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 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)
14.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!"