Dilbert QuotesA 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.
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." (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 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!"
15. "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.)
» go to Atheists of Silicon Valley homepage «
|