Ben Schott

And there's some English.

So, for example, the word G, the G is the customer.

And one of the diamond dealers I talked to talked about the G. And then another one said, oh, well, do you know about Kitty with the G?

So Kitty with the G is something they'd say to one of their colleagues.

They say, hey, Kitty with the G, which means talk to the guy.

Don't let him leave the shop because I've got to go and check something in the back.

so that's great and armed with that i go to another dealer who says oh well if you know about kitty with the g do you know about sherry the g and sherry the g means get this guy out of here it's like this guy's an idiot sherry the g get him out of here and that all came from this single term g that i then kind of zigzagged from diamond dealer to diamond dealer building up this composite and you really get a sense of how they think about customers

from the language they use.

Or why?

Most of them, I think, are designed in order for people to sort of communicate quickly.

So it's really about speed and efficiency and esprit de corps.

So, for example, doctors and nurses.

And some of that is just for speed.

Some of that is to...

communicate politely in front of a patient.

So you might say query mitotic lesion rather than saying query cancer, because cancer is a very scary word.

And if you don't know what it is, you might use euphemism or a technical term that only other medics will know.

And some of them are designed to sort of create an esprit de corps in a dark, difficult situation.

So sometimes it's about being in the weeds and overwhelmed and like black humor and dark comic terms are a way to sort of bring people together.

Well, there's this book that I saw as a schoolchild, and it was written in 1959.