Essential Words for the Work-Place Vocabulary
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 on everything, and then leaves.
ASSMOSIS.
The process by which people seem to absorb success and advancement by sucking up to the boss rather than working hard.
SALMON DAY.
The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die.
CUBE FARM.
An office filled with cubicles.
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. (This also applies to applause from a promotion because there may be cake.)
MOUSE POTATO.
The on-line, wired generation’s answer to the couch potato.
SITCOMs.
Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids or start a “home business”.
STRESS PUPPY.
A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.
XEROX SUBSIDY.
Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one’s workplace.
PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE.
The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
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. This is often affiliated with the dreaded “administrivia” - needless paperwork and processes.
404
Someone who’s clueless. From the World Wide Web error message “404 Not Found,” meaning that the requested document could not be located.
OHNOSECOND.
That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you’ve just made a BIG mistake (e.g. you’ve hit ‘reply all’).