NEW WORDS IN 2006 -- Essential additions for the workplace 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 some people seem to absorb success and
advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than by working hard.
SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream
only to get screwed and die in the end.
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.
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.)
STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and
whiny.
SWIPEOUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because
the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but
you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The Anna Nicole show or
the Bachelor is a prime example.
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.
404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message
"404 Not Found" (meaning that the requested document, like the person's
brain, could not be located.)
GENERICA: Features of the North American landscape that are exactly
the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls,
subdivisions.
OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that
you've just made a BIG mistake.
WOOFYS: Well Off Older Folks.
CROP DUSTING: Surreptitiously farting while passing through a cube
farm, then enjoying the sounds of dismay and disgust. Leads to PRAIRIE
DOGGING.