Nipple or coupler? Let's fight about it!By Marci Adilman Kayne ©2006
I was spending an average day on the cube farm with my fellow industrial-supply catalog indexers as I worked on categorizing fire hose fittings. The object of indexing items for this particular catalog was to use as many terms as possible to describe an item, while still maintaining the integrity of what each item is. And, we were to clean up the existing index to get rid of extraneous descriptors.
At that hour, I was working on the page featuring brass nipples for hoses. It was indexed as "Nipples, Fire Hose" and "Fire Hose Fittings," among other terms, as well as "Fire Hose Couplers." Well, I could plainly see that it was a nipple and not a coupler, which as anyone knows, a nipple is a male part of a fitting and a coupler, by definition, consists of a male and female part.
I went to verify this with my hardware guru of a co-worker, but he disagreed. Then, another cube-mate got in on the discussion, telling him that she checked this very subject out already with "the group upstairs," and what I was saying was correct.
Before I knew it, the two of them were going at it full on, so I was relieved to be out of the discussion because I just couldn't bring myself to say "nipple" anymore in the office. Further, that interchange solidified my decision to look elsewhere for employment.
