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The 69 Words GM Employees Can Never Say
bizwriter (1064470) writes "General Motors put together its take on a George Carlin list of words you can't say. Engineering employees were shown 69 words and phrases that were not to be used in emails, presentations, or memos. They include: defect, defective, safety, safety related, dangerous, bad, and critical. You know, words that the average person, in the context of the millions of cars that GM has recalled, might understand as indicative of underlying problems at the company. Oh, terribly sorry, 'problem' was on the list as well."
Of course they don't need to use any of those words. Everyone knows GM vehicles are doubleplusgood!
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Never buy a car from GM. A company that practices this type of policy can not have my confidence in any way.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
For using all 69 words. No exceptions, right?
I like how the article explains to us the meaning behind the words Hindenburg and Titanic.
You know just in case we couldn't picture an engineer likening the powder keg of a rolling sarcophagus spontansously combusting in an apocalyptic grenadelike explosion, mangling and impaling the hapless ocupants like Curt Cobain flying the Challenger into the Hindenburg.
On the plus side you could use the result to cook you're toast at the end of it all.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Two more words,
"We're Sorry."
Good people go to bed earlier.
Could be worse? How many people died in fires from Tesla? GM covered this up for years. Their solution? Fire two engineers - no one in management who acted like it wasn't an issue.
You get a Challenger disaster.
In my experience, You have to use exactly these words in order to get management to take problems serious. Turns out it was because they put management in a legal bind.
Any engineer who follows GM's edict should be flogged. Bad stuff happens because good men do nothing.
TCAP-Abort
Unlike Tesla, at least they actually acknowledge their faults these days. Shame that they don't use open language to do so, but modern business is 80% psychology and 20% product.
To be fair, Tesla might not acknowledge their faults, but unlike GM, they act proactively and fix them before somebody gets killed.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The NSA will be recording their voice conversations anyway. But seriously, this is a joke, right? If not, it's instant "Hall of shame" material, and my cynicism reaches a new height.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Just say, "this may have negative marketing implications", and corporate will have the recall in effect by lunchtime.
It's a survival-challenging vehicle!
For using all 69 words. No exceptions, right?
Obviously there are exceptions. "Quality and Safety" is one of the top level links on GM's website. And "Ignition Recall" is right there on the front page.
I am not a crackpot.
Rejoice! The fuel tank exhibits a delightful ability to consistently emit large cheerful conflations of thermal exuberance in response to mild percussive excitation. We recommend modifying the roof-rack to double as a full-length barbeque grill to maximize the occupants appreciation of this fortuitous feature.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I'm thinking something like a pre-commit hook, only integrated into Microsoft Office. ;-)
It's a natural consequence of the general public (slashdotters included) being morons and cherrypicking single words (not sentences, words) and basing all their decisions on those words. That's how you elect politicians whose only ability is being able to talk for three hours without actually saying anything.
Exactly. I'm sure political speech writers have similar lists, and good technical writing guides will tell you to stay away from subjective modifiers and phrases.
Just common sense. You don't write anything in an email that could be used as evidence against the company in a court case. Everything you write can and will be used against the company in a court case, no matter how much it has to be taken out of context. Much easier to just avoid some words.
If you know that writing "the car has a defect" can cost the company millions, while writing "the car has a condition" has the same meaning, and your fellow engineers know it has the same meaning, why would you want to write "the car has a defect"?
"'problem' was on the list as well"
:))
Well, as everyone knows, there are no problems, only challenges
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
You damn well know that before the slide was shown in the engineer's meeting, there was another meeting. At this other meeting, people were laughing. There was a slightly-upper manager holding a piece of chalk or a grease pencil or something, pointing it around, "who's got another one? Johnson?" Someone slapped their knee when they heard the absurdly stupid (yet that also makes it clever) "Kevorkianesque," and then someone else smugly rolled their eyes thinking their co-worker less witty than themselves when they heard "rolling sarcophagus." By the time they got to "grenade-like" the laughs had died down, not because it was so serious but because people people were straining too hard, thinking all the low-hanging fruit had been plucked. And let's face it, half the people there, were enjoying poking fun at their own company's products.
I bet you the engineers laughed too. A manager doesn't tell a bunch of people "don't refer to our product as a rolling sarcophagus" without getting a few chuckles.
And nobody tell me "this is no time for joking, real people got killed!" Hey, there's always a time for joking. People have been killed by the mob but you can still laugh when Tony Soprano's father said he had an albacore around his neck. People got killed in 9/11 but you know plenty of jokes about it. We laugh about some of our mistakes at my workplace and you do the same at yours. (And if you don't, then IMHO you are a problem.)
There's an underlying seriousness here, sure. They already knew records were eventually going to be subpoenaed and they didn't want people leaving "smoking guns" around ("See? Their own engineers call it a sarcophagus!") and that alone suggests some guilt. The intent behind the list is cause for concern. The list itself, though: that's just people having fun after getting a memo from legal.
Canyonero!
"There seems to be a bagel with the ignition switch that we should look into."
The emails and memos will still get written, and it's not like anyone will be fooled by the obtuse circumlocutions.
Even tiny, sub-20 person companies have shit they do not talk about via e-mail. Unless you're an idiot, you're well aware of the consequences of living in a society where written records are potentially durable forever.
Anyway, GP - if you want a real reason not to buy GM, go with Government Motors. Funny how there were car manufacturers who didn't need taxpayer funds to bail them out.
And before the loonies start in - I don't care what was paid back with what profit. "Too big to fail"? Same bullshit used to give our money to the banks. And it needs to stop. The very concept of 'too big to fail' needs to be dragged out into the public square and shot. What happens when, say, Comcast is 'too big to fail'?
at least they actually acknowledge their faults these days.
Only because the government is in the process of issuing fines to GM and a host of lawsuits are soon to hit for all the untimely deaths caused by the various design issues they have been forced to recall.
Everybody needs to understand exactly WHAT this is. This is a lawyer sitting in his office who realizes that as soon as he gets hit by a discovery notice, he's going to have to turn over electronic copies of E-mails, documents and such that might have something to do with a lawsuit. He's trying to make the real evidence hard to find, hard to explain and avoid the appearance of having a "smoking gun" E-mail or document that can be easily found using a text search. This is all about obfuscation.
But GM is FAR from the only company that does this.. I've worked at a few companies that had some interesting rules about stuff like this. I worked at one place where the document retention policy was *obviously* geared towards the company getting sued. Keeping something for more than a quarter required manager approvals and justification. It was just plain stupid and hard to work with so we generally ignored it. I found out why though at a later date. Apparently the CFO was doing some "shady" (or outright illegal by SEC standards) practices and was trying to cover his tracks.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The list is just examples of words a lawyer will latch onto. For the same reason doctors are instructed to never say they're sorry for a less than perfect outcome; it can be presented to a jury that they admitted guilt - whether they intended it that way or not.
Sometimes it seems that engineers have the lowest power to education ratio of any profession in the US. Lawyers and bean counters seem to spend their days making sure that any good that might be done by engineers is preemptively neutralized.
The summary goes so far as to tell us that it is Engineering employees who cannot use those words in specific types of communications. People outside that division can use those words, and people inside that division can use them in communications that are outside that list.
GM has enough problems on its own without people distorting their message to make them sound worse than they are.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It comes down to good engineering. Some of the words on the list are pretty reasonable. Telling your engineers not to use terms like apocalyptic and powder keg is fine--those aren't necessary to accurate technical writing. But defect and safety seem like words that an engineer needs. It's hard to believe that GM's engineers didn't object strongly to those restrictions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6IZ2TroruU
They left off exsanguinating.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
If you've ever been deposed as part of a lawsuit, the lawyer will go through every email and key on those particular words to present them is the worst possible light. I had to go through this once and spent three days, basically, justifying every word I used. Now when a customer comes to me and says they have a problem or something is not working, I will ask, "what behavior are you expecting to see and what are you seeing?" When we resolve the "problem", we simply say they should see the expected behavior now and please get back to us if they don't. It sucks but that's the reality.
GM definitely knew they had problems and didn't fix them, but I'm sure there were many emails that were unrelated to their intentional disregard to the known problems that they had to defend along the way. Every little sentence or word that someone has to justify means more time with the lawyers racking up fees. You can't skirt around real problems with the change in words, but it makes it harder for the lawyers to bring in unrelated or insignificant facts into the mix.
In other news, the GM employees responsible for setting the length of the list will be attending sexual harrassment training.
n/t see subject.
You can't use "always"?
"We should usually make cars with working brakes."
You can't use "never"?
"We should rarely make cars that spontaneously combust."
You can't use "problem"?
"Our cars come with many opportunities for repair."
Do not bail out GM and its subsidiaries and daughter companies like a chump like the German government did for Opel. You will get screwed in the worst possible way and GM will still close shop and move east the second they don't need your free guarantees anymore.
"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." - Mark Twain
Someone complained and HR agreed that he intentionally stopped short of making the list an even 70. Fired for sexual harassment.
I prefer companies that are open about their problems than companies that try to hide problems with "disguised words".
Easy to say when you are not the one at the pointy end of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit. Lots of people have plenty of courage in a semi-anonymous internet post. While I agree with you in principle the way the laws are written it isn't nearly as simple as you or I think it should be. As much as I'd like to see engineers speaking freely about problems, the consequences of doing so can be catastrophic when they don't know what they are doing. And I don't know too many engineers who are up to date on their product liability law.
Fact is that NO lawyer worth his retainer would agree with you. The number of ways in which employees can get a company in serious financial trouble through even the most honest attempts to solve problems is HUGE. Employees can agree to contracts, "admit" to wrongdoing (even when there wasn't any), etc. There are VERY good reasons why companies tend to only let a few, carefully selected people who know what they are doing speak for the company. I've worked as an engineer at a large auto company and I had to get special permission to give a technical talk just due to the potential liability and trade secret issues involved.
Years ago, I remember reading an interview with a GM former employee and he talked about advances in safety. He said, paraphrasing, that GM discovered hundreds of ways each year to improve safety related equipment through R&D and testing, but lawyers prevented from implementing the changes. The lawyers reasoned that the older equipment still passed safety regulations and implementing the improved equipment could open GM to legal action.
According to the WSJ article that the AOL article is "borrowing" from (and sensationalizing) these limitations are only applied to "documents used for reports and presentations."
That's bad enough, but we really don't need to discredit them even more for limiting their employees ability to communicate with each other (which they haven't done). They are simply trying to keep emotion out of the official reports & presentations and stick to the facts. I actually don't blame them for trying to do this.
http://www.dangeroustrailers.o...
Seems like SOP.
Mostly random stuff.
So they have no way of expressing something along the lines of: "We are very serious about safety. It is a critical concept to us"
bankrupt.
Only made it because General Motors is actually 2 words.
That's a touchy subject in the engineering world. The duty to report life safety issues (particularly outside of the organization) often runs up against complying with an employer's policies and procedures. Since there is a manufacturing exception to license requirements in most states, pushing this issue would discourage companies from hiring P.E.s. I don't think you want to live in a world where potentially dangerous products are designed by people with an upper boundary on their knowledge and experience.
Oops. To late.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's a troll headline. Guys, it's not a strict list. Someone just crafted a bunch of examples for guidance. A few of those are even made tongue in cheek, such as "rolling sarcophagus".
The another page of the guidelines shows the general idea: just try to use neutral and professional expressions instead of scary words.
Nothing to see here, please move on...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Its not 'Challenger'. Its STS-51L (not on the prohibited list).
And 'Cobain' excludes a lot of people sharing that same surname. Instead, please refer to the ex-husband of Courtney Love.
Have gnu, will travel.
All this shows is GM is behind the times with regards to email. Most corporations changed their email policies after a court ruled a while back that they must keep email for a certain period of time so it could be used in litigation against them. As a result, most places installed chat programs to get general employee chatter off of email and then setup archiving and aged deletion rules to stop new emails being created off of years old threads keeping data around in-perpetuity.
It makes sense to me. When a tester trash talks my hard work, it irks me; it's especially annoying if the report/defect/bug contains no more information than "Oh my god what a piece of trash, it failed". Good testing reports are dispassionate and informative and support the next improved iteration of the product, be it software or car parts.
There are no fires. Only thermal events.
I frankly can't understand how any business that does anything remotely technical can get away with not using the word "critical."
Follow the first link in the article. It includes a slide of words/phrases you should use instead. So, instead of "problem", you should say "issue", "condition", or "matter". Instead of "defect" you should say "does not perform to design". OK, I suppose those make sense.
And what about the word "safety"? Well, it says that instead, you should use the phrase "has potential safety implications".
What about the people who made this nice GM ad seen in John Oliver's show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ;)
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
I remember this one odd incident from my college days. I and my roommate--who DJed for the college radio station and from whom I had picked up some random trivia about the business--had a friend over to hang out. We were shooting the breeze, and at some point my roommate excused himself to use the restroom. The friend and I kept chatting for a bit, until we found ourselves wondering just what exactly was going on in the bathroom, since we could hear my roommate laughing like crazy while presumably still occupied with relieving himself.
As it turns out, he was laughing because in all the years he had known me, he had never once heard me cuss, and yet, while in the restroom, the one thing he could hear from the conversation was me releasing a string of profanities as if I was a seasoned sailor. What he didn't know was that I never really had any problem with using expletives in a purely referential manner, and that our friend had asked if I happened to know the list of words that were banned on the radio.
Which is to say, no exceptions. ;)
You and other commentators have made me reach to the conclusion that the problem is actually deeper. Problem actually are lawyers, and we need to get rid of them as we were rid of a cancer.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
I don't think any of the parties involved should benefit from punitive measures. Let it go to a non-involved party. A charity or a independent body that does safety checks.
Neither individuals or the state should benefit from a punishment, because it taints the motive for the punishment. Was it punishment for profit?
When I say that the views and opinions of the American people are managed to a degree few can appreciate, this is what I'm talking about. In this instance we found out about it. But usually it is kept behind closed doors. People with agendas are constantly managing, shaping and manipulating the picture people get about the world around them. If they can control the information you receive, and the "spin" on that information, they can shape your opinions and perspective to their own ends.
Mind control is a loaded phrase, with certain connotations. So let's call it "opinion control", or "viewpoint control" (See what I did there?). As Obiwan told us, "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." So if someone can affect your point of view, they can affect what you consider to be true.
There is an entire industry built around manipulating how you see the world. And most just take it for granted. Isn't it just natural that the PR and advertising industries try to get you to buy a product? But it goes way beyond selling products. It goes to matters of life and death, truth and untruth and that vast expanse in between. If all we know about reality is what we can perceive, someone who can manipulate that perception can manipulate reality itself.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Never drink and drive.
I didn't see "piece of fucking shit" in the list, so that means it's OK.
You can evidently use Carlin's words (shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits) in notes and memos as needed because they weren't specifically listed.
"The ignition switch could go tits-up unexpectedly and crush the motherfucking shit out of the cunt unlucky enough to be driving. Replacement of this cocksucker is highly recommended. Not doing so would be double-plus ungood."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Please... In my humble opinion every single lawyer needs to be shot on sight .
What a mature attitude you have there. [/sarcasm] Better hope you never find yourself in need of legal assistance.
Russian space agency: 'Unplanned burning of an oxygen generator.'
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Useless without context: That was the contents of the Pinto memo that got Ford's ass sued to hell and back. Thus breaking the formula by writing it down.
Quantum effects in lawyering.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's not really the engineer's fault for calling a problem a problem, right?
The engineers share some of the blame though the lion's share clearly seems to fall to management. The engineers are to blame to whatever extent they saw a serious problem and did not insist upon appropriate action being taken even in the face of management opposition. Saying "I was just following orders" is an insufficient argument to absolve them of their share of the blame for this fiasco.
This is obviously because when the company gets sued and the lawyers go through discovery they will look for anything that helps them show that GM knew of a problem. This doesn't mean that the engineers can't bring up problems, it means that they have to do it verbally or write it on a paper airplane and fly it across the room.
This is obviously unethical. However this is the state of the industry. I have worked at a company where we were told specifically not to write any invention related things down or anything that our competitors could use against us. We (company I worked for and competitor) would trade stupid lawsuits and each companies lawyers would get to read the other companies emails and although it is against law ethics to share proprietary information discovered in a lawsuit it happens every day anyways.
I've owned & driven Chevy trucks for pretty much my entire life, and never had any sort of issue caused by a manufacturer's defect.
I absolutely guarantee you have had maintenance as a result of a manufacturer's defect if you have truly had Chevy trucks for that long. It may not have been a showstopper problem like this ignition fiasco but it is virtually certain you have had at least one part fail due to a manufacturer's defect. I run a company that makes a lot of auto parts and I've worked for Tier 1 suppliers. They simply don't have the sort of bullet proof quality you might hope for. There isn't a manufacturer on earth that has never shipped a bad batch of parts and there isn't a manufacturer on earth that hasn't unintentionally accepted a bad part and put it into production.
exenterate...NOT on the list. *grin*
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
This was made fun of on Sunday's "This Week with John Oliver".
Many of us have known that for quite a while now. Unfortunately, they have more sway in legislatures around the US than any other trade or industry group.
Do not bail out GM and its subsidiaries and daughter companies like a chump like the German government did for Opel. You will get screwed in the worst possible way and GM will still close shop and move east the second they don't need your free guarantees anymore.
This is exactly what they did in Australia.
Government turns the taps off on the tax money, Holden (GM's Australian brand) starts shutting down all factories. Oh sorry, unless you subsidise us to the tune of half a billion a year, we cant stay.
Should of happened years ago. Open up grey imports on cars so we can pay Japanese and UK prices on cars.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
That would be against the "phrases with biblical connotation"
I'm in violent agreement with you on your central point - engineers should take a stand. My point however is that while "established" version of the Challenger accident leaves the impression that they tried to take a stand - that impression is false. It hews too much to the stereotype of the saintly engineer and slimy management and covers up the failures of the engineers in question.
Their stand on the night of the 27th/28th was too little, too late. The time to take a stand was back in the 70's when the joint design (known to be flawed even then) was introduced, or when the Shuttle started flying and the primary o-ring repeatedly failed in flight.Then management might have listened to them when they brought up their concerns about temperature and the engineers would have a valid reason to claim they were the injured party when (if) management over-rode them. But they didn't. They accepted the continuing failure of a primary system, and thus were to some degree complicit in the accident.
Disclaimer - as a former submariner, I actually lived for weeks on end in an environment that demanded two layers of protection, and we did not treat routine failure of a primary layer as acceptable. That gives me a somewhat different point of view than most Slashdotters, who have no experience with such things.
What about "Semprini?"
----
"I used to listen to Null Device before they sold out."
Looks like George Orwell was off by three decades.
But as a potential customer I too prefer companies that don't feel the need to censor their own employees from talking about the products they make.
That would be nice if employees always made accurate and fully informed comments that would be perceived correctly by all customers, media and stakeholders with no ulterior motive or ax to grind on the part of anyone. The real world however doesn't work that way. Even the most accurate and well intentioned statements can and will be used against the company. Customers are not always honest, the media is always looking for juicy stories regardless of whether they are true or not, ambulance chasers are always looking to extort money from a lawsuit, and employees sometimes are looking to make the company look bad whether they deserve it or not.
A lawyer wouldn't agree that companies trying to cover up their failings are shit?
Has nothing to do with lawyers covering anything up. While that does happen of course, there are plenty of problems that can be caused by employees talking to outsiders that have nothing to do with any illegal activity. The perception of wrongdoing, even when the actions are entirely appropriate, can cost companies large sums of money in defending frivolous lawsuits, brand tarnishing, lost sales, etc.
I think you're trying to say that no lawyer would want engineers saying anything to anybody.
Generally speaking that is correct though I wouldn't put too fine a point on it. Engineers (and lawyers) are generally NOT authorized to speak on the behalf of the company for some very sane reasons. That's not to say they cannot or should not every speak on the company's behalf when appropriate (or blow whistles when needed) but any lawyer who is doing their job is going to by default prefer that engineers not say more to outsiders than necessary. There is a sanity to that viewpoint even if it can be overdone.
There are also very good reasons to let the engineers speak freely.
While there are circumstances where letting engineers speak freely is fine, once product liability comes into the picture companies HAVE to be very careful or they are very likely to find themselves at the pointy end of some very expensive lawsuits. To not take some reasonable precautions regarding who can and should speak to people outside the company is irresponsible given the world we live in. Even small companies get sued all the time for all sorts of ridiculous reasons. That's not to say that engineers should be muzzled or anything - just that some reasonable care needs to be exercised.
Now that we have the words, it is possible to create an application the automatically generates a press release using all of them. There should be thousands of permutations possible. It could even find a home like the fortune cookie on Unix.
Ford
Lincoln
Mercury
Toyota
Dodge
Chrysler
Plymouth
Honda
Hyundai
Yugo
Tesla
Studebaker
etc etc
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?