Subject: Corporate Buzz Words
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 all
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.
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.
Chainsaw Consultant - An outside expert brought in to reduce the employee
head count, leaving the brass with clean hands.
Career Limiting Move (a.k.a. CLM) - Used among microserfs to describe an
ill-advised activity. Trashing your boss while he or she is within earshot
is a serious CLM.
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.
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-URL Not Found," meaning that the requested web page 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 Dylan, 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 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".
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.
Alpha Geek - The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an
office or work group.
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.
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 food stamps."
