(Download is an annoying business term and is just one of the 212 Most Annoying Business Phrases Managers Effuse, Confuse, and Overuse detailed in the hilarious must-have guide for every workplace: The 30,000-Pound Gorilla in the Room. Available right now on Amazon.)

Download

Used properly, download has a place in the business world.

If only this were the case in virtually every office in America – yours included. Unfortunately for you, download has come to mean everything from being updated on a major project to simply reading a memo.

Steve once attended a meeting where the manager used download to mean five different activities by his team. He wanted one employee to download all the information he had on a particular customer; another to get a download from the service department on an issue; another to ask for a download from the phone vendor on how to use a new feature; another to download everything we knew about a new program from the manufacturer; and still another to be sure and give anyone not in attendance a complete download of the meeting.

Annoying? Excruciatingly.

In each of these instances, the manager simply meant for someone to gather information.

Some pompous managers are also using download to describe one’s ability or capacity to comprehend complicated information or to complete certain tasks.

We’ve heard, “He doesn’t have the download speed for something like this.”

Of course, none of these misuses of download can match the idiocy or annoyance factor of those rare managers who confuse download with down low; as in, “Be sure to keep this on the download.”

WTH?

Sadly, we’ve heard that cringeworthy sentence more than once in the workplace; and once you hear it, you cannot unhear it… ever.

Replacement phrases: Gather information; Read; Acquire; Disseminate

See also: Do a Deep Dive; Bandwidth

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The 30,000-Pound Gorilla in the Room is available on Amazon