I like to refer to Skip as the "triple date": it was me, him, and his cell phone. Look, we all have cell phones. I'm in a profession where I am always on call or at least I need to be reachable, so I understand it and accept it. My beef was that he was checking the caller ID each time the phone rang, and had no issue picking it up to talk even when it was just a social call. These conversations weren't prefaced with "Oh, sorry, I really need to take this one." It was, "Hey, dude! 'Sup?" every time to whomever was calling.
And then Silicon Valley babble, that would go a little something like this:
"Yeah, we reviewed his skill set, looked at the variables, and decided to link our people. He lives in the five and dime but can BART it down and sit in the pod. He just might be the curry we need since we'll back forty production soon, and the new nomenclature is on the critical path. I don't want to sunset that project and would like to throw it over the wall soon. So let's see if we can get him into the loop and pencil him in since Doug was officially uninstalled last week. Let's discuss this later off line."
Even the woman next to us turned around and glared at him. And, yeah, who can blame her? Did Skip really have no clue how obnoxious it was to those around him, and that his huge vocab of start-up lingo wasn't that riveting? Just writing that conversation was annoying! But that was how homo Siliconis spoke during the dot com boom in San Jose, self-proclaimed "Capital of Silicon Valley," and high-tech Mecca.
Let me break it down for the rest of the country: "Five and dime" refers to area code 510, which covers the east San Francisco Bay Area. This guy can ride the B.A.R.T. (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train, and sit in the "pod," or sea of cubicles. "Curry" would be the spice or new person added to the mix. Something is "back fortied" when it's temporarily set aside, and a project is on the "critical path" when it absolutely needs to be completed. Ideas are "sunseted" when they are finished. You "throw it over the wall" to have the other departments take a look. And poor Doug was fired or laid off.
Skip's self-important ring tone went off again and I gave him a look that clearly said I was losing my patience. He decided that phone call number four was more important than my blind date #13, so I got up and waved buh-bye. He placed the phone on his shoulder and said, "Hold on. Just hang for a few minutes."
Let's spin it this way: the buzzword is "no."