Momnesia

Vocabulary for the Modern Office

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, shits over everything and then leaves.

Blowing your buffer: Losing your train of thought.

Salmon day: [A fave] The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.

Chainsaw consultant: An outside expert brought in to reduce the employee headcount, leaving the brass with clean hands.

CLM: Career-Limiting Move. Used among microserfs to describe illadvised 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.

Dilberted: To be exploited and oppressed by your boss. Derived from the experiences of Dilbert, the geek-in-hell comic strip character. "I've been dilberted again. The old man revised the specs for the fourth time this week."

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 Not Found", meaning that the requested document could not be located. "Don't bother asking him... He's 404, man."

Keyboard Plaque: The disgusting buildup of dirt and crud found on computer keyboards.

Ohnosecond: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.

Ercussive Maintenance: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.

Prairie Dogging: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a "cube farm" (an office full of cubicles) and everyone's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.

Umfriend: A sexual relation of dubious standing or a concealed intimate relationship, as in "This is Dale, 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 all owe $8 each, but all anybody's got is yuppie food stamps."