Comments on: "cow-orkers" - why?

Question: "cow-orkers" - why?

Rash — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 21:01:55 -0800

"cow-orkers" -- why do you write this? I see it on Usenet and elsewhere, and the term seems insulting, but by context is not always meant to be... if it's not always implying one's co-workers are large, slow-moving, cud-chewing beasts, what else is going on?

By: mcwetboy

mcwetboy — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 21:06:13 -0800

It's a Dilbert reference.

By: gac

gac — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 21:09:35 -0800

the jargon lexicon indicates it originated before dilbert: cow orker.

By: kindall

kindall — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 21:13:36 -0800

It jumped from Usenet to Dilbert through the Dilbert e-mail newsletter. Dilbert readers started using it in stories they sent to Adams because so much of the discussion was about stupid things at work, and referring to one's slower colleagues in a desultory fashion came naturally. I'm unsure if Adams ever actually used it in the strip, but it was definitely all over the newsletter in the late '90s.

By: stupidsexyFlanders

stupidsexyFlanders — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 21:29:00 -0800

This was common jargon in alt.folklore.urban as early as 1995, possibly earlier.

By: RikiTikiTavi

RikiTikiTavi — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 21:32:43 -0800

It's commonly used by Cory Doctorow currently, who has a somewhat popular site.

By: crunchland

crunchland — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 21:42:52 -0800

it's one of those jokes... you know, the kind that aren't funny.

By: i_am_joe's_spleen

i_am_joe's_spleen — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 21:51:52 -0800

I believe it began in alt.sysadmin.recovery, aka the scary devil monastery, along with other amusing typo-conventions such as conslutant and froup.

crunchland, they weren't jokes exactly, more a kind of in-group signifier, telling readers that a certain world-weary disdain for lusers and the workplace (or indeed orkplace) was to be taken as read.

By: Rash

Rash — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 21:51:53 -0800

Yeah, crunch -- that's what I'm looking
for -- what do people mean by it?

Not, when did it start, or from where.

By: kindall

kindall — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 22:06:54 -0800

What they generally actually mean is "Aren't I cool for knowing this in-group signifier."

By: Mid

Mid — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 22:26:18 -0800

Its a shibboleth.

Like intarweb. Or please hope me.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 22:35:53 -0800

if it's not always implying one's co-workers are large, slow-moving, cud-chewing beasts

Surely it doesn't imply that they are large ruminants.

It implies that they ork large ruminants.

I think it's just word play. It doesn't usually mean anything other than that you can take coworker and split it as co-worker or cow-orker, and that the idea of someone orking a cow is funny. Or at least funnier than co-worker.

By: Nothing

Nothing — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 22:44:04 -0800

I've seen it as cow-irker, which I like.

By: agropyron

agropyron — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 22:53:37 -0800

that's what I'm looking
for -- what do people mean by it?

I always took it to mean that your colleagues have a herd mentality. Like the way we can insult someone by calling them a sheep. Slow-moving is probably implied too.

By: i_am_joe's_spleen

i_am_joe's_spleen — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 23:35:45 -0800

In ASR use, it did not necessarily imply insult. It was just an in-joke, nothing more.

Conslutant, on the other hand, was definitely a deliberate slur.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 23:46:30 -0800

In the Dilbert context, it just means "the idiots I have to work with." Without actually saying anything -- the verb "to ork" obviously is just a joke, just the result of wordplay -- it at once makes them a bit backward (they are among cows) and a bit vile (they do something odd to cows).

By: benzo8

benzo8 — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:07:05 -0800

Yeah, I knew it from a.f.u and it meant nothing more than "this is the accepted way of writing coworker amongst the group"... Nothing was particularly implied, pejorative or otherwise.

By: web-goddess

web-goddess — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 03:34:15 -0800

For some reason I was thinking it was one of the humorous glossary entries in Douglas Adam's "Generation X"... but I don't have a copy here to check.

By: web-goddess

web-goddess — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 03:35:05 -0800

Douglas Adams?? Sorry, I've got towels on the brain. I meant Douglas Copeland.

By: ikkyu2

ikkyu2 — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 04:46:09 -0800

Using google groups, I found it in the signature of a poster to alt.sca as far back as 1989. He makes a joke out of it: "Are you a cow orker? Would you like to be one? Send $5 and a SASE to me."

It's just an enshrined mistype; computery people use it. If I'm chatting with someone and they say 'cow orker', I know what sort of a person I'm talking to. Same kind of person whose answer to "Is the red light on a stop light on the top or the bottom where you live?" would be "Yes."

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 05:26:58 -0800

ah. people with broken english parsers?

By: briank

briank — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 06:09:48 -0800

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 06:33:44 -0800

(i wish teh wasn't "something". i type it all the damn time and it's annoying in extremis that people then over-interpret it. like using a shell where someone has aliased sl to rm -fr *).

By: gwint

gwint — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 09:03:44 -0800

For some reason, that thing really bugs the hell out of me. Definitely a bias, but every time I see that on boingboing, I think "God, that's so San Francisco."

By: pmurray63

pmurray63 — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 10:25:13 -0800

The mother of a friend of mine was using it in the 1980s. She was a copy editor, so I think it was just wordplay.

By: o0o0o

o0o0o — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 11:20:14 -0800

Definitely a bias, but every time I see that on boingboing, I think "God, that's so San Francisco."

It bugs me too, cause it's just not funny... at all. However, I don't believe it's a regional phenominon. Therefore your bias is unfounded. You know, unfunny things are said all the time, by people all over the world.

By: C.Batt

C.Batt — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 16:28:14 -0800

Cow-orker... hmmm... no, I prefer to say, "Sheeple."

/very late to this thread

By: scruss

scruss — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 17:54:20 -0800

Eww, C.Batt, sheeple/sheople is oft-used in the white supremacist realm. It's got overtones.

By: kindall

kindall — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 23:34:13 -0800

"Sheeple" is also used by rabid anti-corporate lefties. They have in common with white supremacists the conceit of a vast conspiracy that everyone would know about if only they'd open their eyes and see it. I would imagine that conspiracy theorists of many varieties employ it, actually.