My CEO made us rewrite a whole press release because he didn't like the word 'utilize'

Last Tuesday, our team spent 8 hours drafting a press release about a new partnership. We got it approved by legal and the partner's comms team. Then my CEO reads it at 4pm and says he hates the word 'utilize' because it sounds too corporate. He made us rewrite the entire thing using only 'use' instead. That changed about 3 sentences max, but we had to redo the whole flow. By the time we finished, it was 9pm. Has anyone else had a boss fixate on one random word like that and blow up your timeline?

3 comments

3 Comments

juliagonzalez3d ago

The CEO just wanted to feel like he was CONTRIBUTING something important. I once had a client make me redo an entire logo because the font looked "too happy" for a dentist's office. Like, sorry a TOOTH doctor's branding shouldn't make people smile? That rewrite took me a full afternoon and I still had to bill them for it. Nothing makes you feel more like a cog in a machine than changing "utilize" to "use" for five hours straight. At least you can laugh about it now, even if your dinner was cold by the time you got home.

blairstone2d ago

Drove 20 miles to deliver a sandwich once because a guy insisted on "extra pickles" on the side. @juliagonzalez hit it.

the_susan2d ago

My buddy works in PR and his boss once made him rewrite a whole pitch deck because she had a thing about the word "innovative." Said it was overused and made them look lazy. So he had to go through 40 slides and swap it out for stuff like "new" or "fresh" or "different." Took him two days and the client never even noticed the change. He still gets annoyed every time he hears that word on a conference call.