Dilbert Quotes
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:

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 quote from Fred Dales at Microsoft Corp. in Redmond,WA.)

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 be used only for
company business.
(Accounting manager, Electric Boat Company)

4. This project is so important 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 Computer)

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 Div.)

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 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" (pedophiles?) 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.)


category: on the job  date entered: 2006-03-23