Here’s your insight into Digital 55’s top secret team vocabulary

Every industry has its own specific vocabulary, and many workplaces have their own super-secret lingo, too. If you’ve ever made a career change that involved moving to a new company or switching industries altogether, then a large part of getting comfortable in your new role probably included learning some new lingo too. 
For example, a person who has never worked in the restaurant business might be surprised to learn that the short-form for “reservation” is “reso.” And a person who has made the move to the corporate life will have to learn that “EOD” means “end of day.” 

And like many friend groups or families, small offices might come up with some of their own, specific catchphrases too. Over here at Digital 55, we have some of our own team  lingo that we wanted to share with you. Maybe it will help you understand our emails better, and maybe you’ll find some phrases you want to use too! Here are 5 of Digital 55’s top workplace phrases:

Crunchy 

/ˈkrən(t)SHē/ 

Crunchy is an adjective we use to describe a busy or intense time, with many competing priorities and tight deadlines. For example, “At the end of the month, things can get really crunchy.”

Copy That

/ˈkäpē T͟Hat/

Derived from military or aviation speak, and later adopted in the film industry, the events industry, and basically any industry that uses a radio, this phrase means “I understand” or “Got it!” For example, if we are told the client needs something sooner than expected, we’d say “Copy that!” 

86 

/ˌādēˈsiks/

This one comes from the restaurant industry. 86 means to “nix” or “zero out” a food item from the menu, usually because the restaurant has run out. In the Digital 55 world, it means to cancel an item or disregard a task. For example, if a project scope changes and we need to change direction, we might say, “Let’s 86 the home page design for now and move on to UX/LX instead.” 

Agile

/ˈajəl/

Agile is a popular style of project management, which comes from the true word’s meaning of being flexible and able to move and change quickly and easily. Around here, it sometimes means flying by the seat of our pants and making changes on the fly! For example, “This project scope has changed so much that we are just going super agile right now.” 

Modular 

/ˈmäjələr/

Our use of the term “modular” is inspired by the term “modular design”,  which is a design approach that subdivides a system or program into smaller parts called modules, which can be independently created or modified. Over here at Digital 55 though, anything that has many moving parts or features could be described as “modular.” For example, we could say, “Let’s make this design experience super modular” or “A video series will make this interactive experience super modular”, or even: “Let’s plan a holiday party that feels super modular!” 🤣

Those are just some of the fun phrases we use in our meetings and across Slack. What are some of your favourite (or least favourite!) workplace phrases?