Terms to add to your vocabulary in the office environment:
ASSMOSIS - The process by which some people seem to absorb success
and advancement by kissing up to the boss.
BLAMESTORMING - Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline
was missed or a project failed and who was responsible
SEAGULL MANAGER - A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps
over everything and then leaves.
SALMON DAY - The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream,
only to get screwed and die in the end.
CHAINSAW CONSULTANT - An outside expert brought in to reduce the
employee head count, leaving the brass with clean hands.
CLM (Career Limiting Move) - Used among microserfs to describe any
ill-advised activity such as trashing your boss while he or she is
within earshot.
ADMINISPHERE - The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above
the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often
profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed
to solve.
DILBERTED - To be exploited and oppressed by your boss. Derived from the
experiences of Dilbert, the geek-in-hell comic strip character.
"I've been dilberted again. The old man revised the requirements for the
fourth time this week."
FLIGHT RISK - Used to describe employees who are suspected of planning
to leave the company or department soon.
404 - Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404
Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located.
Used as in: "Don't bother asking him ...he's 404, man."
GENERICA - Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same
no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, subdivisions.
Used as in: "We were so lost in generica that I forgot what city we were in."
OHNO-SECOND - That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that
you've just made a BIG mistake.
PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE - The fine art of whacking the crap out of an
electronic device to get it to work again.
UMFRIEND - A sexual relation of dubious standing or a concealed intimate
relationship, as in "This is Bridget, my ... um ... friend."
BODY NAZIS - Hard-core exercise and weightlifting fanatics who look down
on anyone who doesn't work out obsessively.
CUBE FARM - An office filled with cubicles.
IDEA HAMSTERS - People who always seem to have their idea generators running.
MOUSE POTATO - The on-line, wired generation's answer to the Couch Potato.
PRAIRIE DOGGING - When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube
farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.
SITCOMs - What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them
stops working to stay home with the kids. Stands for Single Income, Two
Children, and Oppressive Mortgage.
SQUIRT THE BIRD - To transmit a signal to a satellite.
STARTER MARRIAGE - A short-lived first marriage that ends in divorce
with no kids, no property and no regrets.
STRESS PUPPY - A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.
SWIPED OUT - An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless
because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
TOURISTS - People who take training classes just to get a vacation
from their jobs. Example: "We had three serious students in the class;
the rest were just tourists."
TREEWARE - Hacker slang for documentation or other printed material.
XEROX SUBSIDY - Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace.
GOING POSTAL - Euphemism for being totally stressed out, for losing it.
Refers to the unfortunate track record of postal employees who have snapped
and gone on shooting rampages.
ALPHA GEEK - The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an
office or work group.
CHIPS AND SALSA - Chips = hardware, salsa = software. i.e.: "Well, first
we gotta figure out if the problem's in your chips or your salsa."
G.O.O.D. Job - A "Get-Out-Of-Debt" job. A well-paying job people take in
order to pay off their debts, one that they will quit as soon as they are
solvent again.
IRRITAINMENT - Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but
you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The O.J. trials were a
prime example.
DEINSTALLED - Euphemism for being fired. Heard on the voicemail of a
Vice President at a downsizing computer firm: "You have reached the
number of a deinstalled vice president. Please dial our main number
and ask the operator for assistance. Similar "Decruitment".
VULCAN NERVE PINCH - The taxing hand position required to reach all the
appropriate keys for certain commands. For instance, the warm re-boot
for a Mac II computer involves simultaneously pressing the Control key,
the Command key, the Return key and the Power On key.
YUPPIE FOOD STAMPS - The ubiquitous $20 bills spewed out of ATMs
everywhere. Often used when trying to split the bill after a meal: "We owe
$8 each, but all anybody's got are yuppie foodstamps."
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