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From: ttb@ihuxn.UUCP (Thomas T. Butler)
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: Daffynitions
Message-ID: <487@ihuxn.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 13-Jan-84 09:44:20 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxn.487
Posted: Fri Jan 13 09:44:20 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Jan-84 03:21:57 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 142

--
The following daffynitions were excerpted from a Christmas gift,
the official "MBA Buzzword-a-day 1984 Calendar". The selection
I picked could apply to any business.

Deadwood:
     Anyone in your company who is more senior than you are.
Promotion:
     New title, new salary, new office, same old crap.
Incentive program:
     The system of long- and short-term rewards that a corporation
     uses to motivate its people. Still, despite all the
     experimentation with profit sharing, stock options, and the
     like, the most effective incentive program to date remains:
     "Do a good job and you get to keep it."
Brokee:
     Someone who buys stocks on the advice of a broker.
Forecast:
     A prediction of the future, based on the past, for which the
     forecaster demands payment in the present.
In box:
     A catch basin for everything you don't want to deal with, but
     are affraid to throw away.
Committee:
     A group that keeps minutes but squanders hours.
Taxes:
     Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get
     an extension.
Work:
     The blessed respite from screaming kids and soap operas for
     which you actually get paid.
Concept:
     Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more
     than $25,000.
Boss:
     According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages
     the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except
     that boss, in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers"
     also meant "an ornamental stud."
Management:
     The art of getting other people to do all the work.
Decisionmaker:
     The person in your office who was unable to form a task force
     before the music stopped.
Learning curve:
     An astonishing new theory, discovered by management consultants
     in the 1970's, asserting that the more you do something the
     quicker you can do it.
Expense accounts:
     Corporate food stamps.
Transfer:
     A promotion you receive on the condition that you leave town.
Paycheck:
     The weekly $5.27 that remains after deductions for federal
     withholding, state withholding, city withholding, FICA,
     medical/dental, long-term disability, unemployment insurance,
     Christmas Club, and payroll savings plan contributions.
Interest:
     What borrowers pay, lenders receive, stockholders own, and
     burned out employees must feign.
Trust me:
     Translation of the Latin "caveat emptor."
Vacation:
     A two-week binge of rest and relaxation so intense that it takes
     another 50 weeks of your restrained workaday life-style to
     recuperate.
Conference:
     A special meeting in which the boss gathers subordinates to hear
     what they have to say, so long as it doesn't conflict with what
     he's already decided to do.
Fishbowl:
     A glass-enclosed isolation cell where newly promoted managers
     are kept for observation.
Reception area:
     The purgatory where office visitors are condemned to spend
     innumerable hours reading dog-eared back issues of trade
     magazines like Modern Plastics, Chain Saw Age, and Chicken World,
     while the receptionist blithely reads her own trade magazine --
     Cosmopolitan.
Entrepreneur:
     a high-rolling risk taker who would rather be a spectacular
     failure than a dismal success.
Union:
     A dues-paying club workers wield to strike management.
Appointment book:
     The reference of last resort when trying to duck undesired
     invitations ("Gee, the soonest I can pencil you in is
     December, 1989"), or when trying to figure out what the hell
     it was you did during the past year.
Memo:
     An interoffice communication too often written more for the
     benefit of the person who sends it than the person who receives
     it.
Data:
     Computerspeak for "information". Properly pronounced the way
     Bostonians pronounce the word for a female child.
Consultant:
     (1) Someone you pay to take the watch off your wrist and tell
     you what time it is. (2) (For resume use) The working title
     of anyone who doesn't currently hold a job. Motto: Have
     Calculator, Will Travel.
Scenario:
     An imagined sequence of events that provides the context in
     which a business decision is made. Scenarios always come in
     sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case.
File cabinet:
     A four drawer, manually activated trash compactor.
Consent decree:
     A document in which a hapless company consents never to commit
     in the future whatever heinous violations of Federal law it
     never admitted to in the first place.
Pension:
     A federally insured chain letter.
Program:
     Any task that can't be completed in one telephone call or one
     day. Once a task is defined as a program ("training program,"
     "sales program," or "marketing program"), its implementation
     always justifies hiring at least three more people.
No brainer:
     A decision which, viewed through the retrospectoscope, is
     "obvious" to those who failed to make it originally.
Quality control:
     The process of testing one out of every 1,000 units coming
     off a production line to make sure that at least one out of
     100 works.
Copying machine:
     A device that shreds paper, flashes mysteriously coded
     messages, and makes duplicates for everyone in the office
     who isn't interested in reading them.
Job interview:
     The excruciating process during which personnel officers
     separate the wheat from the chaff -- then hire the chaff.
Power:
     The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA.
Patent:
     A method of publicizing inventions so others can copy them.
Strategy:
     A comprehensive plan of inaction.
-- 
                           Tom Butler
                           ..!ihnp4!ihuxn!ttb
                           (312) 979-7999