me, the laughingstock

Have you ever said something stupid that you know you will never ever live down? Well today was my “moment”. In my line of work there is an acronym for everything. It’s almost as though engineers are not able to speak real words so they need to abbreviate everything. Customer Service Terminal becomes CST, Terminal Revalue Unit becomes TRU, Wireless Data On/Offload System…. WDOLS, of course.

So, I’m in a meeting this morning trying to make a point and I say something like… “So, in order to meet the schedule, the CST and it’s peripheral devices including the CCR (for you non-engineering folk, this is a credit card reader), CE (think…. check endorser), SPD (Secondary printing device) and um... um... um....” For the life of me I couldn’t think of the acronym I was looking for. I knew what device I was thinking of so I tried to describe it…. “um… you know the photo image capturing device, ... will need to be available before beta”.

Of course someone had to call me on it. Smart-ass: “photo image capturing device?”

Me: yah… um the FICD (pronounced “fick-de”)?

Smart-ass: “you mean camera?”

Me: “oh,,, yah,,,, {head hanging in shame, face reddening} camera,,, that’s what I meant,,,, camera”

Fifteen other people at table: HA HA HA HA, photo image capturing device HA HA HA HA

Smartass: you do know that “photo” starts with a “P” right? That would be “pick-dah” to you.

....More laughter from the peanut gallery. So much for maintaining my credibility.