Report and idioms

Idioms:
go belly up - a project goes wrong or fails

rat race - people who compete for success in business or in a career

turkey trot - the practice of transferring a difficult, incompetent or non-essential employee
from one department to another
people churner - a bad employer with a reputation for losing talented staff

an ohnosecond - a sudden moment that you realise you have made a terrible mistake
a dogsbody - when you do a lot of different types of work in an office for very low pay
sickie - when you are pretending to be sick not to go to work

work rage - employee gets very angry at work because of something bad or unpleasant that
happens

out of the loop - an employee is deliberately or accidently excluded from decision-making

processes

a cushy number - work that offers the same money for less effort than another similar job
get the boot - to be dismissed from the job

pencil-whip - when you criticize someone in writing

bird’s-eye view - a general or broad view of a problem as a whole (which does not go into
details)
eye service - the lazy practice of working only when a supervisor is present and able to see
you
mushroom job - a job that is unpleasant

Mickey Mouse job - job that is silly, trivial and unimportant

swing the lead - to pretend to work

lemon - a new product that has some major defects

Memo
one page

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 header (logo, date, to, from, subject) + body (in the introduction repeat the subject, you
can use bullet points, Should you have any questions…)

no personal forms

Report:
similar to the thesis

why are you doing it, what is the purpose, what do I have because of this, what does it
mean

Definition:
- to give boss information about a topic, collective analysis of something - communicating
information that can be acted upon, a key part of decision-making process
- for top managers and supervisors, management - decision makers of the business
- answer the question, solve a problem, analyze and evaluate it, make suggestions

Structure

executive summary - a summary for the executive, manager,decision maker - quick first
pass, condensed form, similar to an abstract
introduction <- abstract similar
body - decision making, identify problems, background, review information (literature),
analysis and evaluation (comparing alternatives), discussion and finishing (often a table)
recommendations - practical actionable items, the most important part
tone formal, not in the first person

💡 1. executive summary
2. intro - background, aims
3. methodology - how you gathered data
4. findings - a) introduce the section (this section is devoted to… etc); b) refer to
the data (can be tables, graphs etc); c) report the most significant findings (what is
the answer to my purpose, what has been established), d) interpret the findings
(the most complex; describe specific data that you analyzed; be specific, discuss
the data)e) claim (indicate the relationship of your data to other contexts, this is
the main - with references to our results we can say that…)
5. conclusion
6. recommendations

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