DEFINITIONS FROM A CORPORATE CULTURE

(Lifted from Grin Light, SUNSTAR WEEKEND, Jan. 2, 2007)

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

2. SEAGULL MANAGER – A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.

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

4. CUBE FARM – An office filled with cubicles.

5. IDEA HAMSTRESS – People who always seem to have their idea generators running.

6. MOUSE POTATO – The on-line wired generation’s answer to couch potato.

7. SITCOM – (Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage) What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids.

8. STARTER MARRIAGE – A short-lived first marriage that ends in divorce with no kids, no property and no regrets.

9. STRESS PUPPY – A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.

10. SWIPED OUT – An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.

11. XEROX SUBSIDY – Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one’s workplace.

12. ALPHA GEEK – The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person inn an office or work group.

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

14. 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.

15. PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE – The fine art of whacking the heck out of an electronic device to get it to work again.

16. 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.

17. DILBERTED – To be exploited and oppressed by your boss. Derived from the experiences of Dilbert, the geek-in-hell comic strip.

18. 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.”

19. GENERICA – Features of a 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 I forgot what city we were in.”

20. OHNOSECOND – That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you’ve just made a BIG mistake.