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.