitting the P&L properly in Q1 if we are using a JE instead of an MRE to book the transaction?”

Look, I live in an Amish Acronym world where I can get by on the bare minimum.  If a twelve year old makes fun of me for not knowing what TTYL means, I’ll just tell them I noticed their thumbs looked a little misshapen when they text.  Go find an acronym to describe that complex.

Do you have insane amounts of acronyms at your workplace?  Have you ever actually invented an acronym on the fly to sound like you know what  you’re talking about?  Have you caught others misusing acronyms?  Have you given up like me?  Tell us about it!