Wednesday Whine Session: The COB Acronym
This week kicked off smoothly without any major office irritations. Nothing out of the ordinary that screamed “Wednesday Whine Session”. That feeling quickly came to an end during my elevator ride after lunch Tuesday.
If you aren’t familiar with this term, consider yourself fortunate. For those that do know what I’m talking about, it’s the one phrase that will quickly ruin any plans after work.
COB stands for “Close of Business”. Meaning exactly as it sounds. However, it does differ from the closing of a physical brick and mortar location such as my laundromat next door (The Building Department deemed it imminently perilous to life). It’s making me wish my apartment was portable.
Natural Gas is the new Tide.
COB, if paired with a work task, means that this task needs to be complete and submitted by close of business or end of the day. The acronym COB is so easy to add in an email, yet creates so much stress and workload for the recipient. It is the office’s catchphrase equivalent to comedy’s “I’m Rick James, Bitch!”.
No caption required.
I didn’t realize until late afternoon, but the COB task in the elevator would quickly become my responsibility. So I begin the arduous task of getting it done.
The worst part, though, is that one person’s consideration on the actual COB time differs from the next. Subjectivity at its finest. It always leaves the person actually working on the task to figure out what time the job must be finished. Would you consider 5 p.m. close of business or is it anytime that night? These decisions can quickly knock you off that ever-so-tall corporate ladder.
What’s the point anyways? If I rush to get this job done by 5 p.m., is anyone actually going to review it that night? It must be too difficult to provide an actual time, say “Due by 5 p.m.” Regardless, the acronym isn’t going anywhere, so the only thing left is to whine.
Have a great rest of the week, and please do your part in eliminating COB. If our generation stops it now, our grandchildren won’t have to spend 15 minutes typing about how much they despise it.
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