As you sit at your desk in the cube farm (an office filled with cubicles) multislacking (doing multiple non-work related things at the same time), some 404 (clueless; as in error message, “404 Not Found”) manager from the adminisphere (organizational layers above the rank and file that makes decisions that are often inappropriate or irrelevant) peeks his head in to ask where the alpha geek (most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in the work group) in the next cube has gone.
Welcome, to corporate America and the new language of the era. Slang has always been a part of our everyday conversations, even in business. Look at the use of it in this speech from the 1988 Hollywood hit “Die Hard” when an employee, Ellis, attempts to negotiate with the “terrorists.
“Hey, business is business. You use a gun, I use a fountain pen, what’s the difference? To put it in my terms, you’re here on a hostile takeover and you grab us for some greenmail but you didn’t expect a poison pill was gonna be running around the building. Hans, baby…I’m your white knight.”
Even though it was twenty years ago, you can still hear these terms in use today. However, American slanguage is constantly evolving, so that means you need to be on your toes. To test your knowledge, see if you understand what’s going on in this scenario.
Your click and mortar needs an angel to avoid going the way of the dot.bomb, otherwise the chainsaw consultant is going to suggest to your seagull manager that he uninstall the office ghost along with a bunch of the open-collar workers. Now you don’t really care because you’re a flight risk not a SITCOM and this is just a GOOD job where everyone is constantly blamestorming anyway, and since you’re not a stress puppy, you decide to kick back and ego surf. After all, it’s bis cas fri.
For those of you who are not quite sure about all the lingo, here are the definitions in the order they appear:
Click and mortar: Brick and mortar with Internet.
Angel: Business investor.
Dot.bomb: dot.coms that failed.
Chainsaw Consultant: Outside expert brought in to reduce the employee head count, leaving the top brass with clean hands.
Seagull Manager: Manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps over everything and then leaves.
Uninstall: Being fired.
Office Ghost: An employee who maintains a position at a company despite the fact that all of his job duties have been reassigned to other employee, either due to the ghost’s own design or through company restructuring.
Open-Collar Workers: People who work at home or telecommute.
Flight Risk: Employees suspected of planning to leave a company or department soon.
SITCOM: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage.
GOOD job: A well-paying “Get-Out-Of-Debt” job taken only to pay off debts.
Blamestorming: A group discussion of why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible.
Stress Puppy: A person who thrives on being stressed-out and whiny.
Egosurf: Scanning the Net for one’s own name.
Bis cas fri: Business casual Friday.
Thanks to InnocentEnglish for the collection of slang. For funny misuses of the English language as well as more slanguage, visit them at www.InnocentEnglish.com.
