Akademik

(KOR.uh.dohr KROO.zur)

n.

A worker who spends a lot of time walking through office corridors, usually en route from one meeting to another.

— corridor cruising pp.

The emerging Tablet PC user will be the "corridor cruiser" and not necessarily someone in a small business, he said. "The target market for Microsoft is clearly the enterprise user — from desktop to boardroom and back," Smith said.

— Heather Clancy, "Take 2 Tablets...," Computer Reseller News, June 10, 2002

Of 27.3 million mobile professionals, 58% spend the majority of their traveling time locally. The opportunities are there for companies that can extend the computing environment to those simply away from their desks. These groups include the following:

"Collaborators" are the most ambulatory. They spend up to 85% of their time working with others and frequently require responses within the hour.

"Corridor cruisers" are usually less technical than collaborators and spend over half their time away from their desks working with others in the same building.

— Kevin Burden, "Local tint in mobile computing," Computerworld, March 8, 1993

Your stereotypical corridor cruiser is a harried executroid who is most often seen rushing by on the way to his or her next meeting. But this phrase likely would not have become as popular as it has (I found over 50 citations) if it didn't have a broader appeal. The corridor cruiser label has also been affixed to doctors and nurses on their rounds, warehouse employees, and even some types of retail worker.

Note that if your job mobility takes you out of the office, then you're a road warrior (1987), a phrase that is likely the inspiration behind a corridor cruiser synonym: corridor warrior (1999; aka a corridorior):

At the Canadian launch event in Toronto, Microsoft Canada president Frank Clegg predicted the Tablet PC is going to quickly become a "socially acceptable" device that will be a key technology in the workplace for everyone from road warriors to "corridor warriors" who spend much of their workday roaming between meetings.

— "Outlook for Tablet PC unclear," globetechnology.com, November 7, 2002

(Thanks to subscriber Jack Kapica for passing along "corridor warrior.") Note, too, that corridor cruiser is also sometimes used for a portable device that enables a worker on walkabout to stay connected to their main computer:

Targeting office workers who require on-campus mobility, Toshiba will announce ultralight, ultrathin wireless notebooks based on the company's Portege 2000 series, nicknamed "corridor cruisers."

— Ephraim Schwartz and Dan Neel, "Wireless, tablets to hold court," InfoWorld, June 24, 2002

A third sense of the phrase is a computer game in which the player navigates various corridors looking for someone or something to shoot:

Daikatana...is not a corridor cruiser with another boring monster sure to be around the next dank corner, exactly like the last and the next.

— Steve La Rue, "Daikatana a graphically rich but deadly dance," The San Diego Union-Tribune, July 11, 2000

These games are also called corridor shooters, but the most common name is first-person shooter.

Bill Ablondi, http://www.parksassociates.com/aboutParks/people-bios.htm\#ablondi , coined the term in a landmark mobile-professional segmentation study (which is what the Computerworld article listed as "Earliest Citation" is quoting from). I had the good luck to work for Bill at the time and just want to see him get his due.I'm trying to find the origins of the term "road warrior" as it applies to the business traveler. I've seen references that claim it was taken from the Mad Max movie, but I can't find any information as to who used the term first and where. I'd appreciate any help you can give! Thank you!!There are no references to business travelers as "road warriors" prior to 1981 when the movie was released, so it's a good bet that the phrase comes from the movie title. I don't know who used it first, but I can tell you that in 1989 a company called Computer Products Plus Inc released a product called Road Warrior Toolkit, which was aimed squarely at business travelers carrying laptop computers. See, for example, this InfoWorld article: http://books.google.com/books?id=vTAEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT22&dq=%22road+warrior.Jeffrey Henning: Thanks for the good info!