DILBERT CONTEST
A "Dilbert Quotes" contest was held recently asking for people to submit quotes from their real-life, Dilbert-type managers. Here are some of the responses:
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 quote)
2. What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter.
3. How long is this Beta guy going to keep testing our stuff?
4. E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used
only for company business.
5. This project is so important we can't let things that are more important
interfere with it.
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.
7. My Boss spent the entire weekend re-typing 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.
8. Quote from the Boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say."
9. How About Friday: 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."
10. "We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to
discuss it with the employees."
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."
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!"
13. Speaking the Same Language: 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 told
that the executive vice president wanted me out of the building by lunch.
When I asked why, I was told that she wouldn't stand for "perverts"
(pedophilia?) working in her company. Finally he showed me her copy of the
memo, with her demand that I be fired and the word "pedagogical" circled in
red. The HR manager was fairly reasonable, and once he looked the word up in
his dictionary, and made a copy of the definition to send back to her, 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 memo by
pasting words together from the Sunday paper.
14. I am not making this up. This gem is the closing paragraph of a nationally
circulated memo from a large communications company: "(Company name) is
endeavorily 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!"
FINANCIAL HEADLINES YOU'LL NEVER SEE:
Helium was up, feathers were down.
Fluorescent tubing was dimmed in light trading.
Knives were up sharply.
Weights were up in heavy trading.
Diapers remain unchanged.
Pepsi Cola fizzled.
Sun peaked at midday.
Scott Tissue touched a new bottom.
Pencils lost a few points.
