New Office Terminology

TERMS TO ADD TO YOUR VOCABULARY FOR THE 2001 OFFICE :

BLAMESTORMING - Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who is responsible.

SEAGULL MANAGER - A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps 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.

CLM - Career Limiting Move - Used among microserfs to describe ill-advised activity. Trashing your boss while he or she is within earshot is a huge CLM.

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 Bridget, 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, wired 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, Oppressive Mortgage.

SQUIRT THE BIRD: To transmit a signal to a satellite.

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.

TOURISTS: People who take training classes just to get a vacation from their jobs. Example: "We had three serious students in the class; the rest were just tourists."

GOING POSTAL: Euphemism for being totally stressed out, for losing it. Makes reference to the unfortunate track record of postal employees who have snapped and gone on shooting rampages.

CHIPS AND SALSA - Chips = hardware, salsa = software. i.e.: "Well, first we gotta figure out if the problem's in your chips or your salsa."

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.

IRRITAINMENT - Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The O.J. trials, Ally

McBeal, Monica Lewinsky, Survivor, Temptation Island, etc.

DEINSTALLED - Euphemism for being fired. Heard on the voice mail of a Vice President at a downsizing computer firm: "You have reached the number of a deinstalled vice president. Please dial our main number and ask the operator for assistance.

VULCAN NERVE PINCH - The taxing hand position required to reach all the appropriate keys for certain commands. For instance, the warm re-boot for a computer involves simultaneously pressing the Control key, the Alt key and the Delete key. Sometimes referred to as the "THREE-FINGERED SALUTE."

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."

A$$MOSIS - The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up