NEW WORDS FOR THE NEXT CENTURY

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.

IDEA HAMSTERS
   People who always seem to have their idea generators  running.

MOUSE POTATO
   The on-line, 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.

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.

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

STRESS PUPPY
   A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whining.

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

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."

FLIGHT RISK
   Used to describe employees who are suspected
   of planning to leave a company or department soon.

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.

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.
   Bill Clinton's shameful video Grand Jury testimony is another.

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

UNINSTALLED
   Euphemism for being fired.
   Heard on the voice-mail of a vice president at a downsizing computer firm:
   "You have reached the number of an Uninstalled Vice President.
   Please dial our main number and ask the operator for assistance." >
   *(Syn: decruitment.)

VULCAN NERVE PINCH
   The taxing hand position required to reach all
   the appropriate keys for certain commands.
   For instance, the arm re-boot for a Mac II computer
   involves simultaneously pressing the Control key, the Command Key,
   the Return Key, and the Power On key.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 foodjoints, 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.

UMFRIEND
   A sexual relation of dubious standing
   or a concealed intimate relationship,
   as in "This is Dyan, my...um ... friend."