Phrases From the Cube Farm

The workplace is an ever-changing environment--one in which unsuspecting employees are exposed to technological innovation, economic subjugation and sociological humiliation. If you sometimes wonder how to cope, or at least how to refer to it all, take a look at this list of “New Words for the ‘90s,” which is presently circulating in cyberspace:

Blamestorming: sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

Cube farm: an office filled with cubicles.

Generica: features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast-food joints, strip malls, subdivisions.

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, 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.

Xerox subsidy: euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one’s workplace.