What slang have you picked up at work?
At my first job, when there was no overtime, they called it “Eight and Skate” for an 8-hour shift.
If you handed someone a crap job with no explanation at the end of your shift, that was called “Dump and Run.”
What odd things do you say on the job?
Every morning when I come into the office, I greet Tommy Two-Ties with a hearty “Bee-yatch!” to which he invariably replies “F***-face!”.
Dunno why, but this amuses us.
Actually, that may not qualify as ‘office slang’ but there ya go.
As the “thank-god-for-nepotism” nephew/employee in Astroboy14’s virtual job, I haven’t picked up any slang at all. In fact, whenever I seem to involve myself in conversations about 3 seconds before they end. Damn my timing.
Well, nepotismic nephew/employee/flunkie Spritle, I hereby endow you with your first Office Slang: “Juliebitch”: (noun) a small, worthless piece of filth; a worthless and insignificant annoyance (after the ex-girlfriend of a college buddy).
Example sentences:
*“Hey! Who put the juliebitch on my monitor, dammit! I just cleaned it!”
*“We can’t sign this contract until we get the juliebitch worked out.”
*“I had to clean the mouse ball. There was some juliebitch on it.”
*“Hey! I found some juliebitch in my belly-button!”
*“I’m friggin’ broke! I reached in my pocket, and all I found was juliebitch!”
*“Everyday it’s juliebitch after juliebitch! I need a vacation!”
*“The CD won’t play; there some juliebitch on it.”
Now, go forth and sland some more!
Damn juliebitch! And I previewed, too!
That should be “go forth and slang some more”
:mad:
Some general computer industry terminology:
When a system is all screwed up, it is “hosed up”, or “it’s tanked”.
“That stupid Solaris box is all hosed up. The OS tanked.”
When all forces seem to conspire against you, it’s referred to as a “clusterfuck”.
“The customer is pissed, the vendor is late, we haven’t come up with a patch yet, it’s just one giant clusterfuck.”
A person who has no clue as to what they are doing is “a lost ball in high weeds”.
Finally, one of those quaint little Southernisms for when things are going well: “Hell yeah, we’re shittin’ in high cotton now!”
When people show up at the job site but refuse to do any actual work, it’s called a “wobble.” This refers to an organized action but not a strike, just an entire group deliberately not doing any work. I’ve also heard this called an “Italian strike.”
“We might have trouble today - rumour is the welders are going to wobble.”
We always had to “Touch Base” with our managers.
Made me cringe, too much like Touching Cloth for my liking!
Got some interesting slang from a frind of mine who is a Mortician.
“Jolly Greens” are the ripe ones, also known as “De-coms”.
“Toggoms” are the nasty wriggly things.
“Bloaters” you want to stay away from.
“Floaters” have been dragged out the river.
“Jumpers” - pretty obvious.
Cant remember any more right now, nevermind.
Coca-Cola, for reasons best left unexplained, is known as Orange Whip.
Lots of other people use Rock Star Parking, but that was definitely in full effect at my last job.
And lastly, “Don’t put it all on me” and “I been sittin’ here, waitin’”, thanks to a Tenacious D mp3 that made the rounds. Both phrases are to be used when A) you don’t want anymore assignments, and B) someone is taking too long to complete their part.
We also use “Rock Star Parking”.
If you need to go correct someone, or if someone is acting like an ass, or if someone is getting to big for their position, you have to go “Drop the Shit-hammer” on them. I like that one.
Blues Brothers perhaps? John Candy as the cop ordering orange whips?
At my office (finance) we use “shit the bed”; i.e, “That trade really shit the bed”-didn’t do any good, was executed poorly, etc
“I don’t make the fries, man”-don’t give me shit, I just work here
and the all-time favourite, “screwing the pooch” to indicate a day spent wasting time
When I worked in a restaurant we used the phrase “In the weeds.”
This translates in to busy or way behind. It was often used by servers when they had way too many tables and couldn’t keep up with all of them.
From Tech Support:
PEBCAK: Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard
We have “The Happy Fun Place” - used to be “Hell”, but management overheard and got mad at us (something about not promoting the proper upbeat attitude - go figure). That’s where the developers and consultants hang out. The “Rubber Room” is where the DBA’s are, and “Land of the Lost” refers to the Executive floor. Funny, we haven not yet been ordered to change that one yet…
“Puppy-poking”, or “listening to the puppy scream” are alternates for screwing the pooch. “Silly code” - oddly enough, this is not screwups by the coders, or a euphemism for bureaucratese - it means Where Is That, from CLLI (Common Language Location) code. Instead of asking for what community or something like that (face it, despite being born 'n raised in the Arctic, most of us cannot pronounce Tsiigehtchic or Lutsel’ke properly), we just ask for the silly. Or give out the silly, for that matter.
“Dilbert moment” is pretty much self-explanatory, no?
“Stress puppy” is someone who enjoys stress (and whining about it) so much that if the stress levels start to go down, they go create some.
“Blamestorming”. When a project/assignment fails, we all get to go to meetings where they try to pin somebody with the responsiblity.
That may be the root of it, but it went much much deeper. We’re a weird group.
At my old job, we tracked our project time online. One of the programmers added a project called “Grab-Ass.” We all logged time under it until the management put the kabosh on it.
“senior management” to mean one’s SO, esp. wife or GF-
“I’ll have to talk that over with senior management”
“ID-ten-T module” to refer to a stupid person-good especially if you can get them to write it on the ticket and upgrade it to User Support. Only works until someone explains it to them.
“Synchronous Hardware Initiation Terminator, Holistic Event Asymetrical Database” again, only works as an acronym. Used to describe the problems our CEO has beating Solitare.
“Download” meaning to take a dump. Having to do this with urgency is referred to as “crowning” or “getting all emotional”. Also “cupping the cigar”.
and
“AIJMU”, used in various situations. Stands for “Acronym I just Made up”.
Sig-ih-chik (Arctic Red River)
Loot-sell-kay (Snowdrift)
booze: chronological file of photocopied correspondence, from “blues”, from “blue copies”.
File 13: the recycling bin.
make people happy: reluctantly return someone’s call when you know there’s bugger all you can do about their problem.
Okay, these require a bit of explanation, and maybe they’re only funny if you work there:
Casual Thursday: One of my bosses (I have two) always shows up in these goofy outfits. One day, he showed up in tan pants, a black t-shirt, and a yellow-ish suede jacket. My co-worker commented, “What’s this? Casual Thursday?” Ever since then it’s been a running joke that my boss’s biggest contribution to our program has been the implementation of the Casual Thursday. One of our slogans: “Casual isn’t just for Friday anymore.”
The Director, The Dressing Room, The Set: Refers to the same boss. His title is “Director of [our program].” Same co-worker and I decided that the guy acts like he’s filming a movie. Hence, he is the Director, our offices are our Dressing Rooms, and every time we’re working, we are on the Set. As in, “Man, the Director isn’t getting the budget he wants, he’s pissed because the training department has a bigger Dressing Room, and he wants all of us on the Set pronto.”
Sharon Stone: One of the VP’s that works in my building. She bears a slight resemblence to Sharon Stone, and seems to really work on looking like her (getting a Sharon Stone hair-do, etc.).
This one isn’t really slang, but it sounds odd to people outside our agency: We need to be re-certified once a year in topics like First Aid, CPR and Abuse & Neglect. I had missed the most recent inservice day, so I had to go to the training manager to catch up. This resulted in the following statement from me: “I’ll be back in an hour or so. I have to go get Abuse from Jason.”
I used to work in a bookstore. When a book on the shelf has its cover facing you, it’s been “faced.” When books are on the shelf the way you’d keep them on your own personal bookshelves, they’ve been “spined.”
We also called the place “Book Whorehouse” instead of Book Warehouse. Not sure if that counts. 