The A-Z of Office Slanguage

Business: The modern office. You stand by the water cooler. You play on the internet. You build piles of things, then knock them over.

It’s an Attenborough-worthy environment, and as such has spawned many a new word, clambering for inclusion in the dictionaries of the future.

We want your help to compile a full compendium of the office slanguage that lets us all get through the working day.

Please tweet us or drop us an email… the good one’s will be added to the directory.

A Mills and Doom – doomed office romance

Adhocracy – a department with little to no process or organisational ability

Administrivia – vitally important stuff that managers leave to everyone else

Agenda Bender – a co-worker who is easily side-tracked in meetings.

Al desco dining – eating at your desk. See also Deskfast

Blamestorming – a meeting in which a scapegoat is identified for causing a problem

Blownus – the money which would have gone on paying bonuses that was spent on the directors xmas lunch (via @RobWeatherhead)

Brandalism – sticking company logos on everything and anything

A Buellerlemic – an employee addicted to throwing a sickie (via @the_wonderer)

Chainsaw Consultant – an outside expert brought in to reduce the employee head count

Chartist – an accountant with a deep love of graphs

Chinese holiday – taking a five minute break by faking the need for the loo and just sitting on a china latrine, head in hands

Clapathy – not caring enough about what you’ve just seen to applaud (via@ britmex)

Communicaking – a session where employers encourage staff to network with colleagues by bribing them with coffee and donuts (via @lordyred)

Crapplicant – an applicant that’s crap. ( via  Tarik Haksever )

Credit munch – switching to a cheaper lunch

Cybernating – snoozing at your computer

Decruiting – firing someone

Deja-moo – bullshit that you’ve heard before

Delegut – A representative at a conference whose sole contribution seems to be that of demolishing the lunch buffet. (@alienonline)

Desk jockey – office-based employee (via @the_wonderer)

Deskfast – eating your breakfast at your desk (via @GriffySavalas)

Dracula shift – Going to work in the dark. Going home in the dark

The Dopeler effect: Tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly (via @liencam)

Ego-Surfing – Searching Google for instances of your name. (via @andybwhittle)

Flashturbation – self-congratulatory and excessive use of animation in Powerpoint

Fleemail. Email delegating responsibilities whilst avoiding confrontation, sent just as your boss is about to leave (via @alienonline)

A Friday FOE. Someone who tends to leave early for the weekend. (ie Fucks Off Early) via @YouNoPayMeBunt

Goat rodeo – an embarrassing meeting

Googlenosis – looking up symptoms on the web to make your sickie more believable.  (via @FullMetalAnnie )

Google Zoo – when an entire office is pretending to work

Horizontal Promotion: climbing the career ladder while laying on your back. (via @ GazzaB162)

Incompitemp Temporary office drone. Serving only to drain budgets and wreak havoc. Possibly offset by tea making skills. (via @Johnny_Two_Dogs– )

Kebab manoeuvre – packing up low quality products, heavily marketing them and selling at an elevated price

Lynx Minx – A female who brings improvements in personal hygiene in male staff (via @Neil_Mawer)

A Middleton – posh, pretty dimwit in the marketing dept who is only killing time until she marries into money  (via @mothmun)

Mushroom Management. Keeping staff  in the dark and covered in shit. (via@matwhite80)

Open Kimono – throwing an idea out, but being open to criticism

Parliamentary bonus – act of wrongly claiming expenses to get more money

Pope-ing it – when losing the real argument during a meeting, to take the moral high ground

Putting socks on an octopus – an impossible task

Randy Pogo – someone who jumps around the office trying to get laid

Ricky Malaise – The discomfort felt when someone attempts a David Brent impersonation (via @BenedictFarse)

Ronnie Bics –  the great stationery cupboard robber (via @abbiehas)

Scatisfaction – the smug feeling one gets whilst taking an extended dump on company time (via twitter@RandomVitriol )

Shirking from home (via @texanbar)

Special Projects Manager = dead man walking via @Rbattams

Special sauce – adding a low-cost ingredient to a poor product and achieving a 500% mark-up

Stroperator – the mardy bitch on reception with an over-inflated sense of importance. (via @abbiehas)

Teahydrated – the urge, nay the need for tea (via @will_woodward)

Teflon Shoulders – nickname for co-worker who offloads work to others, a drop of the shoulder and it slides off onto someone else (via @RobWeatherhead)

T.W.A.T – a person who doesn’t work Monday or Friday – only Tue Wed And Thu (via @martinmitchell )

Wallpapering fog – a pointless exercise

Zombie project – an initiative that keeps coming back to life no matter how many previous attempts to kill it