There are very few things in this world that can strike fear into my heart. I am, after all, a bear. However, there is one specific sequence of pixels that instantly ruins my day: an email subject line written in all caps, preceded by the word [URGENT].
Emails marked “URGENT” are my ultimate weakness. They demand immediate physical movement. They demand mental processing. They demand that I leave my blanket fort, which is a clear violation of my boundaries.
Yesterday, Tom forced me to open my inbox. Sitting right at the top was an urgent message from a vendor. It was filled with terrifying corporate jargon. They wanted to “touch base.” They wanted to “synergize.” But worst of all, they wanted to “circle back.”
The Double-Edged Sword of “Circling Back”
Let me be clear: I actually love the phrase, “Let’s circle back to this later.” It is a beautiful, magical sentence. When you are stuck on a Zoom call with your camera off, and someone asks you a question that requires effort, you simply deploy those six words. It is the ultimate escape hatch. It means, “I do not want to deal with this right now, and if I am lucky, we will both forget about it by tomorrow.” Saying it feels great. It is the verbal equivalent of hitting the “Snooze” button on your entire career.
The problem is what happens after.
The Boomerang Effect
The tragedy of “circling back” is that it is a boomerang. You throw the problem away, and you feel a brief moment of peace. You eat a slice of cold pizza. You lie horizontally on the floor. Life is good.
But then, three days later, the problem returns. It hits you right in the face.
The vendor who agreed to “circle back” actually put a reminder in their calendar. They tracked you down. They followed up. They have returned to the circle, and now they expect you to be standing there waiting for them.
Translating the Jargon
Corporate jargon is just a polite way of threatening people with more work. If we were all honest, the emails would look very different.
- “Just bubbling this up to the top of your inbox” translates to: “I know you are ignoring me, and I am going to make it impossible for you to claim you didn’t see this.”
- “Let’s take this offline” translates to: “This meeting is already 40 minutes too long and I am hungry.”
- “Per my last email” translates to: “I have already answered this, and I am losing my patience.”
- “Let’s circle back” translates to: “I am kicking this can down the road, and I pray it falls into a storm drain before I have to look at it again.”
The Verdict
The next time someone sends you an URGENT email asking to circle back, I propose a new auto-reply for the modern workplace:
“Message received. I have decided not to participate. Let’s never circle back. Let’s walk away in a straight line and never speak of this again.”
Now, if you will excuse me, I have 412 unread messages and a nap that is severely behind schedule.
