BUZZ PHRASES THAT DESERVE THE DUST BIN By Peter Delevett Mercury News April 2, 2002 Last month, I asked readers to pick the most annoying buzz phrase in vogue in Silicon Valley. For starters, I suggested "at the end of the day" -- a bit of nonsense favored by tech investors to say things like, "At the end of the day, we decided selling pet food online was a really stupid idea." Readers weren't shy about sharing the phrases they wish would buzz off: "I am getting SO tired of hearing '24/7' all over the place. Why don't we all go back and speak in complete sentences again?" -- Jane P. "'First and foremost.' It's redundant and repetitive." -- Dennis M. "'Think outside the box.' We are sick of that phrase." -- Michele and George "'Tin-cupping.' As in, 'I tin-cupped a number of departments so we could pull enough money together to run a companywide program.'" -- Gary S. "'Productize,' 'monetize,' or any other terms that venture capitalists use." -- Adwait U. "'The reality is,' because it denotes any other view or opinion as a fantasy." -- Gary A. "'I don't disagree.' I first started hearing this phrase at a dysfunctional dot-com. It's weasel talk. The person is leaving themselves an out, so they can later recall that they didn't agree with what you said." -- David P. "Think Different." -- an anonymous Apple Computer employee. "'Net-net,' as in,"The net-net is that the model for selling pet food online was effective."The 'net' of something is the end result, so net-net really makes no sense." -- Doug W. "'Leverage,' as in, Pets.com didn't leverage the online pet food sales model well." -- Doug W., voting a second time. (Bad Doug.) "'Go-to-market strategy.' Wouldn't it be better to have a strategy that includes what happens AFTER you get to the market?" -- Bruce K. "Shift the paradigm." -- Michael P. "'Grow the business.' Grow is an intransitive verb; such verbs never take a direct object, therefore, you cannot 'grow' a business." -- Nancie G. "I'm tired of everything and everybody in the tech world being called a 'solution.'" -- Neil Then there is Scott W., who's irked by so many buzzwords that he couldn't pick just one: "'Having said that' . . . 'take it to the next level' . . . 'best of breed' . . . 'proactive' . . . 'agile' . . . 'going forward.'" You hope the guy doesn't bust a gasket.