New Words for the 90s

Blamestorming:

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

Body Nazis:

Hardcore exercise and weightlifting fanatics who look down on anyone who doesn't work out obsessively.

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, shits on everything and then leaves.

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.

Chainsaw Consultant:

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

Cube Farm:

An office filled with cubicles.

Idea Hamsters:

People who always seem to have their idea generators running.

Mouse Potato:

The online, 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.

WOOFs:

Well-Off Older Folks.

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. "We had three serious students in the class; the rest were just tourists."

Treeware:

Hacker slang for documentation or other printed material, such as books.

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."

Xerox Subsidy:

Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace.

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.

Alpha Geek:

The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group. "Ask Larry, he's the alpha geek around here."

Assmosis:

The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.

Cropdusting:

Surreptitiously passing gas while passing through a Cube Farm.

Chips and Salsa:

Chips=hardware, salsa=software. "Well, first we gotta figure out if the problem's in your chips or your salsa."

Flight Risk:

Used to describe employees who are suspected of planning to leave a company or department soon.

GOOD Job:

A "GetOutOfDebt" 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 a prime example.

Percussive Maintenance:

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

Uninstalled:

Euphemism for being fired. Heard on the voicemail of a vice president at a downsizing computer firm: "You have reached the number of an uninstalled vice president. Please dial our main number and ask the operator for assistance." See also Decruitment.

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."

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 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."

Ohnosecond:

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

Umfriend:

A sexual relation of dubious standing or a concealed intimate relationship, as in, "This is Dyan, my... um... friend."