Dilbert’s newest additions to add to your vocabulary 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 over everything and then leaves.Assmosis - The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss.
Cube Farm - An office filled with cubicles.
Going Postal - Euphemism for being totally stressed out, for losing it.
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.
Stress Puppy - A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.
SITCOMs - What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids. Stands for Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage.
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 headcount, leaving the brass with clean hands. 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."
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," meaning that the requested document could not be located. Used as in - "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 food joints, strip malls, subdivisions. Used as in - "We were so lost in generica that I forgot what city we were in."
Ohno-second - That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you’ve just made a BIG mistake.
Percussive Maintenance - The fine art of whacking an electronic device to get it to work again.
Umfriend - A sexual relation of dubious standing, or a concealed intimate relationship, as in "This is Dyan, my ... um ... friend." Body Nazis - Hard-core exercise and weightlifting fanatics who look down on anyone who doesn’t work out obsessively.
Idea Hamsters - People who always seem to have their idea generators running.
Squirt the Bird - To transmit a signal to a satellite. Starter Marriage - A short-lived first marriage that ends in divorce with no kids, no property and no regrets.
Swiped Out - An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use. Tourists - People who take training classes just to get a vacation from their jobs. Example - "We had three serious students in the class; the rest were just tourists."
Treeware - Hacker slang for documentation or other printed material.
Xerox Subsidy - Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one’s workplace.
Alpha Geek - The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group.
Chips and Salsa - Chips = hardware, salsa = software. i.e. - "Well, first we gotta figure out if the problem’s in your chips or your salsa." G.O.O.D. 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.
Deinstalled - Euphemism for being fired. Heard on the voicemail of a Vice President at a downsizing computer firm - "You have reached the number of a deinstalled vice president. Please dial our main number and ask the operator for assistance." (See also, "Decruitment.")
Vulcan Nerve Pinch - The taxing hand position required to reach all the appropriate keys for certain commands. For instance, the warm 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 owe $8 each, but all anybody’s got are yuppie food stamps."
Dilbert Rules Of The WorkplaceIf you can't get your work done in the first 24 hours, work nights.
A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the butt.
Don't be irreplaceable, if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
It doesn't matter what you do, it only matters what you say you've done and what you're going to do.
After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the month than you did before.
The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.
You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.
Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.
When the bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never talking about themselves.
If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.
There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car when the boss asks for a ride home from the office.
Keep your boss's boss off your boss's back.
Everything can be filed under 'miscellaneous.'
Never delay the ending of a meeting or the beginning of a cocktail hour.
To err is human, to forgive is not our policy.
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he/she is supposed to be doing.
If you are good, you will be assigned all the work. If you are really good, you will get out of it.
You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your desk.
People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done.
When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.
Following the rules will not get the job done.
Getting the job done is no excuse for not following the rules.
When confronted by a difficult problem you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, 'How would the Lone Ranger handle this?'
No matter how much you do, you never do enough.
The last person that quit or was fired will be held responsible for everything that goes wrong.
Do something brilliant and no one is watching. -- Do something stupid and the boss is sure to see it.
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