Essential vocabulary additions for the workplace (and
elsewhere):
1. BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a
deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
2.
SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on
everything, and then leaves.
3. ASSMOSIS: The process by which some
people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss
rather than working hard.
4. SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an
entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the
end.
5. CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.
6. 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.
7. MOUSE
POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch
potato.
8. SITCOMs: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage.
What Yuppies get into when they have children and one of them stops
working to stay home with the kids.
9. STRESS PUPPY: A person who
seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.
10. SWIPEOUT: An ATM
or credit card that has been rendered useless because magnetic strip is worn
away from extensive use.
11. XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free
photocopies from one's workplace.
12. IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and
media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop
watching them.
13. PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the
crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
14.
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.
15. 404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error
Message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested site could not be
located.
16. GENERICA: Features of the American landscape that are
exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip
malls, and subdivisions.
17. OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of
time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake. (Like after
hitting send on an email by mistake.)
18. WOOFS: Well-Off Older
Folks.
19. CROP DUSTING: Surreptitiously passing gas while passing
through a Cube Farm.
