BS: job descriptions

Subject: job descriptions
From: Mr Happy
Date: 11 Jul 02 - 12:05 PM

while browsing some old threads about the current trend of sanitizing language, i came across this example:

"He's conferencing with a parent", we want to say, "Do you mean he's talking with someone?"

this prompted me to ask if others have 'newspeak' or sanitized job titles?

i've a friend who's a window cleaner- he describes himself as a 'glazial clearview technician!'

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: MMario
Date: 11 Jul 02 - 12:12 PM

We used to have "Network Analysts" - Now we have "Senior Wide Area Network Technology Application Service Assistants"

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: mack/misophist
Date: 11 Jul 02 - 12:21 PM

A few times in my life I have had the honour of being a 'casual lumper'. I was once a 'pearl diver'. It is to my great sorrow that I never had the chance to be a 'gandy dancer'. Oh, for the days of yore!

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: Bardford
Date: 12 Jul 02 - 11:06 AM

Back in the last century I worked as a hospital porter. I called myself an "Inpatient Transportation Facilitator".

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 12 Jul 02 - 03:37 PM

I was an atomic radiation worker once. petr

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: Mr Red
Date: 12 Jul 02 - 07:17 PM

pure finder - dogshit collector
and that was a Victorian trade
newspeak? Busy words? - plus ca change

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: gnu
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 05:26 AM

For sale : hand-held local impactory device and hand-held extendable automatically retracting imperial/metric linear measurement/conversion device. Nails not included.

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: GUEST,van lingle
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 06:04 AM

Gnu, we used to refer to the first item in your ad as a manually accutated fastening device (manually accuated fasteners not included).
One of the great euphemisms: Honey Dipper- one who cleans out outhouses. vl

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 06:14 AM

Is "accutated" a building trade technical term in the USA ?

Murray

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: GUEST,van lingle
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 07:54 AM

No Murray, I mispelled it twice in one sentence. I guess I've spent too much of my life locally impacting manually "acutated" fasteners and not enough of it reading books. When I was a carpenter we coined the term to differentiate hand driven nails from pneumatically actuated fasteners which is how catalogs decribe gun nails. Just a bit of jobsite silliness. vl

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 08:04 AM

Whoops, did it again. Should read actuated.

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 09:23 AM

I used to be a typographer -- now I'm a digital prepress production technician.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: John P
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 10:05 AM

Seattle City Light sent around a notice to my workplace last year saying they were going to start a big project in the area to underground some wires.

My guitar is digitally activated . . .

JP

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: The Walrus
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 04:19 PM

I seem to remember a story to the effect that, some 40 years ago (a little before my time, certainly) my company's Sports & social club wanted to buy an upright piano (from club funds) and, we could get a good discount using the lab procurement system, however the rules would not allow the purchase of non-scientific equipment through the lab system.
The problem was solved when one of our acoustics bods wrote a purchase requisition for a "multi octave, mechanical digital tone generator" quoting the manufaturer's catalogue number, this was enough to get through the system.
I can't vouch for the truth of this story (as I say, it was before my time), but the S&S club does have a rather nice upright piano which had been doing sterling service since before I joined.>br>

Walrus

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 04:37 PM

In the army almost fifty years ago I learned the system for equipment nomenclature: Most general noun form, followed by the qualifying adjectives, from most general to most specific.

Thus the instrument with which one might dig a foxhole would be a Mover, earth, portable, folding, hand-operated, air-cooled. Only the uninitiated would call it an entrenching tool.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: Banjo-Flower
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 05:01 PM

misophist I did some gandy dancing(or the U.K equivalent)when I was much younger and believe me its not as romantic as it sounds,especially in the midst of winter

Gerry

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: mack/misophist
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 05:54 PM

Banjo-Flower: Doing the think is itself not the point. The point is being able to claim it. You cannot imagine how much I enjoy the blank looks when I announce that, from time to time, I've held positions as a casual lumper.

John-P: A recent phone advertiser offered, absolutly free - for the promotional value only - to alarm my house.

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: GUEST,CraigS
Date: 14 Jul 02 - 05:44 PM

My father spent most of his life working as an Internal Grinder and Horizontal Borer, although towards the end his time was taken up with Vertical Honing. Me, I used to order an enormous number of EL34 valve tubes for a spectrophotometer that needed one per year when I had a Marshall 100 amplifier. And I knew a man who got away with buying a caravan as a business expense (said it was a temporary office).

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: Banjo-Flower
Date: 14 Jul 02 - 05:45 PM

misophist point taken

Gerry

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: Micca
Date: 14 Jul 02 - 07:03 PM

I once came across ina a military(UK) magazine a tale about the Royal Navy Quartermaster doing the final inventory of a shore station prior to hand ove found he was a complete small tug boat short, and to conceal it he included it in a list of Mess deck equipment deficiencies so that the list read
Forks, dessert                        6
plates, China, bread, round, 5 inch, 12
boats, Gravy, stainless steel         2
boats,Tug,                            1

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: GUEST,Pean O'Graffey
Date: 14 Jul 02 - 07:23 PM

I used to be a trucker.
Unfortunately this doesn't involve walking rhythmically and humming a song, it involves pushing trucks of ore out of a mine.

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: GUEST,ozmacca
Date: 14 Jul 02 - 08:54 PM

Noted with interest the military terms of definition in the previous posts. In my time, the buzz-phrase "man-portable" was coming in.... and was generally taken to mean the piece of kit in question, however big or heavy, had a strap attached. As I was in an artillery unit armed with pack howitzers which could be broken down into mule-pack loads this had a special meaning for us gunnies. Mules were supposed to be able to do a move in one trip, but we poor fools kept coming back for more bits.....

Subject: RE: BS: job descriptions
From: Hrothgar
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 08:01 AM

Misophist, how far did you have to lump the casuals?