update: my employee makes up words and is impossible to understand

by Alison Green on December 23, 2024

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer whose employee made up words and was impossible to understand? Here’s the update.

I’ve written in and taken your advice on other topics before — and it has been helpful — but I really struggled with putting things into practice on this one. I think it’s because being directly faced with what feels like genuine absurdity is somehow paralyzing to me. With other issues I’ve dealt with in the past, it’s like we both at least knew we were starting from a point of shared understanding or difficulty but in this one, that’s not the case.

You gave some good tips about how to try and ground the discussions in creating a shared understanding, but overall I took what might be the “easy” way out and steered toward the first part of your advice: if his work wasn’t great, focus on those issues instead. And that hasn’t gone much better!

First though, before I go on, I remember in the comments a lot of people wanted to know examples of the words he would make up. If you’ve ever seen the Knives Out: Glass Onion movie and you’re familiar with the vague nonsense words made up by Edward Norton’s character, it’s just like that! Just this morning we had a chat where he talked about needing to “capacitize” something, which I think meant enabling a feature of some software. There’s also a lot of pronunciation nonsense — recently plethora came out as pleTHORa, which I guess is a mistake some people make but it still feels like a twilight zone moment to me. Other misuses include “repointering” which I’ve gathered usually means to fix; there’s also a lot of “getting up” in relation to things that don’t make sense (so, real words, fake meanings) like “I need to work on getting up my SQLs” which, like, perhaps that means troubleshoot a SQL query, but it’s so very hard to know.

I tried to focus on the work quality issues and I’ve never felt more weirdly gaslit in my managerial life! That term — gaslighting — gets thrown around a lot these days, and I don’t take its use lightly, but he often just starts talking and doesn’t stop and the words coming out are so disconnected from reality! I’ve taken a lot more to just directly telling him I have no idea what he’s trying to say. I also interrupt him way more to tell him to stop talking so I can take what he’s trying to outline step by step, and I’ll often be really specific — like saying, “Stop, let me repeat what I think step 1 of XYZ is, then just tell me, yes or no. Am I correct in my understanding?” It’s much more direct and gruff than I have ever been with an employee and feels unnatural to me, but it has been a bit helpful. Sometimes he still just goes off into word salad but I just interrupt him again.

Now, all of that said, here’s the fun (sarcasm!) part. Someone else in our industry somehow put together that he was working for us, and passed along a note highlighting that he’s also listed as currently working at another organization in an identical role on their website. We went to HR to see what we should do and to ask if the background check had verified start and termination dates for his prior employment, and hilariously our HR person said she “didn’t know if we actually looked at or kept background check information” and then also told us that as long as I couldn’t point to a specific degradation in performance, it was perfectly fine for an employee to have two full-time jobs. She encouraged us to ask him directly, which we did, and he denied it. And that denial was good enough for HR.

More broadly and for other reasons, I’ve soured a bit on my current employer and I think 2025 might be a year to make a change. For that reason, I’ve given up trying to do anything substantive with this employee. He can be their problem after I (hopefully!) find a new gig. That’s perhaps a bad karma choice, but I have been open with my boss and HR about my struggles with managing him and haven’t gotten much support and my current strategies of verbally badgering him into spoon-feeding me updates and progress have resulted in us successfully keeping things running, so there aren’t unrecoverable bad outcomes from his relative incompetence, just a ton of effort on me to keep it all together. My energy to dedicate to that effort is waning, so it’s time to whip out the trusty Ask a Manager guides on job searching and freshen things up!

Hopefully the next time you hear from me it will be a new and interesting problem at a new job! :)

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{ 124 comments }

{ 124 comments… read them below or add one }

  2. Almost Academic*

    I know I’ve worked in tech too long because each of those examples inexplicitly made sense to me, even though they are absolutely incomprehensible and not how you use language in the context at all. I think I’ve just worked with too may of these dudes.

    Not to minimize the OP’s frustration at all! That sounds like an exhausting person to manage, and he’s definitely not succeeding in his role if he’s not managing to communicate (made up languages or not!)

    Reply ↓
      1. fhqwhgads*

        ‘eh I think we can’t know. I can come up with what I think was probably meant by those examples, but I’d also not be surprised if the guy meant something else. So without knowing what he were really trying to say, we don’t know if they make sense.

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      2. Sillysaurus*

        I wonder if the bigger issue is the quality of his work, as OP has mentioned, and how that’s tied to the nonsense jargon. If he’s constantly “repointering” something that seems to never change at all, that would really irk me as a manager. It would also probably make the word “repointering” increasingly annoying to me over time.

        Reply ↓
    2. Snarkastic*

      Perhaps because you’re on the same wavelength as the subject of this letter? I mean this in good fun, because you mis-typed “inexplicably”, but it was also used improperly. I know this was an early-morning goof, but it gave me a much-needed giggle on this slow afternoon.

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    3. TooTiredToThink*

      Ok, it wasn’t just me then that felt like I knew what he was trying to say? “I need to work on getting up my SQLs” – I was like – oh, he needs to brush up on them.

      I’m someone whose brain processes silently much better than when I am trying to talk out loud, and so will mess up my words or have an issue recalling the exact word.

      If it were me, I’d ask the person to start emailing me responses to my questions and seeing if there were improvement.

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      1. Kella*

        I think it’s important to point out, though, that in addition to OP’s interpretation of what “getting up my SQL’s” might mean, in the comments there were three additional, distinctive translations from different commenters. And we can’t know which one is the correct one without confirming that with the person who said it. This is the problem with this style of communication. If four different people are going to have four wildly different interpretations of what something means, that means the initial communication was not clear.

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        1. WillowSunstar*

          As someone who uses SQLs daily, I’d wonder if he had meant just running them. But you’re correct, we cannot know for sure and I’d be asking for clarification also.

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        2. Roland*

          Right. People are thinking “obviously he means X” but no, it’s not obvious when you don’t have enough context to know if you’re correct…

          Fwiw I’ve been in the industry for over a decade and I also don’t understand these examples. And I don’t feel like I or OP should have to try any harder instead of him just talking clearly. Just like you shouldn’t shove all of your code into one statemebt just because you can, when it would make more sense broken up with variable names and whitespace.

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          1. AcademiaNut*

            The SQL could mean he’s brushing up on his knowledge, that he’s prepping and testing some complicated queries to be run in batch jobs (I do this a lot), that he needs to run some queries, that he needs to retrieve and look at the results of his queries… All I can determine is that he possibly needs to do something with database queries.

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    1. I'll have the blue plate special, please.*

      I can’t believe that HR doesn’t see this is an issue. There are articles on people getting fired for this.

      Reply ↓
    2. I'm great at doing stuff*

      This has come up at AAM before, and while some don’t approve, Alison said if it’s truly not affecting their work, who cares? Unless there is some sort of non compete going on, it really isn’t the employer’s business.

      Reply ↓
    3. I'm great at doing stuff*

      If it’s not affecting the jobs and there is no non-compete in effect, it really isn’t anyone’s problem if someone has two jobs.

      Reply ↓
      3. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

        It’s a problem because he is NOT performing to the required standard and it’s reasonable to suspect his work would improve if he gave all his attention to just this one job.

        Reply ↓
  4. Juicebox Hero*

    I’m not familiar with Knives Out, but the examples given by the LW are making my brain itch. I hope the job search goes well so you can wash your hands of this munglegrumber and that snarblek of an HR department.

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    1. JP*

      It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, so I did a search. He made up words like “inbreathiate,” as in “can we inbreathiate this moment together?” It was kind of funny, because I did the same thing that every other character in the movie did and just thought “huh?” and then moved on.

      Reply ↓
      1. A Lab Rabbit*

        We can inbreathiate all we want, we just need to remember to also outbreathiate, or else we’re gonna swell up like that kid in the Willy Wonka movie.

        Reply ↓
    2. PropJoe*

      Knives Out and its sequel Glass Onion should both be available on netflix and are absolutely worth a watch. I’ve seen both repeatedly and recommend them enthusiastically.

      Miles Bron, Edward Norton’s character in Glass Onion, is a great counter-example for leadership. If you’re unsure what to do in a situation, think about how Miles would handle it then do the opposite.

      Reply ↓
  5. SilverFlint*

    it’s not bad karma on your end, OP. The company is making this employee *your* problem, so you’re just matching energy.

    I wish you the best in your job search!

    Reply ↓
  6. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    Rereading those examples, I’m wondering if he had a particularly influential college prof who wasn’t a native English speaker or had a distinctive style of speaking that rubbed off on OP’s employee.

    “I need to work on getting up my SQLs” = “I need to work on getting my SQL up to date”

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    1. JP*

      I feel like I would actually do something like this. My brain thinks the right thing but the whole phrase doesn’t come out of my mouth. It’s hard for me to catch.

      Reply ↓
      1. physics tech*

        I was relieved, in a way, to hear that this person worked in tech, because in my more tired moments I could see this letter being written about me!

        Reply ↓
    2. Lexi*

      That could be. I work with a number of people in India and they have words and phrases that I was unfamiliar with.

      One of the biggies is using “pre-pone” when you move a meeting before it happens. and if you think about it, prepone makes more sense than postpone in this situation.

      Reply ↓
      2. TooTiredToThink*

        The first time I saw prepone in an email, I had to stop what I was doing; google and go – ooooo, “add to mental dictionary for future use.”

        Reply ↓
      3. Seeking Second Childhood*

        I do need to quibble about one thing: Many people from India *are* bilingual (or tri- or more) native speakers of English.

        It’s just not the *same* English — I strongly believe that subcontinental English is now its own dialect and has a strong likelihood of progressing to a full, separate language.

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        2. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

          It doesn’t surprise me in the least that though the words might be the same (or slightly different), the context and meaning is wildly different. I’m in the Midwest of America and the English I speak is amusingly different from the English that of the Bostonian roommate I had in college. (The first time she referenced a bubbler I was intrigued. Her pronunciation of daiquiri was similarly interesting.)

          Slightly off topic, but…anyone else go to Youtube to check that they’re pronouncing “plethora” correctly?

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    3. Caitlin*

      My son has such odd pronunciations for this reason! He takes math classes from several immigrants from India, and he says Pythagorean with the stress all in different places than I would put it.

      Reply ↓
    4. I should really pick a name*

      I think this comment would have stood without the “wasn’t a native English speaker” bit.

      I actually find that people who aren’t native English speakers have a better grasp on English grammar than those who are.

      Reply ↓
      1. LadyVet*

        Same. And the native speakers who mangle it, at least in the U.S., are often the same people who yell at people to “talk English.” ‍♀️

        Reply ↓
      2. Kay*

        Non native speakers often understand the rules better, or are at least aware of them, but are much less adept at deploying them than native speakers are. It also depends on their education journey of course.

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    5. LaminarFlow*

      I had many professors who were not native English speakers, and I have worked in several countries where English is not the mother tongue. I currently work on a team where I’m one of 3 (I think?) native English speakers. None of my professors or colleagues have ever created made up words for common things. Some have struggled with some pronunciation, and the nuances of English (ex: bisexual and unisex have similar definitions, but are used for different things). But, situations have been few & far between.

      Working with someone who does this would be as annoying as working with someone who uses a lot of baby talk. This guy is killing his own credibility.

      Reply ↓
    3. A Lab Rabbit*

      Flashback to “It’s pronounced lev-i-O-sa”!

      I once heard a high school English teacher pronounce “myriad” as “my raid”. When a student called him out on it, he doubled-down on his pronunciation.

      Reply ↓
      1. LadyMTL*

        It makes me think of the Simpsons ep where Marge yells at everyone to run like the wind (she pronounces it like ‘wine-d’). When Lisa points out that it’s pronounced wind Marge retorts ‘I’ve only ever read it in books!’

        English gonna English, plethora’s gonna plethora hahaha.

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        1. MsM*

          At least Marge is on solid Shakespearian grounds. I remember singing an adaptation of one of his poems in high school where we had to pronounce “wind” with a long i.

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        2. Carlie*

          My favorite Marge pronunciations are:

          “Lisa, it doesn’t take a nu-cu-lar scientist to say FOIL-age!” (a two-fer)

          “Oh-reh-GAH-no.. What the hell?”

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      2. This Old House*

        My friends and I all walked around saying “You put the wrong emPHASis on the wrong sylLAble” in middle school and high school. I thought it was from an Adam Sandler movie but I just googled to discover it’s from a Mike Myers movie I’ve never seen.

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        1. The OG Sleepless*

          IDK, my mother has said that for as long as I can remember, in the tone of someone quoting a movie, but she’s 85 and has definitely never seen any of Adam Sandler or Mike Myers’ movies.

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        2. KaciHall*

          That was absolutely the only good part about View From the Top. My husband pronounces things oddly sometimes (or just does the thing from the letter) and I absolutely quote that to him. (My least favorite is observative. Which apparently is an actual word, but he meant observant.)

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        3. Seeking Second Childhood*

          I can second that it predates Mike Meyers– my grandfather was born in 1900 and knew it from HIS. childhood.

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      3. old curmudgeon*

        Decades ago, one of my nieces had an argument with a teacher in southern Texas over the correct pronunciation of Michigan. My niece, who had spent her first ten years living in Michigan, pronounced it “MISH-eh-gan,” while the teacher was absolutely convinced that it was pronounced “mitch-EE-gun.” My sister-in-law wound up getting involved because the teacher gave my niece a zero for the day for arguing with a teacher.

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        1. Dahlia*

          Oh my god there’s a running joke in Welcome to Night Vale about someone from Michigan, which doesn’t exactly exist in that universe, and they pronounce it Mitch-U-Gin and it’s so funny XD

          My mom came in to talk to a teacher once that the word “slough” is pronounced “slew” when referring to the things cows drink out of, because I knew it was, and my 4th grade teacher did not, and he didn’t believe me when I corrected him. Funnily enough, it is in the dictionary with an alternative pronounciation when used in that context.

          Reply ↓
      1. tabloidtainted*

        Consistency is a part of language. There’s no harm in pointing out correct vs. incorrect pronunciations. It’s not an attack on anyone.

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        1. Goldfeesh*

          I’ve just never heard anyone pronounce it as PLE-thora. I’ve always heard it with neither syllable with much stress on it.

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            1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

              I’m used to hearing “pléth’ra.” As if the o only existed on paper.

              My intuition leans towards giving LW’s employee the benefit of the doubt, as I cast a similar shadow, but with two important differences–1st, while they may be old if not outright antiquated, my words are documented, and 2nd, my work performance has never been an issue. I get odd looks for “coming down the pike,” “could not care less,” and others where the modern corruption has supplanted the original form. And, weird though he may sound, that is one way language evolves and morphs over time

              In some ways, though, I think it’s a blessing the employee’s performance is poor. That justifies moving on, and his eccentricity is ultimately moot. A valuable, productive employee would either get manipulated into attempted artificial normalcy or Management would have to negotiate some sort of modus vivendi that pleases no one.

              Reply ↓
              1. Sharpie*

                Coming down the pike = turnpike = road.

                And for those who who could care less, well, they care and it’s possible to care less. For the rest of us, we couldn’t care less because we don’t care at all, therefore it isn’t possible to care less, only more.

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          2. Sillysaurus*

            Very few English words have equal stress on each syllable. A trick for figuring out the stress is to imagine that the word is your dog’s name and you’re calling it to come inside. The sound you’d drag out the most is the stressed syllable. Pleeeeeeethora!

            Reply ↓
    6. CityMouse*

      I generally try to be kind on mispronunciations because I assume that’s someone who has learned from reading. That can indicate someone who’s self educated or motivated to learn and may have not had the same kind of opportunities.

      However, here it’s part of a bigger picture.

      Reply ↓
  8. Foghorn Leghorn*

    So glad you are finding ways to deal.
    But as a huge Knives Out fan I have to say, Edward Norton is not in that movie. Maybe you mean the Chris Evans character? He brilliantly plays a jerk so maybe that’s who you mean?

    Reply ↓
    3. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

      It’s “Glass Onion – A Knives Out Mystery” formally but many people refer to it as “Knives Out: Glass Onion”.

      Reply ↓
    7. good grief, Charlie Brown*

      No, because as many other people have pointed out, the LW correctly identified Glass Onion, and also Chris Evans doesn’t use incorrect words.

      Reply ↓
      1. Seeking Second Childhood*

        Chris Evans is a good enough actor he would indeed use wrong words if the script & character required it … but then it would be correctly incorrect wouldn’t it?

        Reply ↓
  9. Lucy Valdon*

    I have an extremely close relationship with someone who has the communication problems you describe, and know the intense frustration and sense of unreality that can happen during conversations (the differences in our situations are that my poor communicator is both brilliant and highly skilled, and our relationship is personal, not professional).

    It’s not your problem to fix, and I can’t possibly diagnose is, but I will say that this sounds like neurodiversity that affects language production (plus possibly the intense anxiety that can accompany this condition, if your employee has any self-awareness at all — I find my person makes up or misuses words much more, the more aware he is that our communication is sliding off the rails).

    In your circumstances, letting go sounds like the most appropriate solution for you. But I hope someone in his personal life sends him to a specialist. My person has really benefitted from working with his communication coach. (bonus: I spend less time feeling like I’m going crazy.)

    Reply ↓
  10. Three Flowers*

    I had a coworker like this. My manager (who was very non-tech) took a long time to figure it out and met roadblocks at every turn trying to get HR to back her up in dealing with him. He definitely did not know his job, but he was so good at enthusiastically obfuscating his lack of knowledge that people on other teams loved him. He literally got a peer award for work he did wrong, that I (not supposed to be as techy as him) could have done right and did fix in under five minutes…after it had rolled out. That sort of carp went on for years. I was so happy when he finally got canned…but also pissed that wasn’t what he got canned for.

    Anyway, as somebody who spent years cleaning up the garbage from a guy like this, I hope his peers know you aren’t ignoring the problem. And I hope you get out since the company won’t help you deal with him.

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    1. Rainy*

      Mere weeks before I left my last, unlamented, job, they made an external hire for a role that had three highly qualified internal candidates. The external hire, who appears to have–at best–grossly exaggerated her qualifications and experience, has simply refused to do the job she was hired for. Leadership is now admitting that she was a bad hire, but I don’t think they’re going to fire her. The AD who overruled the hiring committee’s recommendation is constitutionally incapable of admitting a mistake. One of the three passed-over internal candidates has already landed a huge, well-deserved promotion in another division; the other two won’t be far behind. That entire team is job hunting. The new hire isn’t the cause, but she has proved to be the catalyst. Partly because the only thing she *does* do is file complaints against her colleagues when they won’t do her work for her, and people are getting tired of it.

      This bad hire was not that AD’s first–in fact, I’d probably call it her third overall, but her previous bad hires were not incompetent jerks, just people that anyone with sense could tell wanted to be doing something else and so were going to do the best work they could on their way to a job they wanted. I am frankly dubious that this one will ever leave of her own volition, especially because she’s managed to find herself in a spot where no one will make her do work.

      It’s frustrating, because that unit was such a great place to work when I started there almost a decade ago. Recovery is possible, but it takes longer to rebuild a workplace like that than it does to destroy it. When the brain drain starts accelerating, you know it’s not long until the whole system inevitably crashes.

      Reply ↓
  11. soontoberetired*

    wow on HR not caring he has another full time job. That would be an issue at places like mine where there’s a lot of confidential information.

    Another job that’s totally unrelated would be okay, but it would be something our HR might be interested in to make sure there’s no conflict.

    Reply ↓
    1. Where’s the Orchestra?*

      Sometimes even adjacent is okay – but it has to be fully declared openly.

      I work in a behind the scenes role in a hospital system, on a B-Shift schedule. One of my teammates works part time as a lunch cover CNA in a rehabilitation facility. The two schedules never overlap, and both HR Depts are fully aware of the other job. The key is open and clear communication.

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    3. UKDancer*

      Same. I am not allowed to take a job at the same time with any of our major competitors or with any of the subcontractors I let work to with due to the potential for conflict of interest and the risk of leaks. Any side jobs I take I have to declare. It’s usually fine as long as the other job is unrelated to our work. So I’ve a colleague who works for my company and has a side hustle doing nails and that’s ok because there’s no conflict of interest.

      Reply ↓
  12. Timothy*

    I think I would have fun with this, and start a wiki page with all of the new words and their definitions. These words would, of course, only be used with this employee. Explain them away by saying, “Oh, that’s one of Bob’s terms.”

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  13. Calamity Janine*

    > pleTHORa

    the correct collective noun is, of course, not a pleTHORa, but a pantheon of Thors. perhaps a multiverse of Thors, if you are under the auspices of Marvel comics

    (yes this joke is incredibly silly.)

    Reply ↓
  14. ThursdaysGeek*

    It is annoying when incomprehensibility is confused with brilliance, and happens much too often with tech people. Most IT people likely aren’t smarter than you, even if they think they are.

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  15. fhqwhgads*

    If I heard someone say this ““I need to work on getting up my SQLs” which, like, perhaps that means troubleshoot a SQL query, but it’s so very hard to know.”
    I’d be wondering if he meant he needs to improve his SQL skills, or if he meant deploy a new SQL instance. But I’d also probably expect the answer to be neither and something else entirely, given his other linguistic choices.

    Given HR’s response about “degradation in performance”… were they unmoved by “his performance is currently bad”? And they’d only care about it being terrible now if it used to be good? Cuz wow they suck.

    Reply ↓
    1. Azure Jane Lunatic*

      I’d think deploying a new instance, but indeed, who knows.

      For “repointerize” — I imagine that some pointers (a data structure that is a bookmark to the real item, and vulnerable to being broken if anything about the real item changes) broke, and needed to be unborked. But understanding “repointerize” depends HEAVILY on knowing what a pointer is and that they’re prone to breaking, and why fixing that is such a tedious process.

      “Capacitize” — I admit I’m baffled by this one, but if I had to guess:
      * literally increase the capacity (probably storage space but maybe RAM) on something
      * take advantage of something that’s already being paid for (this one fits in with enabling some option or other)

      (I have a moderate technical background, and worked as an assistant to the UX department of a company that most laypeople have never heard of, but anyone who has spent more than fifteen minutes looking into how to manage your own data center has assuredly considered. Which role included taking notes on meetings where the UX folks asked data center people what they’d think if the software they were using daily should happen to change in this or that way.)

      Reply ↓
  16. Typity*

    This employee’s communication style is so interesting. It’s like a variation on malapropisms, but instead of coming out with a word that sounds similar to the one he intends, he grabs at passing syllables and piles them into wordlike configurations. It’s kind of fascinating (something I can say as someone who doesn’t have to work with him).

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  17. MsM*

    I fully support OP’s decision to just disengage from the problem, but I’m curious if “explain like I’m five” would work on this guy.

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    1. Generic Name*

      I am going to say that no, it wouldn’t work. If the dude resorts to using made up words to “explain” things, he doesn’t actually know what he’s talking about.

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  18. merida*

    This is so interesting… Are the made-up words and nonsense only in the employee’s technical work conversations, or part of everything he says? Would his response to “how was your weekend” or “how about that weather we’ve been having” make sense, or still include made-up words? Has he always communicated this way at this company? I’m just baffled and pondering, but that’s besides that point. Sounds like there are bigger issues at stake there.

    OP, may you go on to find a great and stable job far from this nonsense employee and incompetent HR! You got this!!

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  19. Seashell*

    If he’s using weird words while speaking to you one-on-one, you could say, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard the word ‘capacitize’. What does that mean?” If you ask about enough of his weird words, he might dial it back.

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  20. Milltown*

    These incomprecatable wordings must be so irrigating! It’s emiciating that other purple aren’t complaiting about it alswell!

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      1. Sharpie*

        There is a society for people who can’t say their worms properly… Look up the Two Ronnies’ Mispronunciation sketch, with the late and much lamented Ronnie Barker.

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  22. The largest eye roll*

    PleTHORa is an acceptable pronunciation in many areas and it seems you’ve mistaken a pet peeve of your own with the genuine issue of misunderstanding.

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    1. Seeking Second Childhood*

      Where? I’m all for descriptive linguistics but this wird is first-syllable accented in UK and US English according to every dictionary I’m checking.

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    2. Some Dude*

      The only place I’ve heard it pronounced pleTHORa is in YouTube videos. And those same people make me scratch my head at quite a few other pronunciations as well. I think there are just people who doesn’t use the words in every day speech and just go with their gut.

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      1. boof*

        I am suddenly reminded of a youtube video where they pronounced aluminum as “Al-u-MIN-e-uhm” (whereas I and most around me would say “AlU-min-um” – it took me quite a while to be sure he wasn’t talking about some kind of alloy I was unfamiliar with. I think the rest of the vid was great, and maybe that’s where they pronounce it normally (somewhere?) or he’d just never heard it out loud before. … of course for a long time I thought velociraptor was “veli-copter” because I read jurassic park before seeing the movie and didn’t really bother sounding out words much at that time XD (I was after all reading for fun and usually very fast). But to the OP, this is way more than a one-off and communication is kind of an essential workplace skill that it sounds like they are lacking – I’ve gotten lost in the updates what role the OP has with the employee – some kind of authority but not like, able to fire them I guess?

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        1. Carmen Acclaim*

          Ah yes, that’s how we pronounce Aluminium in Australia. Not sure about other commonwealth countries though.

          Reply ↓
    3. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

      The largest eye roll is in fact for you for cherry-picking a single example so you could be a snot to the LW instead of thanking them for updating us.

      Reply ↓
  23. TeapotNinja*

    This sort of thing is what dumb people do to appear smart. Or lazy people to appear being industrious.

    I would be incredibly annoyed and frustrated if I had to work with this person.

    Reply ↓
  26. Lucifer*

    I’m not going to armchair diagnose this guy because that’s pointless so I’ll just say: he’s either manipulating you so he can skate by doing subpar work OR he’s a straight up idiot (in the “some people are just … dumb you know??” way. Not everything needs to be pathologized). Or a little of both, which is probably the worst case scenario.

    Reply ↓
  27. Anna*

    I think the comments are going to be harsh on this guy so I want to say that this is not, by itself, an arrogant white dude thing, or a trying to sound smart thing. I managed someone who spoke quite similarly and was none of these things. Instead of technical terms, she would often use synonyms that she thought meant the same thing, but were completely incomprehensible. There were also other issues with her work, and I suspect she was neurodivergent in some way. She wasn’t arrogant or malicious, she was clearly trying very hard but still struggling. I felt bad for her. (I also left that company without getting a real resolution on this.)

    It sounds like there’s evidence this guy is not acting in good faith, but I want to say that the made-up words and lack of understanding are not by themselves signs of poor character, even if they are frustrating, and it is not kind to mock them.

    Reply ↓
  28. HigherEdEscapee*

    This reminds me very much of a long ago job in which I worked in publishing. A very kindly author, who had an odd way of speaking but was a native English speaker, kept using the word reflectivity in their text. Every phone call was a marathon and getting the text to production was generally a slog. I have a background in science and it was driving be bananas that the author’s intended meaning of the word, which was everywhere in the text was sort of like a portmanteau of reflection + activity. Not the definition I knew, “the reflective quality or power of a surface or material.”

    About 18 months after publication it turned out that the author had plagiarized large portions of their text. We had to pull it off of the market, tear up their contract, and fire them. We had put a lot of work into getting the text on the market and it absolutely wasn’t worth it. I hope LW finds a new job and puts this all behind them.

    Reply ↓
  29. Wreaths*

    “ our HR person said she “didn’t know if we actually looked at or kept background check information”

    Um WTF??? Maybe I’ve worked in compliance too long but hi, WTF???

    Reply ↓

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