This review coughs up a rather a shameful confession: I may have regularly – albeit unknowingly – littered work emails and team meetings with cringy corporate jargon and proudly paraded an important-looking lanyard around my neck to give the ego a bit of a stroke – particularly in younger years.

Thanks to the hilarious guys from Wankernomics – As Per My Last Email, James Schloeffel (The Shovel) and Charles Firth (The Chaser), I can now recognise this faux pas and ‘drill down’ on my journey to recovery – and have a hard-earnt laugh at my own expense!

However, I’m not alone embarking on this revelation. Approximately 730 corporate comrades filled almost every seat at Wollongong Town Hall to watch Schloeffel and Firth’s latest rendition of this side-splitting satire unfold on Friday, 3 May.

No doubt, this ‘workshop’ triggered flashbacks of long-winded meetings in which no parties are particularly clear on either purpose or outcomes, colleagues awkwardly passing the buck when put on the spot, recollections of many emails kicked off with a token (but no doubt often well-intentioned), ‘I hope this finds you well’, and copying in countless unnecessary people to make a point.

Not to mention the impressive lingo on LinkedIn profiles and mission statements that quite literally could have been plucked out at random using a prize wheel, as Schloeffel and Firth demonstrated that evening with a brave patron who revelled in a crash course on everything she needed to know to ‘upskill’ for success. Hilariously, the random end result spat out by a few prompts and spins of the prize wheel quite likely reflected mission statements outlined by many modern organisations.

Enthusiastically tossing mentos to the audience, who had cooperatively ‘accepted the invite’ to the workshop, these guys presented the most refreshingly light-hearted lesson on ‘how to outmanoeuvre your colleagues with nothing more than an obnoxious LinkedIn profile, a passive aggressive email, and the phrase circle back. In a world where we often take ourselves and corporate lives too seriously, this presented the perfect reminder to laugh and lighten the tone.

And then … Wankernomics sent my over-analytical brain into overdrive, that led me way down into a deep rabbit hole – pondering how all of this corporate poetry per se happened to come about. And so, the ‘googling’ about the evolution of office jargon began. One write-up on TeamBonding claimed that office jargon came to the fore in the 1950s with the goal of office cohesion. It was around this time that three Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors, Douglas McGregor, Edgar Shein and Richard Beckhard, developed the field of organisational development, which saw buzzwords bulldoze through workplaces at lightning speed.

However, as demonstrated in Wankernomics, this evolution of talking in office tongue – often containing components unique to certain industries – commonly causes mass miscommunication. [1] 

Given Firth in fact joked about using my emails as material for the show (although, that could disgracefully be legitimate!), I suppose it is only apt to sign off with a ‘kind regards’ or ‘best’, and then ‘loop in’ my network for a spot of team bonding to catch them again when they return to Wollongong Town Hall in December for War on 2024. In the meantime, head to www.wankernomics.com for witty tips and tricks about how to nail your professional persona!