December 5, 2007
Always having been a fan of the ridiculous, Guru was heartened to read in Personnel Today's Work Clinic blog about the 'new' concept of 'moofing' - a term allegedly coined by a Mr Moof.
After a quick calendar check to be sure it was not 1 April, Guru continued his reading, and swiftly learned that a 'moofer' is 'part of a generation of flexible workers, where staff have the power to choose where, when and how they want to work' - a flexible worker, then.
Now, Yours Truly is all for acryonyms, slang and any form of wordplay, but 'moofer' allegedly comes from the 'loose acronym' - a cunning term for something that isn't an acronym - based on the term 'mobile out of office'.
Mr Moof deserves a good hoof in the moof (in a John Smeaton kind of way).
Clearly, the 'new' term should be 'Mooo', which is probably a more accurate description as, in his considerable experience most 'homeworkers' or 'flexibandoleros' tend to be a right bunch of heffers, quite rightly kept out of the office on the grounds of being a distraction to the more attractive office adornments that make up the majority of those of us who bother to turn up to work.
That being the case, anyone doing it could then be a real 'mooover'. And, as they really spend their time at home or down some gastropub drinking cocktails they could also be referred to as a real 'mooover and shaker'.
Guru politely suggests they ditch the 'f' as people who 'work flexibly' tend to keep doing it, so they could be described as 'still mobile out of office' folk, or smooovers. This band of smooove operators would then at least be more Sade than saddo.
Sade-ly, Guru fears it's too late for Mr Moof who seems intent on reinventing the wheel - as a square.
