The New Vocabulary

Tell Us How You Really Feel


I didn't know any of these terms 5 years ago. Some I have come up with myself, others have been given to me by equally frustrated co-workers. It hasn't been a terribly good week at the office. There is a lot of politicing going on becuase of looming budget cuts and case loads. Folks are jockeying for position, and not doing a lot of work in the interium.

I have learned that the best way to relieve stress is to jot something down, so here goes.


Bobblehead Manager You have seen them. You have probably worked for them. No matter how bad things get, or how many mistakes are made, they just stand there moving their head like it was on springs. Their one saving grace as supervisors is that they always have a good attitude. Working with them is always a happy-happy, joy-joy experience. Upper managment likes these types. They promote harmony and make the CEOs feel safe. They rarely accomplish much in the real world though.

Playdough General Some managers are made of iron some are made of playdough. They can be molded into the heroic figures of Geroge Patton or Irwin Rommel. While they look imposing at first, they just tend to stand there and do nothing. First impressions will only get you so far.

Adminisphere Definition: "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." This one is so common, I actaully wrote a whole blog on it alone. This condition comes from two possible sources. The manager that is so focused on upward mobility, that they totally lose touch with what their underlings are doing, and those managers that move into a position from outside the organization, and have absolutley no practical knowledge of the organization that they have joined.

Rec-Centric [Recommendation Centered] This is a term I came up with to describe a particular problem in my office. Through the constant dumbing down of the office staff (see below), the actual work in the office began to center on the primary production unit, called the recommendation. All training eventually centered around this because it was the one thing management could hold in their hand and look at. It was tangible. Only problem was that all the other things we are supposed to do that didn't appear on the recommendation suffered terribly. Hence, the Rec-Centric point of view. Concentrating on the obvious and dismissing all the details that lay beneith it.

Dumbing Down (the process to the lowest common denominator, instead of training to the highest potential)..or the office is as strong as it's weakest link, so lets ALL be weak links.

The Seagull Manager They fly in, make a lot of noise, shit on everything, turn things over and fly away. They tend to look good on paper, but the reality is, they have little practical experience.

Pushing Paper When Supervision and Management totally fail, it is important to look busy, so that if the higher ups actually find out how screwy things are, we can always claim it is because we are to busy to deal with the real problems. But it only looks like we are working....in reality.....it is just volume, volume, volume with no quality control.

Titanic Promotion Being made Captain of the Titanic 'after' it strikes the iceberg isn't really a promotion, they are looking for someone to take the fall for the previous Captain's mistakes (who has probably been promoted to a better ship).