Everyday Office Jargon · Managing Director level

"Screw the pooch"

"Screw the pooch" means to make a serious mistake or badly mishandle something, often in a visible or consequential way.

Say this instead: mess up badly

How "Screw the pooch" shows up at work

This one lives in the vocabulary of blunt senior leaders who prefer color over corporate polish. It shows up in post-mortems and private Slack channels, rarely in formal documentation. Its directness is the point.

Buzzword

We really screwed the pooch on the rollout and need to own it with the client.

Plain English

We badly mishandled the rollout and need to own that with the client.

Corporate Rank: Managing Director · Category: Everyday Office Jargon

Stop sounding like the buzzword.

Buzzkill highlights "Screw the pooch" and 634 other buzzwords in Gmail and LinkedIn, and rewrites them to plain English in one click. Free to try, 100% local.

Add to Chrome, free

More Everyday Office Jargon: 30,000 ft. View · 800-pound gorilla · A day late and a dollar short · A lot on my plate · Above my pay grade · Ace in the hole

All Everyday Office Jargon · The full library · What's your Corporate Rank?