A NEW DEVIL'S DICTIONARY: SAMPLE 0009

Here's a special batch of holiday-themed samples from my new Devil's Dictionary of words and phrases that are (ab)used in Silicon Valley.

Corporate community involvement - (n)
Any one of a variety of team activities used to build and support a shared feeling of social superiority. 

Gift - (n)
A good or service provided out of kindness, also a belittling descriptor for hard-earned skills.

Gift - (v)
Because using nouns as verbs is so very cool, this is a term used by those who have come to believe that the act of giving is an embarrassing sign of political weakness.

Gifting campaign - (n)
The practice of giving out gifts in exchange for publicity, based on the success of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

Holiday bonus - (n)
Not being one of the 900 employees laid off during a three-minute, one-way zoom call just as your startup exceeds all financial expectations.

Holiday party - (n)
Corporate potlatch. An opportunity for the executive to divert funds that could have been spent as employee bonuses into an off-site, all-hands ass-kissing session.

Holiday plans - (n)
To paraphrase Mike Tyson, what everybody has until reality punches them in the mouth.

Playing Santa - (v)
The only role in which an individual contributor can be allowed to act generously without being subject to vicious gossip about social climbing or attempting to curry favor from management. Usually only taken on by social climbers who are attempting to curry favor from management.

Secret Santa - (n)
A game which allows co-workers to take a short break from work while they circulate passive-aggressive coffee mugs, expired chocolates, and hotly-contested bottles of discount alcohol.

Toast - (adj)
A descriptor denoting total defeat, often mistaken for a noun by those who struggle to recognize a difference between the determiner "your" and the contraction "you're."

Toast - (v)
To proclaim gratitude or admiration by calling everyone's attention to the wrong person or department.

Toast, a - (interjection)
A short speech before drinking, often used when everyone involved has already had more than enough of both.

Unbox - (v)
To look for answers the way characters in an ancient Greek drama look for the hand of god.

Unboxing - (n)
A video that combines the best qualities of a poorly-produced commercial from 1980s local cable-access television with the shallow braggadocio of a villain from a 1980s high school film.

Unlimited time off - (n)
No time off.

Unwrap - (v)
The action of looking beneath the surface, though no more deeply than the cover of the book.

Vacation - (n)
Time spent trying not to worry about whether or not your manager is trying to reach you, and why.

Vacation - (v)
To spend predetermined time away from work, thus demonstrating to your manager the precise degree to which your role is expendable.

X-mas - (n) Originally a term suggested by Christian activists who insisted that is was sacrilegious to have their messiah's name printed in any non-religious context, now a rallying cry for those who believe the opposite.

Thanks for reading, Please come on back for more of the same in the new year!