A
magazine recently ran a "
Dilbert quotes" contest. They were looking for
people to submit quotes from their real life
Dilbert-type
managers. I couldn't remember what magazine it was, but as i used to
work for one of the winners, I couldn't resist posting it. Here are the
finalists:
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." (Winning quote from Fred
Dales at
Microsoft Corp.).
2. "What I need is a list of specific unknown
problems we will encounter."
(
Lykes Lines Shipping)
3. "
E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should only
be used for
company business." (Accounting Manager,
ElectricBoat Company)
note:...thank
God I worked in a different
section...still funny to see my former employer, a fairly
geek-friendly place, up here...
4. "This
project is so important that we can't let things that are more
important interfere with it." (Advertising/Marketing Manager,
United Parcel
Service)
5. "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 and Manufacturing/
3M Corp.)
6. 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)
7. Quote from the
boss: "
Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say."
(Marketing Executive,
Citrix Corporation)
8. 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)
9. "We know that
communication is a problem, but the company is not going to
discuss it with the employees." (Switching supervisor,
AT&T Long Lines
Division)
10. 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)
11. 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 manager,
Hallmark Greeting Cards)
12. 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 in one
of the sentences I 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 the 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. (
Taco Bell Corporation)