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 the finalists:
- 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 from Fred Dales at Microsoft Corp)
- What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will
encounter. (Lykes Lines Shipping)
- E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should
be used only for company business. (Accounting manager, Electric
Boat Company)
- This project is so important, we can't let things that are more
important interfere with it. (Advertising/Marketing manager, United
Parcel Service)
- 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.)
- 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." (Marketing 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." (Switching
supervisor, AT&T Long 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 manager,
Hallmark Greeting 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 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 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. (Taco Bell Corporation)
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