Peace, Love & TQM

After a couple straight database-laden posts, I thought I'd go back to the somewhat more familiar format I've been following- that is, the larger part of the post being about life in the Secret Underground Lair, followed with a bit of database news. That's a polite way of saying: until I get back to rebuilding my queries, it's pretty much going to be data entry for a while!

My cohort in contracting has said on several occasions that to force writing is to end up with forced writing. Well, something along those lines. As I was leaving the office this morning, I said to him in parting, "Peace, Love and TQM!" It's such an odd phrase, coined by yours truly in Germany, in the halcyon days of The Drawdown following the end of Desert Storm. And this is the crux of today's musings.

In any environment where the same folks gather on a regular basis- whether it be professional, social or casual, a common vocabulary will emerge as these individuals get to know each other and become comfortable and maybe friendly. Beyond lingo, jargon or truisms, a certain "groupspeak" will emerge. Groupspeak, according to wiktionary.com, is "The jargon used by a particular group." They go on to define jargon as,
  

1. (uncountable) A technical terminology unique to a particular subject.
2. (countable) Language characteristic of a particular group.
3. (uncountable) Speech or language that is incomprehensible or unintelligible; gibberish. 

I like their definition #2 best, as it fits this monologue quite well. The characters in the group I'm in have been together for around five years, with additional members who have since either left or work different shifts. It is worth noting that not all of the phrases are original to our group or even original at all, but have developed into a kind of verbal shorthand for us. With that having been said, I'd like to share some of these expressions and their current usage. It should also be noted that not everyone has a signature groupspeak phrase.

There are a few different ways in which we announce that we are leaving for the day. "I don't know about you all, ..." is Adrian's phrase; Jimmy Z's is, "I gotta get out of here" and mine is, "I've had enough fun for one day".

A great deal of what we do at night and overnight is quality control, which sometimes requires us to engage with folks from different departments or even facilities in different parts of the country. One evening, we were checking some work for a job we were doing for another facility, and we had to call the Customer Service Representative (CSR) for advice on this particular job (this particular CSR has long since left the company). First we asked about some counts, and the CSR said, "Is that really important?" Uh, yes, it is. Next, there was another issue and the response was," Do you think they'll notice?" Uh, yes. The last question was answered with, "Does it really matter?" These legendary, epic responses have become a regular part of our groupspeak and are invoked whenever something that obviously needs to be fixed shows up.

There are many others, of course, but one final group is the ones which just don't really mean anything- things like "Where do I sign?" (where something should be done, but the speaker indicates that another person has thoroughly checked something out), "He's off my Christmas card list", which indicates someone has done something particularly inane. And then there's the Jimmy Z all-time classic, "It's a setup!" in cases where something has gone horribly wrong, or where someone else has started a job, and then goes on vacation, leaving all sorts of potential disaster on the table (as well as all of the responsibility).

That's it for today. As mentioned, I'm pretty much to data entry mode, so no database news today.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.