on the annoyingness of abbrevi-speak

I work with someone who uses expressions like “in parens” for “in paretheses” and “do you have any heartburn about it?” when he means do you have any reservations or problems with his plan.

Now. I’ve worked in the corporate world. And I’ve never encountered someone who was so important and pressed for time that he couldn’t just say “in parentheses”. Really.

Maybe it’s a pr/ad thing or something else to that effect, but it annoys me almost as much as the proliferation of the expression “the hell.” REALLY. How hard is it to say “what” in front of “the hell”?

Has it become a coolness factor to try and contaminate the world’s vocab with abbrevi-speak? (that’s me being a hypocrite, because “abbrevi-speak” is the word that I use to label other people’s offenses).

Now. Some expressions are so funny and so catchy that they totally deserve to be repeated.

A clear example of this is the expression “ofa.” as used by the dj stylings of Michael Maze on KC101. j started using it and then I started using it and now it’s been adopted into our regular vocab.

But my coworker – as much as I do really like this guy – does not merit his own slang glossary.