Aggravating Acronyms

“Is this your first meeting on the HS’s”

“uhhhh...Yes…”, I said with a pause! I guess I know what he is talking about…hmmm…do I?… What is HS?..…but before my brain cells Googled…

“You should have been for the JHS meeting man. These THS are kind of advanced you know, and is certainly not for a newbie. If you had been to the JHS, you would have understood the concepts much clearer…Never mind you will have your way through…. but am saying man ….I did not know that the DUDs and DURs means the same thing until I attended these JHS meetings…Anyways as you move on to the DHS you will know what we are talking about”, he said as he walked towards his cube.

“Did you realize that this is my second day at work and you are throwing acronyms left right and straight at me….”, I was yelling…well to myself!

Well, at that time, whatever you got from the earlier monologue is literally what I got as well. However, now, it’s different! As you work on.. you get the hang of it. But it makes one wonder. Why would we use acronyms so often?

Now with stores almost starting to sell Textotine patches for avoiding addictive text messaging, the use of acronyms is getting worse. To a certain extent, I understand the use.

Well, when you write a formal letter/report/article and you foresee using something quite frequently at a later stage…you parenthesize the acronym in the earlier stage and let the reader know this is what it means… In essence you do the same thing while you talk in business/working terms…you assume that the paranthesization stage has been crossed and that the person you are talking to, understand what you exactly mean when you say XYZ. Unfortunately that’s not the case all the time!

Now, even in the non-professional environment! In a room with people who might not have any clue on your daily routines! Dialogues like these do fill up some folk’s days!

“Machan…what about TOC?”

“Table of contents?”

“No. Taste of China”

“Okay…GTC?”

“Good ‘till cancelled?”

“No. General Tso’s Chicken”

“By the way AT&T is not working today”

“What?…that’s not true…! I just called…may be they are not working just for you! Did you check others?”

“No. They are not working today…I met them home…Aarthi, Tara and Tarun are not taking a break today”

“Dude..this is confusing. Lets go eat. On our way back, you wannu hit SBC for a HB?”

“Southern Baptist Convention? Why there now?”

“God! I meant Starbucks for a house blend…. Come on we need to HB soon?”

“You are so addicted to coffee bud”

“I meant hurry back soon”

Sure! These does happen in some of the folk's life ..the people I almost know/ew

For those who come to me in a non-professional environment with bundles of acronyms like Karan Johar movie titles…I politely let them read between the lines…. of a little more than half of my handful of fingers! Whereas in a professional environment … you sometimes don’t have the liberty to be yourself…in this case smudged with profanities…..so, I say…..I don’t know and I do not understand. By the way, that is very difficult!

Anyways, as we progress through time we need to realize that using an acronym is fine as long as it holds its value! If using them only leads to confusion and eats more of your time and brain cells…..a couple of seconds more on a conversation would certainly help.

All I am saying is bear with me..I am bored! :)