It seems that every group I work with seems to evolve a special key phrase that let's us vent our frustrations yet maintain humor to lighten the mood.

Example #1

I worked techical support for a fairly involved software application -- clients on different platforms and a central server running SCO Unix (!!!) in the middle. One particular client has their Unix Admin as the technical contact, but they really knew nothing about Unix. It was amazing. They were nice people though, and rarely called, but when they did . . . oh boy.

We were forcing an upgrade and they wanted us to step them through it over the phone. Yes, this was before web meetings where we could have done it for them. The tech lucky enough to get this task (not me!) was an interesting guy. He was great on the phone with the customer, but after he was done you never knew what would come out of his mouth.

Needless to say, this upgrade should have taken an hour and four hours later he's still on the phone with them. We know they aren't following our instructions, yet how do you let the customer know that? Once we get them to realize they aren't doing what we are saying, it goes smoothly. When he is done, he thanks our customer for their patience, hangs up the phone, and screams out so everyone hears,"For the Love of God!" Hence our catchphrase was born. After that, whenever we were frustrated by something our servers or customers were doing, you would hear someone say, "For the Love of God!".

Example #2

A few weeks ago our new project manager and I were talking about the current state of our projects and, really, it's not good. He suddenly long time since I had heard a [Thundercats][] reference. As the days went by we both muttered that phrase back and forth.

I was gone on Friday, but this Monday morning I had an email from him with the subject line of "grrrr...". When I opened it, I almost fell on the floor laughing [at the picture that greeted me.][]

So another phrase is born.

I wonder if this is normal for most IT shops? I think so. "[And there was much rejoicing][]" is a very common phrase in a lot of places. Where I worked in college we said "broked" a lot. Does anyone have any other catch-phrase?