Onboarding and Re-onboarding

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Clarissa

September 17, 2021

“Have you prepared onboarding packages for your lecturers?” an administrative asks.

“No, what’s an onboarding package?” I ask.

After a long, torturous discussion, I discover that we are talking about welcome packages that I obviously had prepared.

“Why don’t we keep calling them welcome packages?” I suggest.

“Because we need to differentiate between onboarding packages and re-onboarding packages for people who are completely new and those who have worked for us before.”

“And how are they different?”

“Umm… well, I don’t know.”

I love the English language, and it hurts to see it tortured like this.

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5 responses to “Onboarding and Re-onboarding”

cliff arroyo

September 17, 2021

“re-onboarding packages”

Wouldn’t “welcome back packages” sound better?

If you hate seeing English mangled then stay away from EU documents… they specialize in formulations that are simultaneously hideously ugly and semantically opaque…

Also I remember official Spanish versions of things in the US were often horrible and unidiomatic (separate rant).

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1. Avi
  
  September 17, 2021
  
  @cliff arroyo
  Yes, EU English is particularly awful, an all-round harrowing experience. Moreover, the irony is that, after Brexit, the percentage of native English speakers in the EU is – get ready for this: 1% ! There are more speakers of Danish than of English!
  [Full disclosure: I did pass the test to enter the Translation and Interpretation service at the EU but in the end I decided to accept a teaching position. So glad I didn’t join the insufferable Eurocracy]
  
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methylethyl

September 17, 2021

Sounds too much like waterboarding.

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CRC

September 17, 2021

People in the past whose brains hadn’t yet been addled by radiation, ideology and lies like nearly everyone’s these days would probably call these “welcome” and “welcome back” packages.

You know, a “welcome back pack” – see how it rhymes? That’s poetic, a hint of that beauty deep down things that these demoniacs despise.

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1. Clarissa
  
  September 17, 2021
  
  This is probably off-topic but it reminds me how in Quebec the tax you pay when you buy a house is called “welcome tax.” It sounds like mockery but it just so happened that the Minister who created the tax had Beinvenue as his last name.
  
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