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BUSINESS.HTM
A
magazine recently ran a "Dilbert Quotes" contest. They were
looking
for people to submit quotes from their real-life Dilbert-type
managers. Here are some of the submissions:
1. As
of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building
using
individual security cards. Pictures
will be taken next
Wednesday
and employees will receive their cards in two weeks.
(This
was the winning entry; Fred Dales at Microsoft Corporation in
Redmond,
WA)
2. What
I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will
encounter.
(Lykes
Lines Shipping)
3. How
long is this Beta guy going to keep testing our stuff?
(Programming
intern, Microsoft IIS Development team)
4.
E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It
should
be used only for company business.
(Accounting
Mgr., Electric Boat Company)
5. This
project is so important, we can't let things that are more
important
interfere with it.
(Advertising/Mktg.
Mgr., UPS)
6.
Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule. No one
will
believe you solved this problem in one day!
We've been working
on it
for months. Now, go act busy for a few
weeks and I'll let you
know
when it's time to tell them.
(R&D
Supervisor, Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing /3M Corp.)
7. My
boss spent the entire weekend retyping a 25-page proposal that
only
needed corrections. She claims the disk
I gave her was damaged
and she
couldn't edit it. The disk I gave her
was write-protected.
(CIO of
Dell Computers)
8.
Quote from the boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what 'I'
say."
(Mktg.
executive, Citrix Corporation)
9. My
sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday.
When I
told my boss, he said she died so that I would have to miss
work on
the busiest day of the year. He then
asked if we could
change
her burial to Friday. He said,
"That would be better for me."
(Shipping
Executive, FTD Florists)
10. We
know that communication is a problem, but the company is not
going
to discuss it with the employees.
(AT&T
Long Lines Division)
11. We
recently received a memo from senior management saying, "This
is to
inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the
subject
mentioned above."
(Microsoft,
Legal Affairs Division)
12. One
day my boss asked me to submit a status report to him
concerning
a project I was working on. I asked him
if tomorrow would
be soon
enough. He said, "If I wanted it
tomorrow, I would have
waited
until tomorrow to ask for it!"
(New
Business Mgr., Hallmark Cards)
13. As
director of communications, I was asked to prepare a memo
reviewing
our company's training programs and materials.
In the body
of the
memo one of the sentences mentioned the "pedagogical approach"
used by
one of the training manuals. The day
after I routed the memo
to the
executive committee, I was called into the HR Director's
office,
and was told that the executive VP wanted me out of the
building
by lunch. When I asked why, I was told
that she wouldn't
stand
for "perverts" (pedophiles?) working in her company. Finally
he
showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be fired,
with
the word "pedagogical" circled in red. The H.R. Manager was
fairly
reasonable, and once he looked the word up in his dictionary
and
made a copy of the definition to send to my boss, he told me not
to
worry. He would take care of it. Two days later a memo to the
entire
staff came out, directing us that no words which could not be
found
in the local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos.
A month
later, I resigned. In accordance with
company policy, I
created
my resignation letter by pasting words together from the
Sunday
paper.
(Taco
Bell Corporation)
14.
This gem is the closing paragraph of a nationally-circulated memo
from a
large communications company: "Lucent Technologies is
endeavouringly
determined to promote constant attention on current
procedures
of transacting business focusing emphasis on innovative
ways to
better, if not supersede, the expectations of quality!"
Thanx
to Paul Calvert for this contribution.
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