Is Your Boss Dumb?
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, 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 Computers)
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 Division)
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" 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)
