New Workplace Terminoloy to Learn!

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


PRAIRIE DOGGING - When someone yells or drops something loudly in a "cube farm" (an office full of cubicles) and everyone's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.


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 - Printed computer software/hardware documentation.


CLM (Career Limiting Move) - Used among microserfs to describe ill-advised activity. Trashing your boss while he or she is within earshot is a serious CLM. (Also known as CEB - Career Ending Behavior)


OHNOSECOND - That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake. (See CLM)


ADMINISPHERE - The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the admini-sphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.


DILBERTED - To be exploited and oppressed by your boss. Derived from the experiences of Dilbert, the engineer in the job-from-hell comic strip character. "I've been dilberted again. The old man revised the specs for the fourth time this week."


SEAGULL MANAGER - A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, poops on everything, and then leaves.


SALMON WEEK - The experience of spending an entire week swimming upstream only to die, and someone else get the benefit.


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."


PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE - The fine art of whacking an electronic device *just right* to get it to work again.