I used to work for a jersey manufacturer. Sometimes there would be subtle differences in the graphics on the left and right sleeves, but sometimes not. This would cause confusion in the manufacturing process and we’d end up with the “left graphics” on the right sleeve and “right graphics” on the left sleeve.
To eliminate this problem, I implemented a diagram: A head and arms shown in profile to point out the difference between left and right. To exaggerate the profile, I gave the round head a black pompadour and muttonchops. Thus, the diagram and eventually the entire condition of “having sleeve graphics that were not interchangeable” became known by the single term: “Elvis.”
The diagrams were kept on file by the manufacturing department in “The Big Book of Elvis.” A memo could include the message: “Please note: This has Elvis” or “Note: No Elvis.”
The term “Elvis” is still used by the company, though I left ages ago.
We called it “an industry term,” but it was unique to our company.
Not sure if this was unique to the place, but I haven’t run across it anywhere else . . .
I used to work for a printing company in the prepress department. (Printing geeks, I’ve simplified this for the masses.) Our “flats” (sheets of film that carried the image for making plates, or taped-together assemblies of individual pages of film) were generally 4 pages (for newspapers) or 8 pages (for catalogs, directories, etc.). Some jobs, because of page count or layout reasons, had to have one section that ran only half a flat, with only 2 or 4 pages. For some reason, this short sheet (and its corresponding half-roll of paper on the press) was called a “dinky.” Don’t know why. My husband worked in printing at various companies for 20 years, and he never heard this term used anywhere else.
For some reason the word “dinky” always elicited sniggering. So did another term that didn’t come up very often. Many jobs had a base flat with overlays to separate colors. Some jobs had several bases for different sections, each with their own overlay. And a few really complex jobs had a base for the entire job that was used in combination with another “base” flat and overlays too. That “überbase” flat was called, of course, the “master base.”
“Master base” – tee-hee. We couldn’t say it often enough.
I doubt this is unique to my workplace, but I hadn’t heard it til I got here. Anytime something is wrong, my co-workers say it’s ‘dorked up’. Somehow, I doubt it’s a formal engineering term. At first, I thought it was just something my supervisor liked to say, but then I realized everyone on the floor says it. I have thus far resisted assimilation. Not sure how long I can hold out, though.
A former boss had been the Zoning Administrator of Biloxi, Mississippi. Whenever he came up with a new interpretation of the zoning ordinance and he prefaced it by saying “When I was in Biloxi…” it became known as “a Biloxi Rule.”
A former co-worker was from the extreme southwest corner of Virginia and had a very thick accent. We were reviewing a site plan and I noticed something that I couldn’t readily identify. I asked him what it was and he said it was “a whale lot.” I had no idea what he was talking about so I said “Jonathan, what is a ‘whale lot?’” He replied, “You know, a lot where they put the whale.” Still confused, I asked him (sheepishly), “Uh, what’s a whale?” His reply, “You know, a hole in the ground that has a pump in it for getting water. A whale.” He was saying “Well lot” (the property had a separate parcel for locating the water system) and I couldn’t for the life of me understand him. From then on, if something was around the office was lost, it was “on the whale lot.”
I’m working in the tech sector this summer and people here say “hosed up.” This too, is not exactly a technical term. I have never heard this expression before in my life. How can a company have a regional dialect? I absolutely refuse to incorporate it into my speech.
A stage manager I used to work with was baffled one day when a technician up on a ladder asked her: “Hey, can you toss me up a margie?”
She had no idea what the hell he was talking about, but went over to his tool box to see if she could decipher it… Nope.
“What the heck is a margie?”
Technician: “Huh? Oh, sorry. It’s a wing nut.”
Apparently, about 15 years before, there had been a stage manager named Marjorie. When Marjorie was tired or impatient, she would often stand on the stage with her hands on her hips and look up at the lights. The hand-on-hips posture became indellibly associated with Marjorie. A tall, thin woman, Marjorie looked like… well, a wing nut screwed on to the end of a bolt.
Hence, they started referring to wing nuts as “marjories” which over time, was shortened to “margies.” It is still used today by technicians working in that theatre and that theatre only.
Mrs. FtG has worked at a variety of hospitals, which seem to originate a fair number of terms. (I’m a computer geek and we have a lot of our terms, but they tend to not be localized.) At one DO hospital she worked at, well, a lot of patients didn’t leave by the front door. The phrase for a person dying became “They went to the big <hospital name> in the sky.” A lot of stuff like that.
I used to be a host at a restaurant in Atlanta. Seating people, etc. One host would be at the front door taking names, and the other would be in back, seating people, busing tables, etc. The two would have walkie-talkies to communicate. When the front host needed to know how many tables were open, he/she would ask for “an all-day.” No idea why, but an all-day was the term for a listing of how many tables of various sizes were available in the restaurant.
My current job uses terms like Vinnie, packets, buckets, promoting material to core, and a mysterious group called “the salmon.” I work on a Web site, so we’re getting pretty metaphorical here.
One day, he was late because his car died completely (IIRC, the engine fell out). Another friend, in the process of saying that Vic was “Dicked by Fate,” slipped and said “Vicked by fate.”
Now, when things go bad for any of us, we’ve been “Vicked.” The “by fate” thing is understood.
Also, another company I worked for had the following shorthand for “I quit! (but not really).” It was, “I’m going to my car.”
The archdemon I worked for briefly in Hell had no life. Well, he did, I guess, but it was a couple hundred miles across the state and he only visited it on weekends. Apparently he knew he wasn’t going to have this job long enough to make it worth moving his entire family. Anyway … as a result of having no life during the week, he would work 16-18 hour days. He arrived at work sometime around 8 a.m. like the rest of us and was well known to still be in the offices, roaming around, doing things that he should have left for his staff to do, until well after midnight. I caught him more than once in my cube after 11 p.m., looking through my inbox for things he could “help” me with.
Several of my colleagues went through an extremely brief period of unspoken mutual agreement before we settled on what to call it when we came in at 8:00 to find that something had been FUBARed the night before. We’d nod knowingly at each other and say …
Perpstah
This is what we call the people who commit credit card fraud against their family members. It comes from a call I had years ago. The customer’s sister used her social security number to get a credit card for herself.
The woman kept wailing “But she’s my sistah! Why would she do this? I can’t believe my sistah did this” (She was from Boston, BTW)
In the Aircraft Maintenance World (my workplace) CANN … as in to “cannibalize” - steal a part from one aircraft for another. “I CANN’ed a oil pump from the #1 engine.” It took me a while to get used to “Cannibalizing” things.
I’ve coined one term and migrated another from one part of the country to my current workplace. These are techie terms as I work in PC and systems support.
The migrated one: “Golden Drive” - means once a computer has the OS and all apps and everything is just so, it gets imaged and saved onto a spare hard drive (the Golden Drive) with other images on it. It was a reference to when a game “goes gold” and is burned onto a gold disc. Co-workers use this term regularly now and confuse the hell out of fellow techs at sister properties when explaining our process to them.
My original: “George-Jetsoned” - one of my talents is automating a process that used to require humans to do it into a one that can run at a scheduled time and be completely hands-off. This may involve VB macros, DOS batch files, or some other sundry built-in macro programming language. When I can get a process down to pushing a button and sitting back to watch it run on it’s own, it’s “George-Jetsoned”. I once nearly George-Jetsoned myself right out of a job.