Comments on: The language of office mates

By: Russ

Russ — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 19:04:33 +0000

My wretched day job is at a small, draconian office on the edge of town. Management keeps control of the company by keeping the departments in conflict with each other. The guy on top (a somewhat charismatic control freak) single-handedly introduces all of the new office lingo into the work environment . . . thereby securing his control over things on a very fundamental aesthetic level..

I’ve recently started a campaign to give the rest of us some of that control by injecting new office lingo into inter-departmental email. Otherr people are starting to catch-on and folllow suit.

There’s a subtle war over language in the office. It’s all very civil and professional on the surface, but on a linguistic level, it’s a vicious, vicious battlefield.

By: Mary Martha

Mary Martha — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:45:05 +0000

I worked for a veterinarian and we ended up with a lot of phrases…
the best one came from a breeder who took her bitches to Ohio to be bred. So anytime she was going to breed she would announce that “Fluffy Sue is going to OHIO! She’s a big girl now” We stole the “going to Ohio” to mean we were going on a date, going to get drunk, anything that had the meaning that we “were big girls now!!”
Also we somehow used the phrase “I concur” whenever we agreed with someone…

By: Meredith

Meredith — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 01:17:19 +0000

Many females are addressed as “Lady”, something I picked up at a former office, and seem to be spreading to my current coworkers. There are four of us in the department, all female, and our exec director is female. We are all Ladies.

My boss and I share an office; we sometimes sing the mahnahmahnah song. She does the whistles, I can’t.

By: Ssquach

Ssquach — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 01:03:46 +0000

Where I work we all have nicknames, many of which have no meaning whatsoever, usually someone calls someone by the wrong name and it sticks, or are our logon names. For some reason we say thanks or thanks champ at the end of nearly every conversation.

We’re an accounting office and a lot of the terminology we use is unique to our office. When someone new starts, we have to explain many of the terms we use.

By: Sheri

Sheri — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 23:11:36 +0000

25 years ago I worked in a silk screen shop—One of the other screeners seemed like he could answer Any comment or observation with “There ya go!”

I still do it myself, and it’s especially funny when I run into the screeners I worked with then—”There ya go!” It can mean ANYthing.

By: Jason!

Jason! — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 21:11:53 +0000

This post is making me realize how boring conversations with my coworkers can be. Oh well, at least we still have anonymous pranks…

By: becky

becky — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 20:42:43 +0000

so great to hear all these. “Oh, look at me”–too funny! Ostensibly so…love that.

By: Rebekah

Rebekah — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 20:21:22 +0000

My coworkers are really catty, so whenever we say something mean, we add, “Bless her heart” to the end of it. Like, “Did you see how ugly her socks and sandals combo is? Bless her heart.”

By: Karen

Karen — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 19:49:00 +0000

At one job, when I started, I thought I overheard one admin address the other as ‘Miss. [first name]‘. By time I left that job, all of us were calling the people we liked ‘Miss. [x]‘ and ‘Mr. [y]‘ Ever since then, I have always called the women I work for as ‘Miss. [whomever]‘.

At this job, we have one co-worker who excells at being difficult. Don’t ask me how it started but now, when ever he leaves early we find ourselves doing the dance of the Dancing Baby (a la ‘Ally McBeal’).

By: That one chick

That one chick — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 19:27:30 +0000

I work in a university, while helping a student out over the phone I asked her to go online and fill out a form. She was soooooo offended that I had asked her to ‘go online’ she started yelling and screaming and even “told me off” by saying ‘No! YOU go online!!! How dare you tell ME to go online’!!!

It was VERY hard for me to not crack up over the phone, but now it’s a joke in my office. Anytime someone gets (fake) upset, we tell each other to ‘go online’ all the time! lol