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69 Words GM Employees Shouldn't Use

We've all been there at least once - working like a dog at a big multinational corporation for a pay we couldn't really enjoy spending because of the 40+ hours spent at work per week and the lack of energy needed for after-hours activities. But one of the most terrible aspects of working for a corporation is represented by the silly, yuppie code of conduct handbooks you have to abide to the last letter if you want to survive in that dog-eat-dog ecosystem.
General Motors list of Judgement Words 11 photos
Photo: GM
General Motors list of Judgement WordsGeneral Motors list of Judgement WordsGeneral Motors list of Judgement WordsGeneral Motors list of Judgement WordsGeneral Motors list of Judgement WordsGeneral Motors list of Judgement WordsGeneral Motors list of Judgement WordsGeneral Motors list of Judgement WordsGeneral Motors list of Judgement WordsGeneral Motors list of Judgement Words
And we have a prime example of those silly, yuppie corporate rules and regulations thanks to the wonders of the Internet and a man or woman with very sticky fingers in the propensity to steal way, not the Rolling Stones album kind of way.

Even though the presentation you can check out in the gallery below is dating back to 2008, it took six years for it to travel freely on the vast World Wide Web. So feel free to not excuse us for our lack of response time. Starting with a boring and long consent order between General Motors and the U.S. Department of Transportation and the NHTSA, the presentation features a very interesting and juicy piece of info starting from page 33.

Specifically, what attracted our attention most is a list of naughty 'judgement words' at page 41 of the confidential document. GM big wigs advise employees that handle reports and presentations to not use speculations, personal opinions, vague non-descriptive words or words with emotional connotations. In alphabetical order, the 69 'no-no' words and phrases are the following:

Always, annihilate, apocalyptic, asphyxiating, bad, Band-Aid, big time, brakes like an 'X' car, cataclysmic, catastrophic, Challenger, chaotic, Cobain (what the?), condemns, Corvair-like, crippling, critical, dangerous, deathtrap, debilitating, decapitating, defect, defective, detonate, disemboweling, enfeebling, evil, eviscerated, explode, failed, failure, flawed, genocide, ghastly, grenadelike, grisly, gruesome, Hindenburg (again, what the?), hobbling, horrific, impaling, inferno, Kevorkianesque, lacerating, life-threatening, maiming, malicious, mangling, maniacal, mutilating, never, potentially-disfiguring, powder keg, problem, rolling sarcophagus, safety, safety related, serious, spontaneous combustion, startling, suffocating, suicidal, terrifying, Titanic (sorry Leonardo DiCaprio), tomblike, unstable, widow-maker, words or phrases with biblical connotation, you're toast.

We don't know about you, but mixing two words from this list will get you the perfect name for your future heavy metal band. Lacerating Cobain, Band-Aid Titanic, Powder Keg Widow-Maker, and the list goes on and on and on.

GM also tells its employees to not act "cute or clever" in their writing because "the words you choose could be taken out of context to suggest you meant something much worse than what was intended." Ahem… can somebody remind the Detroit manufacturer it has recalled about 8.1 million vehicles over the last 5 months, 2.6 million of which being affected by the widely known ignition switch glitch? We rest our case.

'Nuff said. Now scroll down and laugh your head off by reading the full PDF document or the essentials from the photo gallery below.
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 Download: General Motors list of Judgement Words (Page 41) (PDF)

About the author: Mircea Panait
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After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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