So, businesses love hosting events! But they often name those events ironically. Sometimes even in an Orwellian manner.

Anyone following the Starbucks union drive probably read about this. According to the coverage, Starbucks held mandatory ‘listening sessions.’ In theory, a company holds these sessions to hear feedback from its workers. In practice, and in the Starbucks case, companies use them for propaganda sessions.

That’s a slap in the face, but it’s hardly unusual. That’s how many companies play it. They hold propaganda sessions and call them ‘listening sessions.’ They hold lectures and call them ‘town halls.’ Normally a town hall implies some kind of back and forth between leaders (or politicians) and staff (or voters). Not so in corporate world!

Why does this happen? Sometimes, as in the case of Starbucks, it’s probably so a company can make itself look better. At least to the public, but perhaps to its employees. But often it comes from much more ‘ordinary’ forces in the corporate world. Companies create a (pseudo) intellectual veneer by giving their lectures fancy names like ‘town halls.’ And then there’s the fact that corporate HR is often full of people who simply have no idea what the words mean.

So they just use whichever word stands out as trendy.

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