Corpo Dictionary
As functional and highly sarcastic Young Underpaid Professionals, we’ve come up with a Corpo Dictionary for all of you folks in the same soup as us. This is a completely open dictionary so feel free to send in your words and definitions. A word of warning though, personal attacks and offensive entries won’t be posted for obvious reasons. Plus, come on people, it’s easy to be hateful and critical, it’s harder (and funnier) to be creative.
Kape or Coffee for all of you non-Pinoy folks. It is every Yuppie’s best friend, faithful companion during overtime, and the lifeblood of everybody working during the unholy hours of the graveyard shift. Also, good-but-expensive coffee provides an excuse for lounging about in a faux-posh setting.
Your Boss. This species from the Middle or Upper Management genus varies in terms of competency, likeability, and general hygiene practices. Hopefully, you are blessed with one who is not out to kill you, has a working frontal lobe, and smells good. If you aren’t so blessed, remember a couple of things: don’t make eye-contact, don’t make any sudden movements, and don’t get caught using your office internet connection for personal surfing (i.e. Facebook).
Your Company. This is basically a collection of Executives who get far more money than the average Peon who does more Work. Some Companies try to make themselves as warm and welcoming as possible to curb Turnovers (read: Death Rates), leading to the creation of things like Office Parties, Casual Days, and Recreation Rooms. Many Companies fail miserably at this though, as they strain to imitate human compassion (FYI, most Executives aren’t human) that their efforts are seen by their ungrateful, overworked Peons as cruel and highly unusual modes of torture.
Your Peons (according to Dogbert, the more politically correct term for them is Your Underlings). They are the ones who work directly under you, therefore, your whims directly affect their ways of life. While that fact can go straight to your head and make you a malevolent force bent on making their lives not worth living, it might be far healthier for you (imagine life sans death threats or blog posts cleverly referring to you as THE shithead) to take the benevolent dictator kind of leadership.
Work. This is the ugliest word in the Corpo Dictionary for some since it requires a certain thing called Effort. One way to keep yourself from tendering your resignation letter is to remember why you Work in the first place: you need Sustenance, Money, and according to Maslow, Job Security.
Job Security. According to Maslow and his theories on self actualization, you need to have this type of Security to fully actualize your self. In this particular universe though, where BPOs and call centers can go kaput without so much as a “Thank you ma’am”; all you can ever hope for is a Wham! Bam! You’re redundant, kthxbai. For most Yuppies, Job Security is a mythical creature, like the tooth fairy and the abominable snowman. Some people maintain and will insist that these mythical creatures are real and it’s easier to just smile, nod, and walk away instead of breaking it to them and shatter their fragile egos.
Salary. This is the main reason why you work in the first place. Your Salary equals spending power, therefore it means that your eating habits, social life, and general spending (your expensive coffee, the size of your coffee and the state of your wardrobe) is directly proportional to your Salary bracket – unless you have control of one of the most evil inventions in the history of forever: a Credit Card. Keep in mind though that your Salary is subject to Tax and other government deductions (like Social Security, PhilHealth and PAG-IBIG) you learned in school but never paid attention to until they showed up in your payslip and ate a chunk of your precious little Salary.
Facebook. The second most evil invention on the face of the earth, next to weapons of mass destruction. Efficiency analysts should probably add Facebook into their lists of Things-That-Impact-Peon-Productivity-and-Overall-Internet-Usage.
Moanday. According to the Overlord herself, Moanday is the day of the week when you moan that you don’t want to go to work. You moan through breakfast that you will come down with the flu at any second (you even try a few coughs to hurry it along), you moan while waiting for the FX, and you moan all the way to the office. At the office, you find that your friends are moaning along with you, filling the entire floor with wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Fried-day. This is the day of the workweek when you wonder why you work in the first place and you get a realization that provides absolutely no comfort for you; refer to Work. Be glad that this is the end of the workweek and take comfort in the two days you get to spend at home with your home stresses. Then you’ll get back on Monday feeling refreshed and de-stressed, though like Sisyphus, you’ll have to do it all over and end up on Fried-day again. But take heart dear Yuppies, since this vicious cycle allows you to collect a certain thing called a Salary.
Office Paranoia. This is pretty common in all call centers and BPOs. It doesn’t matter what account you’re working for, what company, and how many years that account has been there; there will be rumors flying about that everybody is about to lose their jobs because the company is closing or the account is pulling out. Most of the time, this isn’t true, just wishful thinking on the parts of the Peons who wish for reprieve from the torment in the most spectacular ways (like a meteor hitting the building or somebody spontaneously combusting). Sometimes though, the rumors are true and signs of the account closing include Upper Management jumping ship.
Diet. The typical Yuppie diet consists of fast food, Ministop/7-Eleven fare, and jollijeep food. These don’t necessarily fill the nutritional requirements of a human body, but since they are cheap and easily accessible, they fuel the general workforce who have pitiful excuses for Salaries.
Exercise Regiment. This is purely theoretical in the case of many Yuppies and consists of standing up and sitting down or pushing the elevator button and waiting. According to wasabikid, this also includes neck stretches (i.e. stretching to the left and to the right to get better reception of Office Gossip).
Income Tax. The bane of every person who has a Salary. This is far worse than Satan tempting you into oblivion and the Apocalypse. Satan’s rewards gratifies instantaneously and that’s enough to make people turn a blind eye. As for the Apocalypse, it is set to happen once. Tax? Every. Single. Month.
Office Crush. At the moment, he or she is the object of your obsession, eherm, attentions. The criteria for the Office Crush varies from person to person, though the best Office Crushes possess (along with the other exemplary virtues) a density rivalled only by a diamond and/or an equally excellent spouse or spouse equivalent. Basically, the more unreachable, the better. Apparently, pining for somebody you can never have is far more romantic than having a real relationship.
Promotion. For some Yuppies, a Promotion belongs to the Mythical Creatures department, along with Job Security and the Manicorn, since achieving it is sometimes as hard as attaining Nirvana. One will have to go through epic (as in arduous, biblical) trials, and do Hard Work, among other things (see Ass-Kissing) for this near-mythical prize. Due to the fact that some companies simply do not have room for growth, you can do one of two things, a. go and strangle your boss or b. goad your boss into resigning. These are not surefire ways to getting a Promotion though, as there is such a thing as Getting Passed Over.
Vacation. A state of delusion where one thinks he is free from the shackles of slavery (Work). It just has a placebo effect. It lulls you into a false sense of relaxation that almost makes you forget that you are On Call. And Big Brother is always watching. Always.
Buzz Words. In the media industry, this is what your boss throws around like stray kittens. The real purpose of these nasty pieces of nauseating literature is simply 1.) to confuse you, and more importantly 2.) to make it appear your superior knows MORE than you do, not that they understand the vocal poison they spew or anything. They just want to appear that way.
Twalay. (Spelled Twilight, also known as Ang-Haba-ng-Hair-ni-Bella.) This is the most inexplicable bestselling series on the face of the planet, proving that there is absolutely no justice in the universe.
Manicorn. According to Rica’s officemate Val, a Manicorn is a man who is cute, smart, funny, and generally perfect – too bad they don’t exist.
