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Sent to me by a friend still toiling in the media vineyard.

New Words for the Twenty-first Century Workplace
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 on everything, and then leaves.

CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.

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.

SQUIRT THE BIRD: To transmit a signal to a satellite.

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."

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.

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

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

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

YUPPIE FOOD STAMPS: The ubiquitous $20 bills spewed out of ATMs everywhere. Often used when trying to split the bill after a meal, "We each owe $8, but all anybody's got are yuppie food stamps."

SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.

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."

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.


#48671 11/25/01 03:50 PM
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wow, a memorable list and a clever one! Thanks for the little education. Wish I had some in exchange, but I do have, at least, a story about an orangutang:

Several years back I took a group of school children to D.C. to visit the zoo. There we saw an orangutang exhibition in which we witnessed an orangutang learning how to read symbols from a touch-screen computer. If the organgutang could correctly match a picture of a certain type of fruit with a symbol for the fruit, it would receive an edible reward. The orangutang had mastered many symbols in its reading vocabulary, and we were impressed. But most impressive were the times the orangutang chose the incorrect symbol, thereby receiving no edible reward. In such instances, the orangutang would commence beating upon the huge touch-screen of the computer. It was one of the funniest sights I've ever seen yes, I've lived a sheltered life, though I'm not an orangutang--beast meeting language and technology, then reverting to bestial instincts when the dadburned thing wouldn't work.

Now I've got a word for what the orangutang was accomplishing: percussive maintenance.

Best regards,
DubDub




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Great list! Thanks. 404's been brought up before, but I was too clueless to know what it meant...

Now: wow, a memorable list and a clever one! Thanks for the little education. Wish I had some in exchange, but I do have, at least, a story about an orangutang
Well, now, DoubleDub, there's a logical follow-up if ever I saw one...

I can identify with the term generica, and I imagine CK can, too. On a recent trip out of town, I saw block after block, all of the same stores we have here.

tsuwm, I homage you by acknowledging that you are our alpha geek. [irony e] Anyone who doesn't get the irony, feel free to ask.

Y'all know, we never DID settle on an icon for irony, did we?




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I was thinkin' tsuwm would be our *omega geek, but my patience seems to *be askew.

Jackie - Good to see you changed your name back. Hi, WO'N


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Jackie - Good to see you changed your name back.

No,no,no, musick!...take another look around. Our sweet Jackie never has to be anybody but herself! Who else could she be? Viewing Another Missing...(there's a little clue in that)


#48675 11/26/01 01:29 AM
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orangutan from the Malay/Indonesian for jungle/forest person.

orangutang would mean person in debt. (utang = debt)

Bingley


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Our sweet Jackie never has to be anybody but herself! Who else could she be? Viewing Another Missing...(there's a little clue in that)
Why, thank you, Sweet WO'N! But, aren't you having kind of a reversal?






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Thank you, wow - a truly ecucational list. I particularly relate to "percussive maintenance," which I have used for many years; long before becoming involved with the magical abacus. The most often used item in my motor maintenance kit was a four-pound lump hammer.

"Generica" is common in the UK as well; the high street of any town is virtually identical to that of any other. The very few that have remained individual are well visited, and are able to charge higher prices.

My own contribution to the list is one in common use over here, "MUSHROOM MANAGEMENT," which is where the bosses keep you in the dark and feed you on a dialy basis with large quantities of bull-shit.


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Thank you, wow - a truly ecucational list. I particularly relate to "percussive maintenance," which I have used for many years; long before becoming involved with the magical abacus. The most often used item in my motor maintenance kit was a four-pound lump hammer.

"Generica" is common in the UK as well; the high street of any town is virtually identical to that of any other. The very few that have remained individual are well visited, and are able to charge higher prices.

My own contribution to the list is one in common use over here:-
"MUSHROOM MANAGEMENT," which is where the bosses keep you in the dark and feed you on a daily basis with large quantities of bull-shit.


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MOUSE POTATO: The online, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.

I've always thought of them as MONITOR LIZARDS


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