Terms of Employment

The secret lingo of the workplace

Slang and jargon from different jobs and professions

Bit of an eye-opener, the research for this one. A friend who works in car sales told me they refer to air conditioning and leather upholstery as ‘wind and skin'. I also learned that US airline staff call the plastic bin bags in which some passengers carry their hand luggage ‘Nashville Samsonites'. That professional cyclists refer to scars as ‘gravity tattoos'. That the fashion industry has ‘vanity sizing' (labelling garments with a smaller size than their real one to make customers feel good about themselves). That when techy-types send a signal up to a satellite they say they're ‘squirting the bird'. Few worlds stranger than the world of work ...