Employee builds app to track how many times coworker says 'circling back' in meetings: 'Recently [he said it] 23 times in a 56 minute sync'

Corporate jargon is everywhere… we will be circling back for all eternity.

You all know that type of language. It's somewhere in between professional and friendly, and it has a way of sounding really hollow. We're putting a pin in it, we're synergizing, we're looping you in, and we're doing it all cross-functionally. It's a whole other language, and if you don't know how to speak it, it can feel like you're being left behind. But all of that jibber-jabber grates on your ears after some time. It's easy to feel powerless in a work environment- like you're being made to put up with all sorts of nonsense that you wouldn't tolerate on your own time. It's the sacrifice of the working person. But there are a few ways to make the day go by a little bit faster, and sometimes you need that. 

Office pranks can range from harmless to career-ending. You should be allowed to have a little bit of fun to make life more interesting, but there's not always a great way to do that. There is a fine line between pranking and being mean, and you should avoid the latter at all costs. You would hate to create a hostile work environment for anyone else, even if that person deserved to be called out. There are proper channels and alleys to deal with that kind of situation, and prank is not one of them. What the person did in this story, though, was somewhere in between.