TPS report

English

Etymology

Coined as a reference to the 1999 film Office Space, written by Mike Judge, who later claimed the initialism stood for "Test Program Set".

Noun

TPS report (plural TPS reports)

1. (informal) An abstract item of corporate bureaucracy.
   • 1999, Mike Judge, Office Space:

     Bill Lumbergh: Hello, Peter. What's happening? Ah, we have sort of a problem here. Yeaaah, you apparently didn't put one of the new cover sheets on your TPS reports?
     Peter Gibbons: Oh, yeah, I'm sorry about that. I forgot.
     Bill: Mmmh, yeah. You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out. Did you see the memo about this?
     Peter: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I have the memo right here. I just forgot. But it's not shipping out 'til tomorrow so there's no problem.
     Bill: Yeaaah. If you could just go ahead and make sure you do that from now on, that would be great. And I'll go ahead and make sure you get another copy of that memo. M'kay?
     Peter: Yeah, no, no, no, I have... [Bill walks off.]

   • 2005 April 1, Eric Foster-Johnson, John C. Welch, Micah Anderson, Beginning Shell Scripting, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 182:

     To promote reuse, the date_required variable holds the day the TPS reports are due. With this, you can reuse the script for any time the reports are due. The pithy_statement variable holds a pithy statement to end the message.

   • 2007 07, Joe Scartz, Bicentennial Baby:generation X and Y: Be, iUniverse, →ISBN:

     I was sitting there last Tuesday working on your typical TPS report when a series of events unfolded that made me realize that I needed a change.

   • 2009 June 8, Neils Clark, P. Shavaun Scott, Game Addiction: The Experience and the Effects, McFarland, →ISBN, page 81:

     Spending all of your time doing one thing, be it video games, filling out TPS reports, or anything else, the human brain literally can become one-dimensional.

   • 2013 May 20, Dave Delaney, New Business Networking: How to Effectively Grow Your Business Network Using Online and Offline Methods, Que Publishing, →ISBN, page 175:

     Supervisor: “I need you to remember to file the TPS report by 5:00 p.m. Friday, because Ms. Smith will be returning Monday and will need access to them in order to meet her end-of-day deadline on Tuesday. […] ”

   • 2017 June 21, Todd Kelsey, Introduction to Social Media Marketing: A Guide for Absolute Beginners, Apress, →ISBN, page 4:

     In general, a business to business, B2B, approach has a longer sales cycle. For example, if you worked at a software company and your job was to fill out TPS reports, you might suggest using an outside service to help fill out the reports.

   • 2017 October 3, Peter Shankman, Faster Than Normal: Turbocharge Your Focus, Productivity, and Success with the Secrets of the ADHD Brain, Penguin, →ISBN, page 14:

     How much we have of these chemicals, or how much or how little our bodies can produce under normal circumstances, is why some people can sit and file TPS reports for hours without getting bored, and others (like us) simply can't.

   • 2022 November 22, Jason C McDonald, Dead Simple Python: Idiomatic Python for the Impatient Programmer, No Starch Press, →ISBN, page 457:

     You know the situation: you have to finish that TPS report for your boss, fix a bug that shipped to production, and figure out which of your co-workers borrowed your stapler (it's Jeff again, isn't it?), all before day's end.

Translations

an item of corporate bureaucracy