Assmosis – The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss.
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, poops over everything ,and then leaves.
Blowing Your Buffer – Losing your train of thought.
Salmon Day – The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.
Chainsaw Consultant – An outside expert brought in to reduce the employee head count, leaving the brass with clean hands.
More Workplace Vocabulary Lesson
Career-Limiting Move (CLM) – Trashing your boss while he or she is within earshot is a serious CLM.
Flight Risk – Used to describe employees who are suspected of planning to leave the company or department soon.
404 – Someone who’s clueless. From the World Wide Web error message “404 Not Found” “Don’t bother asking him… he’s 404, man.”
Ohnosecond – That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you’ve just made a BIG mistake.
Percussive Maintenance – The fine art of whacking the heck out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
Prairie Dogging – When someone yells or drops something loudly in a “cube farm” (an office full of cubicles) and everyone’s head pops up over the walls to see what’s going on.
Umfriend – A sexual relation of dubious standing or a concealed intimate relationship, as in “This is Jill, my… um… friend.