Marry Up – /mar ee uhp/ (v)

1. to attach one or more ideas or tangible items to one another
2. to group together

Sentence:

“Let’s marry up the orders and ship them together.”

Thinking Cap – /thing king kap/ (n)

1. An imaginary accessory that one “wears” during reflective thought, analytical reasoning, and/or problem solving to enhance cognitive abilities.

Sentence:

“OK, team – put on your thinking caps! We have a big problem to solve and only an  hour to do it.”

bait and switch – /beyt n swich/ (v)

1. Practice in which companies use to lure unsuspecting potential employees with a fabulous position and after meeting them in an interview tell them they want the candidate for a completely different position.

Sentence:

Mary: “I was so excited about the most amazing position that I went in to interview for, and after the interview, they told me they were actually hiring for a report analyst position.”

Dave: “aaaaah, they pulled the bait and switch on you!”

See also: Switcheroo

The Great Migration – (n) /th ee greyt mahy-grey-shuhn/

1. The act or instance of migrating in mass quantities
2. A period in which a group of employees of one company all move to a large competitor of the said company
3. Mass movements of people

Sentence: “Our company recently experienced a Great Migration and therefore have many positions to backfill.”

Poor planning on your side should not create an emergency on mine.”

Food Baby – (n) /food beybee/

1. A small, but noticeable pooch in the belly area after consuming a lot of food and drink during the lunch hour.

Sentence: “OMG I am soooooo full.  I ate soooooo much! Look at me! I have a food baby!” (said while rubbing stomach area)

Can you summarize that for me? – (is*) /kan yoo suhm-uh-rhyze th at fawr mee/

1. A request made by one of your peers, or manager, in which you will do all the grunt work, send it to them, so that they can forward it to someone else and make it appear as if they did all the work.

Sentence:

“Jenny, thanks for all that great information.  Could you summarize that for me so that I can let Mark know what’s going on? Thanks!”

*interrogative statment

Parking Lot – (n) /par-king lot/

1. A flat, usually concrete, designated area to leave a vehicle in park before entering a building
2. The place to leave vehicles even if it is not flat (e.g. a Parking Garage)
3. An imaginary place you leave off-topic items in a meeting for later discussion.

Sentences:

1. “Bob, Dave will be late for the meeting.  I saw him in the parking lot frantically trying to open his locked car.  The presentation is on his laptop, which is in his locked car, so we should postpone
2. “Jenny, it’s not a parking lot.  It’s a parking garage.  There are multiple levels and it is not flat.”
3. “Now that Dave is finally back, we will put the issue of the parking lot vs. the parking garage in the parking lot so that we can continue down our meeting agenda.  We can come back to that at a later time.”

Circle Back Around  – (v) /sur-kuh-l bak uh-round/

1. To follow-up

2. Further action to complete previous task

3. Another phrase to take the place of “I’ll get back to you”

Sentence: “I’ll take that as an action item and circle back around once I get an answer.”

Random thought: Whenever I hear the phrase “circle back around” at work, I picture Coco chasing her tail for some very weird reason.

Well kids, it’s official – the U.S. is in a recession. I don’t see what the big deal is. I could have called that months ago and I’m not by any means an economic genius.

Actually, my economics professors in college shamelessly tried to get me to change my major to economics and I seriously considered it. But I digress.

For some reason, this led me to wonder – why in the hell is the pink slip called the “pink” slip? Why not the “red” slip? Isn’t red the international color for “stop”? Like “you are about to STOP working”?

This required some serious research.

So naturally, I looked it up on Wikipedia and I have to say, I think Wikipedia can sometimes be full of shizz. It says there isn’t a significance for the use of the pink paper. Sorry, but I’m going to have to call BS on that.

More research.

According to a random crystal website, pink gemstones can be used to promote love, self-worth, order and protection from violence or aggression. Hmmm… I think we’re on to something!

Self-worth makes sense because the boss doesn’t want the former employee to feel like crap. Protection from violence or aggression makes sense too – the boss doesn’t want the former employee to lose it and cause bodily injury to him/her.

At this point, I really felt that I needed to dig into this a little bit deeper. I found another website that says in the Native American culture the color pink signifies creativity or working. Check and check.

It also said that in ‘color therapy’ (whatever that means) pink is used as an appetite suppressant, it relaxes the muscles, relieves tension and is considered “soothing” by the brain.

huh?, check, check and check.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that whoever started using pink paper to fire people back in the early 1900’s actually did have some kind of reason for using pink instead of other colors. It’s not like offices back then had reams of pink paper lying around in case they needed to fire someone. Shit, they didn’t even have color TVs back then.

Nowadays I guess employers don’t even really need pink paper. They can be Earth-friendly and just fire people over the internet. Geez… could you imagine being told “Hey everyone! Check your email at precisely 9:03 – if you don’t receive an email from HR you’re in the clear!” I would have an anxiety attack.