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"Throwing shade," "on fleek" and "lit": these are just a few of the phrases Taco Bell execs are desperately trying to study like SAT vocabulary words so they can communicate with millennials.
They're so committed to learning this super secret language that they have a "Millennial Word of the Week" that's on display around their Irvine office and sent out to employees through email, according to the AP. The words are chosen by their employees who are in their 20s, which seems to be their target demographic. Millennials sure love their Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos at all hours of the day. (Actually, we do, too.)
Their word of the week reads like an Urban Dictionary definition. For example, "lit" was one of the words employees were taught, and the definition they had was the word is "used to describe a certain situation, person, place or thing as awesome/crazy or just 'happening' in general." And they apparently use the word in very company-relevant sentence examples, like "Taco Bell was so lit last night. I had to wait in line for 15 minutes before I could order."
It seems like it's pretty important to nail these words down since Taco Bell CEO Brian Niccol made the mistake of calling something "on cleek" instead of "on fleek" (meaning: on point) during his presentation at an investors meeting last year. OMG LOL.
May we suggest they also add "turnt," "YOLO" and "bae" to their millennial dictionary?