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:
  * 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)
  * What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter.
 (Lykes Lines Shipping)
  * How long is this Beta guy going to keep testing our stuff?
 (Programming intern, Microsoft IIS Development team)
 * 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)
  * This project is so important, we can't let things that are more
 important interfere with it.  (Advertising/Mktg. Mgr., UPS)
  * 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.)
 * 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)
 * Quote from the boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say."
 (Mktg. executive, Citrix Corporation)
 * 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)
 * We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going
 to discuss it with the employees.  (AT&T Lone Lines Division)
 * 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)
 * 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)
 * 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 HR 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)
 * This gem is the closing paragraph of a nationally-circulated memo from
 a large communications company: " Lucent Technologies is endeavorily
 determined to promote constant attention on current procedures of
 transacting business focusing emphasis on innovative ways to better, if
 not supercede, the expectations of quality!"
  (Lucent Technologies)



  

© Richard Burk 1997-2100

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