playfulkitten - Funny Forwards


New Office Vocabulary

  • 404 - Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error messaage "404-URL Not Found," meaning that the requested page could not be located. Used as in, "Don't bother asking him... he's 404, man."
  • 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.
  • Alpha Geek - The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group.
  • 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.
  • Body Nazis - Hard-core exercise and weightlifting fanatics who look down on anyone who doesn't work out obsessively.
  • Career Limiting Move (CLM) - Used among microserfs to describe an ill-advised activity. Trashing your boss while he or she is within earshot is a serious CLM.
  • Chainsaw Consultant - An outside expert brought in to reduce the employee head count, leaving the brass with clean hands.
  • Cube Farm - An office filled with cubicles.
  • Flight Risk - Used to describe employees who are suspected of planning to leave the company or depart soon.
  • 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."
  • 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.
  • Idea Hamsters - People who always seem to have their idea generators running.
  • 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.
  • Mouse Potato - The online, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.
  • Ohno-Second - That miniscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a big mistake. [see CLM]
  • Percussive Maintenance - The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again. (A tried and true technique)
  • 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. (A truly hilarious sight!)
  • Salmon Day - The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.
  • Seagull Manager - A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps all over everything, and then leaves.
  • 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 Opressive Mortgage."
  • Starter Marriage - A short-lived first marriage that ends in divorce, 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.
  • Umfriend - A sexual relation of dubious standing or a concealed intimate relationship, as in "This is Dylan, my... um... friend."
  • 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."