ISSUE: 198
"Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
-Dylan Thomas
POTPOURRI

The Irreverent MBA


• ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss, rather than by working hard.
• 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.
• SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.
• CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.
• 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.
• MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.
• SITCOMS: 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.
• STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiney.
• SWIPEOUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.

• XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace.
• 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 repeatedly whacking an electronic device to get it to work again.
• 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 to solve.
• 404: Someone who's clueless. (From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located.)
• GENERICA: Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, subdivisions.
• OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.
• WOOFYS: Well Off Older Folks.
• CROP DUSTING: Surreptitiously passing wind while walking thru a cube farm, then enjoying the sounds of dismay and disgust. Leads to PRAIRIEDOGING.
- Contributed by Susan Miles.


More in the section:
The Water Cooler

Read also previous issue' articles:
Bumper Stickers
Things Found Only in America
Devil in the Church
Generosity Begins at Home
Murphy's Other Laws
Some Interesting Facts



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