You’ve Been in Corporate America Too Long When…

1. You ask the waiter what the restaurant’s core competencies are.

2. You decide to re-organize your family into a “team-based organization.”

3. You refer to dating as test marketing.

4. You can spell “paradigm.”

5. You actually know what a paradigm is.

6. You understand your airline’s fare structure.

7. You write executive summaries on your love letters.

8. Your Valentine’s Day cards have bullet points.

9. You think that it’s actually efficient to write a ten page presentation with six other people you don’t know.

10. You celebrate your wedding anniversary by conducting a performance review.

11. You believe you never have any problems in your life, just “issues” and “improvement opportunities.”

12. You calculate your own personal cost of capital.

13. You explain to your bank manager that you prefer to think of yourself as “highly leveraged” as opposed to “in debt.”

14. You end every argument by saying “let’s talk about this off-line.”

15. You can explain to somebody the difference between “re-engineering”, “down-sizing”, “right-sizing”, and “firing people’s asses.”

16. You actually believe your explanation in number 15.

17. You talk to the waiter about process flow when dinner arrives late.

18. You refer to your previous life as “my sunk cost.”

19. You refer to your significant other as “my Co-CEO.”

20. You like both types of sandwiches: ham and turkey.

21. You start to feel sorry for Dilbert’s boss.

22. You believe the best tables and graphs take an hour to comprehend.

23. You account for your tuition as a capital expenditure instead of an expense.

24. You insist that you do some more market research before you and your spouse produce another child.

25. At your last family reunion, you wanted to have an emergency meeting about their brand equity.

26. Your “deliverable” for Sunday evening is clean laundry and paid bills.

27. You use the term “value-added” without falling down laughing.

28. You ask the car salesman if the car comes with a white board and Internet connection.

29. You give constructive feedback to your dog.