Corporate Buzz Words

New Corporate Buzz Words for the 90's

• Blamestorming: Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
• Body Nazis: Hard-core exercise and weight-lifting fanatics who look down on anyone who doesn't work out obsessively.
• Seagull Manager: A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, and then leaves.
• 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.
• 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 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.
• 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.
• Chips and Salsa: Chips = hardware, Salsa = software. "Well, first we gotta figure out if the problem is 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 "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 a prime example.
• Percussive Maintenance: The fine art of attacking 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.
• Vulcan Nerve Pinch: The taxing hand positions required to reach all the appropriate keys for commands. For instance, the warm re-boot for a Mac II computer involves simultaneously pressing the Control Key, the Command key, the Return key and the Power On key.