(How the Sausage is Made 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.)

How the Sausage is Made

Apparently – and we write apparently because neither of us has ever witnessed the act of sausage making – no one should ever see how the sausage is made.

Why? We don’t know; though, we’re also pretty sure your annoying manager – the one who overuses this one – doesn’t either. You see, he or she has likely never experienced sausage making in the flesh, as it were.

This one’s annoying because it’s overused, implies something that must be disgusting, and – this one really grates our nerves – it’s often uttered by the same manager at different times with completely different meanings.

Give too many details in a presentation or report and you’ll hear, “We don’t need to know how the sausage is made.”

Discuss how much transparency to provide a client and the response will be, “Don’t let her see how the sausage is made.”

Attend a breakfast meeting at Denny’s and your annoying manager will invariably tell you, “You don’t want to know how the sausage is made.”

Okay… umm… so, sometimes this refers to sausage, sometimes it refers to what we should hide from customers, and sometimes it just refers to the minutiae. Is that it? As annoying as this one is, somehow it makes us want to actually see how the sausage is made, doesn’t it?

Replacement phrases: Details

See also: Warts and All

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