‘Sure, I'll think outside the box’: Corporate employee is fed up with workplace jargon, so he takes his boss's advice literally during an important client presentation

Author image for Lana DeGaetano
Lana DeGaetano • "Show me to me please."
Mar 3, 2025 4:00 PM EST

When one first enters the workforce, they'll quickly learn that "normie" discourse will not suffice at the water cooler or in meetings with the COO. Instead, one must read the dictionary, front to back, in addition to the Urban Dictionary online. Saying what you mean is not what's "in" in corporate settings, mostly because higher-ups have no idea what they're talking about and instead disguise their incompetence as intellect using corporate platitudes. What even is "synergy" in the workplace? Why should I care? Spoiler: I shouldn't, and neither should you.

In this next story, a corporate employee is finally fed up with his boss's workplace speak and decides to take his words literally. This employee was told to "think outside of the box" and create a presentation for a client, which is not in his job description. So, he decides to put his boss's pleas for boxy thinking to rest with one memorable presentation. Scroll to read.

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  • This kind of corporate jargon is not new. Especially in a tech/business setting, you'll likely learn new vocabulary that'll take up a whole page (5-point font, single-spaced) of printer paper. Why is it that companies feel the need to automate their very human employees through discourse autocracy? We all know they don't know what they're talking about, they don't know what they're talking about, so who's fooling anyone here?

  • "The CEO, however, was NOT thrilled." JuJu 00 00 C
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • "Sure, I'll think outside the box"

    A few years ago I was working at a company where the CEO was a kind of "tech-bro" on steroids - he was absolutely obsessed with "disruption", like something
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  • fierce. Kept sending out emails about how we MUST think outside the box, and "push the boundaries of innovation." (direct quote, it's been burned into my memory).
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  • He also had a stack of approved templates that he brought with him from god knows where, and they had to be used for any and all presentations or reports. They
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  • were outdated, clunky, and pretty ugly, too, but he insisted they were ESSENTIAL for maintaining a "consistent brand image."
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  • One day, I was tasked with creating a presentation for a major client meeting, which isn't my job, at all, but "Synergy" (another one of his buzzwords).
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  • My protests that it was taking me away from what I actually had to do were not heard, and I was told to get cracking on this presentation.
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  • Cheezburger Image 10473955072
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+
  • After taking a look at the godawful template he wanted me to use, I had an idea. I decided to take the CEO's words to heart and think outside the box within
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  • the confines of the template. I drew a large box in the center of the PowerPoint slide, and then I filled every slide with text, OUTSIDE of the box I drew.
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  • When I presented it to the client, they were confused but polite. The CEO, however, was NOT thrilled. It was clear he hadn't actually looked at the
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  • presentation himself before the meeting, and was just happy that he got me to write the presentation.
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  • I since left that place for greener pastures, where the presentations look nicer, but I don't really care since no one is asking me to draw up presentations in the first place
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  • PAUL_DNAP You certainly pushed the boundaries of box out thinking and accelerated the velocity of innovation there.
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  • National Pensio... Love it when so-called "innovators" weaponize the word to squeeze you but then offer nothing innovative in terms of your quality of life. It's just another version of "do more with less."
    via National_Pension_110
  • AppropriateRip... This reminds me of efficacy. I had somehow gotten by in life without needing that word and then at work it had to be used every day.
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  • SoftCattle I had a co-worker come and talk to me about something I was working on. It started to take longer than expected so I moved my chair into the walkway of the cube-farm since I was working long
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  • hours to keep the project on track. After the conversation finished I was sitting in the walkway writing my notes on the discussion. Another coworker asked me what I was doing, I said I was thinking outside the box.
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  • Lem1618 Corporate jargon is mostly platitudes.
    via Lem1618
  • I_heart_naptime He used every cliché in the book yet insisted on thinking outside the box? Tool. Tool BOX! See what I did there? B000
    via I_heart_naptime

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workplace-stories malicious toxic-workplace malicious compliance work malicious-compliance-reddit reddit story horrible-management workplace Horrible Bosses reddit thread Reddit malicious compliance reddit entitled people compliance
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