February 09, 2006
The New Office Speak for 2006
Where we all dream of being on any sort of workday....Kawaihae Sunset Big Island of Hawaii
Quite a while back I
published this post with jargon that shaped the corporate communication of the time. Well, here are some new ones, some of them are in questionable taste but this is life in the office Cube Farm
NEW WORDS FOR 2006:
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, poops on all ideas from the rank and file,and on everything else, 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 turn 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 the 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. The J-Lo and Ben wedding (or not) was a prime example - Michael Jackson, another.
13. PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the daylights 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.Im off to a corporate care and share meeting where I will strain my ears to hear a few of these choice ones...
