In the Wheel, Don says, “Bringing in business is the key to your salary, your status, and your self-worth”.

And later, Pete gets in Don’s face with his news about landing the Clearasil account, and closes with, “Self-worth and status. You said it”.

Self-worth seemed a little 1970’s/1980’s to my ear, a little me-generation (’70’s) or even the 12-step recovery years (late ’80’s early ’90’s) but I couldn’t pin it down. According to what I could find, it is 1960 plausible. Technically. Just barely.

Now certainly I have observed ‘corporate speak’ to eventually bleed into the streets. Who doesn’t know what being on the same page means? So perhaps Weiner is thinking that this expression got its start in the board room. Perhaps I could give Mr. W. a little more credit… perhaps his research reaches past dictionary.com (where my research stopped) and he actually knows this to be historically true.

But self-worth just doesn’t sound like something that originated in a conference room or ad agency. And so I remain skeptical.