More sad-but-all-too-true definitions from CRAPCOMM

ARCHITECTURE.   All the crappy DOS programs below the glossy Surface.   The skeleton that supports the body corporate.  Commonly used with the word “open,” as in OPEN ARCHITECTURE,  a structure which is flexible enough to change at a moment’s notice and strong enough to be impervious to major and minor modifications.  The fact that this is a contradiction in terms is one that is deliberately ignored by everyone from IT programmers to executives, all of whom believe that you can add an eighth floor to a four-story walk-up without actually building floors five through seven. 

What most corporate architecture looks like.

AUTHENTIC.  The approved version of false.  An authentic conversation, for instance, consists of all the backstabbing your boss wants to hear, not the backstabbing you want to say. 

BANDWIDTH.  The current sexy term for “plate.” In the old days, when you said, “My plate is full,” your boss would say, “Okay; we’ll get somebody else to do it.”  This is because plates are only so big.  Bandwidth, on the other hand, can always be increased—and it’s your responsibility if it isn’t.  Which is why these days you don’t tell your supervisor, “I don’t have the bandwidth for that,” because this means you are not willing to work overtime and weekends to get the job done.  Also—and more importantly—the phrase, “We don’t have the bandwidth for that” can never ever (ever) be said by any CEO about his company, because it implies that the company is as old, outdated and slow as the CEO.   

BUSINESS MODEL.  The way a company says it does business, as opposed to the way it actually does business.  The corporate version of an essay outline which makes perfect logical sense, and is then totally ignored because you haven’t written a word in weeks and the stupid thing is due first thing in the morning so now you’re going to stay up all night and type like Hunter Thompson on Ibogaine until the required number of pages and/or words is met,  just so you can have something to meet the deadline.  (See DELIVERABLE.) 

CANCER RESEARCH.  Corporate term for any long-range project which can never actually be completed, because when it is, it will result in the loss of millions of dollars in funding.   

CHANGE MANAGEMENT.  Renovating the building to support the penthouse.  In essence, “asking” employees who were hired to do Job A to “transition” to Job B, usually without any training or preparation, because (a) Job A is no longer making the firm any money, (b) the people currently doing Job B are so overwhelmed with work that nothing is getting done, or (c) the barbarians are at the gates, and the only way to hold the line is to deploy as many Job B warm bodies as possible against the onslaught while the CEO goes on TV to tell worried investors that everything’s under control. 

This used to be called “restructuring,” until the word came to imply that there was something wrong with the corporate structure to begin with—an admission which can never be made publicly, but which is always discussed on a daily basis in whatever after-work bar employees gather to blow off steam.  During which marathon, somebody will make the excellent point that if an executive with actual management skills had been calling the shots from the beginning, any change would not be necessary.  And then, after a couple of rounds of tequila shots, somebody else will sum it all up with the words: “The good news is, you’re still on the boat.  The bad news is, it’s still the Titanic.” 

CORE COMPETENCY.  The one thing a person or a company does best.  The thing you hire them for.  Until all hell breaks loose.  (See CHANGE MANAGEMENT.) 

CORE INCOMPETENCY.  The many things a manager cannot do, all of which you are expected to do for him.  (See TEAM PLAYER.) 

CULTURE, CORPORATE.  The catch-all phrase which describes the many unwritten rules of behavior, status recognition, and departmental warfare which must be obeyed by all full-time employees and permatemps.  These rules are neither explained nor invoked until and unless they are broken, in much the same way as a land mine is not discovered until you step on it.  Ignorance of the unwritten law is no excuse.  Whatever you did to get the stink-eye or the awkward silence, you should have known enough not to do it.  If you’re lucky,  someone will take you aside and inform you that you just spit in church by saying something like “Just so you know,” “A word to the wise,” and “In case you were wondering.”  Like fortune cookies which always attain their true meaning by adding the words “in bed,” the above three reminders achieve their true passive-aggressive brilliance by sub-vocally adding the words “you moron.”    

The word “culture” is also used in public relations as a loose synonym for “the really cool way we do business,” which makes it a verbal prophylactic to prevent the unwanted children of all business relationships, namely accusations of greed.  So you will hear a lot of talk about a company’s CULTURE OF EXCELLENCE (which means not doing things in the best way, just the best way we know how), its CULTURE OF COMPLIANCE (which means obeying every law the company has previously broken), its CULTURE OF RESPONSIBILITY (which means firing support staff whenever a manager makes a mistake), and its CULTURE OF TOLERANCE (which means not pointing to the gay albino in the wheelchair and saying “Look at that gay albino in the wheelchair!”). 

CULTURE CARRIERS.  Old people we haven’t gotten around to firing yet. 

JOB SECURITY.  Obsolete term for an employee’s belief that doing a single job and performing up to and beyond expectations will guarantee her a seat at the corporate table until she decides to retire.  The current term for this belief is “living in a dream world.”   

QUALITY CONTROL.  Making sure that everything shares the same low standards.

TALENT.  Wage slaves who can be monetized.   

TALENT, RETENTION OF.  Patting your wage slaves on the back for a job well done by compensating them with something other than money, and then claiming that whatever you’re giving them is more valuable than money, which helps to support the myth that there is actually something more valuable than money.   

TRANSPARENCY.  Making sure that all the profit-making loopholes are invisible to outside auditors and easily accessible to internal analysts.   

TRANSPARENCY, CREATE.  Regulatory sleight-of-hand. An investment bank will use the phrase “ create transparency” the same way a stage magician uses the phrase “Nothing up my sleeve.” 

UPGRADE.  Improve to failure.

 

ZERO TOLERANCE.  A policy which is applied without exception to everyone in the firm who is not an exception.  Saying a company has zero tolerance for sexual harassment, shady business practices, and anything that damages its reputation is like the NBA saying that it will always call a player for traveling—in both cases, the franchise players are exempt from the rule.  This is also pretty much how the Justice Department deals with investment banks in this country: they have zero tolerance for everything that everybody else does.  If Moses had come down from the mountain with the Commandments of Corporate America, there would only have been one of them: “Thou shalt never fail to produce results, because results always trump morality.”



Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

Some excerpts from CRAPCOMM: The Devil's Dictionary of Corporate Communications

ACTION ITEMS. A fancy term for your current workload, which used to be called “assignments” back when people didn’t take offense at being assigned tasks by their bosses.  But these days—when bosses are all called supervisors, like glorified hall monitors, because of Corporate America's rampant “I am the boss of me” sense of entitlement—which means that a supervisor can’t actually order around subordinates without making them feel like, well, subordinates— the Powers That Be want their slaves to feel like their chains are a fashion choice.  So it took Corporate America no time at all to come up with a sexy synonym that implies adventure instead of subservience and mind-numbing drudgery. This is particularly ironic because the main features that make up an action movie (adventure, violence, profanity and sex) are the same for an action item (the adventure is not getting fired, the violence is visions of killing your supervisor, the profanity is muttered under your breath, and the sex is you being fucked over).

 

ACTION FIGUREHEADS. Supervisors who promise change, results, and transformationals, and then assign the real work to you.

 

BEST PRACTICES.  What a company does until it gets caught doing it.  In theory, “best practices” means rigorously obeying the letter of the law as opposed to squeezing through the usual loopholes.  In practice, it means breaking the law without actually alerting the regulators that a crime has been committed.  All investment banks promote best practices as a standard; the fact that they continually have to promote them at all gives you some idea of how standard they really are.

 

CHALLENGING.  Impossible.

 

CHALLENGING ECONOMIC CONDITIONS.  (Also known as CHALLENGING ECONOMY.)  The current panic-free synonym for Depression, replacing the previous panic-free synonym Recession once it, too, became a cause of panic.  The beauty of this three-word phrase is that it is too nebulous to ever cause panic. It is also the drumbeat of doom that clever investment banks keep repeating over and over again, in order to lower salary expectations and undermine job security in their rank and file workers. Which is hilarious when you consider that “bad times” is defined as only making 2.1 billion dollars a quarter instead of 2.5 billion.  The phrase is also consistently used as an excuse for unpaid overtime and making employees do three jobs instead of their usual two, in the interests of “meeting the challenges of a changing economy.”    This is a meeting which will never take place in an executive conference room.

 

COMPLIANCE.  Diligently obeying all the laws you’ve paid a fine for breaking in the past.  Corporate compliance says that when your hand has been caught in the cookie jar, you have to be careful around the cookie jar.  The rest of the kitchen is fair game.  This is fine with Federal regulators because — like doctors and healthcare professionals — regulators are only interested in diagnosing the disease after the patient is sick, not preventing the disease from starting in the first place.  So as long as you don’t show any obvious symptoms, a smart corporation can manage to get a clean bill of fiscal health without the annoyance of regulatory check-ups.  Some common examples of compliance outside the investment banking industry can be found in the phrases “My wife’s suspicious; I have to play the good husband,”  “My teacher’s standing right over my shoulder; I can’t cheat on tests anymore,” and “There’s a cop in front of the bank; we can’t rob it.” 

 

DEEP DIVE.   Bullshit backed up by PowerPoint slides.  Ostensibly a presentation which supplies verifiable facts as opposed to the usual bullet points and jargon, a deep dive usually takes place (a) when people start asking intelligent questions that poke holes in the normal day-to-day BS that passes for information; (b) there is a special interpretation of the facts that needs to be understood so that the facts can be ignored; or (c) when an army of facts needs to be deployed to support a particular world view. The implication being that all the information we gave you originally was shallow, if not totally wrong, and this is what you really need to know, honest—until we do a deep dive on the deep dive. (See PRESSURE DIVE.)

DEPRESSION. The “Fire!” that always clears Wall Street’s crowded theatre. A word that is never, ever (ever) spoken aloud when discussing the stock market, which is proof positive of the herd mentality of the industry, as well as the house-of-cards stability of the current market economy, which can be blown over by a single whispered run-on-the-bank-causing stock-price-plummeting three-syllable word.

 

GAAP.  Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, which, as the name suggests, are generally followed.  Not to be confused with GAAL, Generally Acceptable Accounting Loopholes, which are always followed.

 

“I HEAR YOU.”  Shut the fuck up.

MENTORING.  What happens when a man with experience or a high position takes a man with little experience or a lower position under his wing, and guides him through the mine fields of the company’s bureaucracy.  This word is sex-specific.  When a man with experience or a high position takes a woman under his wing at work, this is called HAVING AN AFFAIR.  And when a woman with experience takes another woman under her wing a work, this is called CONSPIRING.

ON BOARD.  Welcome to the Titanic.

ON POINT, STAYING.  Never saying anything that will result in an embarrassing question.

 

SENSITIVITY TRAINING.  “This is the shit that will get us sued.  By saying that out loud, we are now legally covered when you go back to your office and talk to your secretary’s tits.”

 

"THERE’S NO RIGHT OR WRONG HERE."  It’s wrong to the power of ten.

 

TOWN HALL.  A spontaneous departmental gathering during which scripted questions are given prepared answers, and after which profanity will be bleeped out, awkward pauses will be edited away, and Compliance will request a dozen edits of substance to retro-delete the two greatest enemies of Corporate Communications: remarks that are actually honest, and remarks that could lead to lawsuits or criminal charges.  The kind of meeting which, if it took place in Stalinist Russia, would be dismissed as nothing but propaganda; but since it happens in Corporate America, it stands as a prime example of the purest form of employee democracy, where everyone has a voice. Since that voice is always the glorified press releases of Corporate Communications, the “purest form” part of  this definition is (sadly) all-too accurate.

 

URGENCY.  Panic. When someone in management uses the phrase “sense of urgency,” head for the hills and don’t look back. Learn from history—Custer at the Little Big Horn had a sense of urgency. Travis at the Alamo had a sense of urgency. The French at Dien Bien Phu had a sense of urgency. They all soldiered on regardless. Do the same at your own peril.

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

Life at Trampley Nixon: Work SCUCKS and Then You Die

Here at Trampley Nixon we’ve been watching the decline and fall of market capitalism with what we euphemistically call “total fucking glee,” because we’re making so much money that we don’t have to lay off anybody. We don’t even call them lay-offs here; we use the word SCUCK, as in Start Collecting Unemployment Compensation, Kid. Nobody ever gets SCUCKed at Trampley Nixon. Or at least that’s what we said up until the end of February, when people actually started disappearing from the Corporate Directory in droves, after which the CEO sent us all an e-mailed letter explaining that, since everyone else in Corporate America was suffering, “we need to be seen to be suffering as well, so we don’t look like the heartless greedheads we all know we are.”

Well, if it’s anything we heartless greedheads know how to do, it’s pretend to be repentant when we get our hands caught in the cookie jar. (And I mean really - our hands spend so much time in that jar that it might as well be called the Cookie Glove.) So I got my sackcloth and ashes from HR, I practiced my mournful worried frown in the little hand mirror I carry around to cut coke lines on, I bought $100 bottles of wine for lunch instead of the usual $500 ones, --

And then they SCUCKed me.

That was two weeks ago. Since then, I have gone through the denial, the anger, the bargaining, the binge drinking, the spam e-mailing, the breaking and entering, the trashing of window offices, and the suspended sentencing. I am now at the final stage of Job Loss, the sarcastic blog posting. In the past two weeks, I’ve learned a lot about myself, and even more about my former job. Seven things, in fact – and I am happy to share them with you in total violation of my non-compete agreement.

Seven Things To Remember

About Working in Corporate America.

1. It’s not that they fucked up, it’s that you’re not stepping up. No matter how vital the information which is lost when an employee is SCUCKed, it’s never your manager’s fault for getting rid of it, it’s always your fault for not knowing it. Sample dialogue:

THEM: You’re supposed to be translating this into Spanish every morning.
YOU: The guy who knew Spanish got fired on Friday.
THEM: So why aren’t you doing it?
YOU: Because I don’t know Spanish.
THEM: Then you’re not stepping up.

2. You are just a number on a balance sheet. It’s not about how well you do your job, it’s not about how badly you keep fucking up, it’s about whether that annual salary number you’re paid is either noticed or not noticed. If it’s not noticed, you can harass interns, surf the net all day, and append the words “Please advise” to the end of every e-mail like the asshole you are, and you will always get a corporate paycheck. But if that number becomes noticeable? You better take your pint of whiskey home from that bottom left drawer, because your corporate days are numbered.

3. When they say “family,” you’re the in-law. In family terms, getting SCUCKed is like getting divorced. They love you as long as you’re happily married to one of their children, but the second you’re kicked out of the house, their cellphones go unanswered, their Facebook pages are all blocked, and your your heaping plate of family Thanksgiving turkey is now a pile of food stamps. And everyone in your so-called family becomes like that elevator operator in Night At The Opera, the one who smiles at Groucho when he has a job and then kicks him downstairs when he doesn’t.

4. You are working in Stalinist Russia. Ours is the best company ever, with the best leaders and the best employees who haven’t been purged yet. (Repeat as necessary, during town hall meetings, earnings announcements, and self-aggrandizing appearances on FOX Closing Bell.) And when any of our best leaders and employees do get purged, they disappear down the memory hole just like members of the Politburo vanish from photos of prior May Day parades. Because things are not only getting better in the future, they’re getting better in the past. (When you realize how hooked these people are on creative accounting, it’s no wonder they’re addicted to creative history as well.) Only the pure survive a purge; only the flawed are hit by one, and once they’re gone, they’re gone retroactively, like they never got hired in the first place. And you will go the same way, unless you praise Stalin and try to forget that one wrong move will land you in a gulag. Be happy you’re on a bread line. Seriously. Be visibly happy. Or else.


5. Your smarts must never make them look stupid. In Corporate America, information is a battleground. When your managers start addressing a massive system clusterfuck challenge, they are not actually trying to solve it, they are claiming turf over it, and any competing information is treated like an invading army. This means that (a) every answer they come up with is like a declaration of war; (b) the problem issue is not about coming up with a solution, it’s about owning the last solution standing; and (c) if you actually know the correct solution, you can never say it out loud, because if you do then suddenly everyone else will sign a temporary treaty and wipe you off the face of the corporate earth for challenging their authority. Remember –- their authority is not based on knowledge, it’s based on lung power and repetition. Against those two weapons, hard knowledge of the truth is defenseless, so all you can safely do is retreat behind the front line until the battle’s over and then agree with whoever’s left standing. And Jesus, whatever you do, don’t even think of pointing out the obvious to any of them, because that means they’re not only dumb, they’re blind.


6. The problem is your reaction to the problem. It’s never what was done to you; it’s your reaction to what was done to you that matters –- like when somebody shoots you, and you have them arrested? It’s your fault for calling the cops. Sample dialogue:

THEM: What are the cops doing here?
YOU: You shot me!
THEM: That’s no reason for you to call the police.
YOU: What am I supposed to do then?
THEM: Just deal with it and move on.
YOU: But I’m bleeding.
THEM: Then put a band-aid on it, and move on.
YOU: But you fucking shot me!
THEM: And this wouldn’t be an issue if you didn’t keep bringing it up.
YOU: Can I at least call a doctor?
THEM: Sorry, you don’t get healthcare.


7. You are sleeping with crack whores. You cannot trust the people you work for. You cannot reason with them. You cannot save them. They are only friendly because friendly makes you lower your guard. They are not your friends. They are crack whores. If they need the money, they will roll you. If they like your stuff, they will steal it and sell it. If they envy your talent, they will drag your name in the mud. They will suck your dick till you think you're the God Of Love and they will forget you the moment you leave the room. And the longer you sleep with them, the quicker you get their diseases.

Life at Trampley Nixon

Great day at the company last week. We wrote down 10 billion dollars in mortgage loans, but because the Street expected us to write off 10.25 billion, our stock went up a dime. Yay defying expectations! Proof yet again that the Stock Market is exactly like the New Hampshire Primary -- it's not about winning or losing, it's about whether you meet, better, or disappoint targeted expectations. You can get 40% of the vote, but if you were expected to get 50%, you lose; you can come in third with 11%, but if you were expected to get 2%, you win big! It's like a gambling casino with pundits!

This week's dictionary entries:

Action items. All the shit nobody wants to do. In school, these used to be called “assignments” or “homework,” but because they require the same amount of work-at-home hours to complete, it took Corporate America about fifteen minutes to come up with a sexy synonym that implies adventure instead of mind-numbing, time-consuming overtime. This is particularly ironic because the main features that make up an action movie (adventure, violence, profanity and sex) are the same for an action item (the adventure is not getting fired, the violence is visions of killing your manager, the profanity is muttered under your breath and the sex is you being fucked over).

Action Figureheads. Managers who promise change, results, and transformationals, and then assign the real work to you.

Best practices. Actually obeying the letter of the law as opposed to squeezing through the usual loopholes. All corporations promote best practices as a standard; the fact that they have to promote them at all gives you some idea of how standard they really are.

Deep dive. A presentation which supplies verifiable facts as opposed to the usual bullet points and jargon. Deep dives usually take place (a) when people start asking intelligent questions that poke holes in the normal day-to-day BS that passes for information; (b) there is a special interpretation of the facts that needs to be understood so that the facts can be ignored; or (c) when an army of facts needs to be deployed to support a particular world view. In UFO terms, this means that deep dives (a) use facts to make believers think twice; (b) use facts to make believers look misinformed; or (c) use facts to make believers look stupid. The implication being that all the information we gave you originally was shallow, if not totally wrong, and this is what you really need to know –- until we do a deep dive on the deep dive. (See PRESSURE DIVE.)

Deliverables. All the shit nobody wants to do wrapped up in garbage bags.

Dentist Appointment. Job interview.

Depression. The “Fire!” that always clears Wall Street’s crowded theatre. A word that is never, ever (ever ) spoken aloud when discussing the stock market, which is proof positive of the stupidity and herd mentality of investment bankers and stockbrokers, as well as the house-of-cards stability of the current market economy, which can be blown over by a single whispered run-on-the-bank-causing stock-price-plummeting three-syllable word.

Doctor’s appointment. Second interview.

Initiative. The corpse of change; change after it’s been covered in makeup and filled with embalming fluid. The equivalent of looking at the body of your grandmother in an open casket and thinking “I could swear I just saw her breathe.”

Once. Legal definition: always. If a woman has had sex once, then in the eyes of the law she’s a slut; if a man smoked pot once, then legally he’s a dope addict; and anyone who’s ever been caught telling just one fib is legally a compulsive liar who can not be believed in a court of law no matter how much he swears he’s telling the truth.

Robust. Something that actually works, as in, “We need a robust server structure.” Most often used to describe either a goal or a potential outcome, thus implying that the current state of affairs is static, moribund, and possibly dead.

Sick Day. Third interview.

Urgency. Panic. When someone in management uses the phrase “sense of urgency,” head for the hills and don’t look back. Learn from history -- Custer at the Little Big Horn had a sense of urgency. Travis at the Alamo had a sense of urgency. The French at Den Bien Phu had a sense of urgency. They all soldiered on regardless. Do the same at your own peril.

Life at Trampley Nixon

As many of you know, during my day job I slave away as an Everything Bagel at Trampley Nixon, the only federally-approved combination accounting firm/law firm/investment bank/financial services corporation in America. As a model of the kind of conglomerate that 21st-century corporations will all have to become in order to survive, Trampley Nixon is the anti-evolutionary corporate animal: the dinosaur descended from mammals. We do everything (not necessarily well), and while our slogan isn't the best ("We put the tramp in Trampley and the Dick in Nixon"), it's light years better than "On your backs for Goldman Sachs" or "Merrill Lynch, and vice versa."

And what do I do as an employee of TN? First of all, I'm not an actual employee--like almost all of the support staff in law firms and investment banks, I am an outside service provider who has been hired through a third-party staffing agency at a low-benefit no-healthcare salary to do whatever it is my immediate superiors want me to do on a given day. On July 2nd, before I left on vacation? I lost half a million on oil working the trading floor from 8 to 10, did paralegal work till lunchtime, and spent the rest of the day cooking the books for Budweiser in anticipation of their upcoming sale to InBev. I was also put in charge of updating the next edition of the LieBanker Dictionary, which used to be the province of Bear Stearns until their stock tanked (and guess who built the tank for them?) and they became a leisure service of JP Morgan.

Now and then I'll be blogging about all the fun things the lawyers, bankers and accountants at my company do. But for now, I'd like to share with you a list of several prominent buzzwords which showed up in one out of every five e-mails I plowed through when I got back from vacation:

BEST. When used as an adjective (as in “We expect you to do your best”) it means “no better than your immediate superior.” When used as part of an e-mail signature (as in “Best, Joanne”) it means “Fuck you.” (See also PLEASE ADVISE and JUST SO YOU KNOW.)

COMFORT ZONE. The gated community of incompetence. The place which managers want you to vacate so they can safely remain in theirs. Contrary to corporate mythology, Comfort Zones are not created by workers who are afraid to go beyond their limitations – their borders are actually established by the internal corporate culture and patrolled on a regular basis to make sure that (a) the right sort of people are protected inside it and (b) the expendable people are the ones who become targets outside it.

The best way to picture what Comfort Zones are and how they operate is to think of the Vietnam War. In this war, the enemy is a group of raiders called Victor Charles. They own the night, so nobody does any soldiering except during the day, and even then nobody with any brains ever (ever) humps outside the designated patrol route (the CZ). Any and all patrols which do end up outside the CZ are usually ordered by Rear Echelon Motherfuckers (REMFs) who are more than willing to see a grunt’s ass blown away so theirs can be saved. When grunts are accused of staying in their CZ or not going outside the CZ, it’s a sure sign that the REMFs are feeling the heat from Command, and need the corporate equivalent of a high body count mission in order to look good. In other words, it’s a given that no one in a position of actual power within a corporation will ever talk about “getting out of your comfort zone” unless his or her job is on the line.

Comfort Zone is also used as a synonym for the job you were actually hired to do, as opposed to the two or three jobs you will now be doing for no extra pay because some REMF laid off half of your co-workers.

FEDERAL BAILOUT. The lollipop that Uncle Sam shoves into his whining nephew's mouth to shut him up. When it occurs in Russia and pays failed companies millions of rubles to continue existing and repeating their failures, a bailout is socialism at its worst. When it occurs in the United States and basically rewards corporate stupidity with billions of dollars of taxpayer money, thus giving them no incentive at all to either learn a lesson or do their jobs well, a bailout is capitalism at its finest.

FOCUS ON THE ISSUE, NOT THE PERSONALITY. The accepted corporate euphemism for “We all know which arrogant asshole is the root of the problem here.”

GOING FORWARD. See MOVING FORWARD.

LEVERAGING THE FRANCHISE. Making sure that anyone who touches the Tar Baby that is your company gets totally covered by it. In fashion terms, wearing Nike clothes, sneakers, underwear and perfume. In Mafia terms, keeping it in the family. In racial terms, segregation. In political terms, paying the right kickbacks. In AA terms, only socializing with fellow ex-addicts because no one else can ever understand. In religious terms, making the Church the center of your life. In construction terms, getting your brother to lay the foundation, your sister to supply the lumber, your cousin to do the designs, your nephew to do the plumbing and electricity, and your father to sign off on the inspection.

MOVING FORWARD. “Let us never speak of this again.” Always used in relation to massive layoffs, the firing of high-level management, the “resignation” of high-level management, the out-of-court settlement of any and all lawsuits, and the payment of massive fines to the SEC. Currently used in relation to all losses and write-offs associated with the Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis. The temporal aspect to this term (along with GOING FORWARD) implies that the internal corporate calendar has been reset as of this moment to Day One, Year Zero, like the French Revolution; and (like the French Revolution) a lot of heads will roll every time this happens.

THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX. The corporate equivalent of saying “Hello -- we’ve pigeon-holed and cookie-cuttered your ass since B School. Now do something we didn’t train you for.” In creative terms, saving your job by coming up with an idea that no one has thought of before so your boss can take credit for it. In financial terms, finding a loophole in the regulations that no one has thought of exploiting before. In reality, a double insult, since it implies that (a) the person telling you to think this way is incapable of doing it himself and (b) he’ll be the one vetting whatever you come up with, from his secure position (cough) inside the box (cough). It's like a fish being asked to think of something outside water, and when you come up with the idea of air, your boss fish scratches his gills and says "Air, huh? What the fuck is air?" and promotes some grouper who has this great new way to look at wet sand. And always remember: along with “getting out of your comfort zone,” “thinking outside the box” is a phrase that is never used unless the tumbrels are getting ready to carry a fresh load of aristos to Madame De Guillotine.

TOXYMORON. An expression that is so stupidly contradictory that hearing it spoken aloud is like having someone pour hydrochloric acid in your ears. Examples: “Thinking outside the box is a no-brainer.” “We will continue to be a world-class franchise moving forward.” And the classic "Just so you know, 'Please advise' is an invitation, not a command. Best, Dick."

How to describe layoffs in LieBanker

In the investment banker (or IBanker) world, where a great deal of effort goes into creating buzzwords and phrases like “leveraging the franchise,” “increasing the footprint,” and “maintaining work-life balance,” an even greater amount of effort goes into creating pleasant synonyms for “We fucked up” and “You are paying for our fuck-up with your job, pal.”

What is not generally known is that these phrases and synonyms are collected and updated in a shared dictionary that is housed on a secure server underneath the Bank of New York building on the corner of Wall Street and Broadway. It was originally called the Gould Standard, after robber-baron Jay Gould, who started gathering current Wall Street slang after he won control of Western Union in the late 1800’s. It is currently known simply as the LieBanker.

The 2008 version of the LieBanker mandates that any corporate discussion of billion-dollar write-downs, massive losses due to risky portfolio positions, and personal responsibility for stupid investment mistakes should all be described by the phrase “turbulent market conditions” or "current corporate environment." It also requires that, in every meeting or discussion of these conditions, the following quote from Charles Darwin should be prominently displayed:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
(The number of false assumptions contained in that single sentence are staggering, and deserve a separate post; for the moment let me just say that an investment banker who is actually responsive to change is like a mountain which is actually responsive to erosion –- the effects are visible only after eons, not e-mails.)

The following synonyms for “You are paying for our fuck-up with your job, pal,” are taken from the 05-15-08 LieBanker, which has not been updated since that date because the analyst in charge of it was from Bear Stearns:

Bobbit. A particularly emasculating form of severance; as in, "Did you hear what happened to Brian? It was a real Bobbit."

Boned. To have all the personnel and consultant fat removed from your group or department by those butchers in Human Resources; as in, “Oh man, we got boned in the last RIF.”

BS. A layoff which occurs because it will make the next quarter's balance sheet numbers look good. A BS always affects actual employees, not consultants.

Cap-sized. To have your numbers reduced based on budget restrictions and not performance. Departments that have been cap-sized usually end up life-boated (qv).

De-mailed. To have your absence in the company discovered only when someone realizes you are no longer in the e-mail directory; as in, “Oh my God -- Sharon Radulov just got de-mailed.”

Foxed. To be walked out of your office by security after getting boned. From Bud Fox, the character played by Charlie Sheen in Wall Street.

Life-boated. What happens when the survivors of a cap-size are assigned to different departments.

RIF. Reduction in Force. Not to be confused with ROF, which stands for Retention Of Fuckers, the worst of whom always seem to survive layoffs with their jobs and attitudes intact.

Right-size. The kinder gentler way of saying “down-size,” which is the kinder gentler way of saying “laid off,” which is the kinder gentler way of saying “fired.” Right-sizing means there was something wrong with having all those people doing one job apiece, and therefore something right about a smaller amount of people doing three jobs apiece. It also implies that the kinder gentler event which has just taken place is really just another example of the most overused word in LieBanker: a correction.

Tipped. To be pushed onto the life side of work-life balance.

Unpersonnel. Former high-level company officers who have to be edited out of all corporate historical records; as in, "Zoe Cruz has to be taken out of that video--she's an unpersonnel."

Wrapping. A large severance package; as in, "He's gone, but they gave him a lot of wrapping, so he should be okay for the next few months."

Z-sponsible. Used to describe the person least responsible for a multi-billion-dollar mistake, who then takes the fall for the person actually responsible. The rules of corporate z-sponsibility require that any mistake resulting in massive write-offs can only be rectified by de-mailing as many people as possible at the bottom of the payroll pyramid.