Ofice Vocabulary
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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.  
CHAINSAW CONSULTANT: An outside expert brought in to 
reduce the employee head count, leaving the brass with clean 
hands.  
CLM: Career Limiting Move. Used among micro-serfs to describe 
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.  
DILBERTED: To be exploited and oppressed by your boss. 
Derived from the experiences of Dilbert, the geek-hell-comic strip. 
"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. Used as in: "Don't bother asking him...he's a 
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 realize 
that you've just made a BIG mistake. Like making the selection that 
reformats your hard drive.  
PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the crap 
out of an electronic device to get it to work again.  
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.  
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.  
IDEA HAMSTERS: People who always seem to have their idea 
generators running.  
MOUSE POTATO: The online, wired, generation's answer to the 
Couch Potato.  
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.  
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."  
TREEWARE: Hacker slang for documentation or other printed 
material.  
XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from 
one's workplace.  
ALPHA GEEK: The most knowledgeable, technically proficient 
person in an office or work group.  
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 were prime examples.  
DE-INSTALLED: Euphemism for being fired. Heard on the 
voicemail of a Vice President at a downsizing computer firm: You 
have reached the number of a de-installed vice president. Please 
dial our main number and ask operator for assistance."  
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."  











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