Quotes of Companies

Here are some of the submissions of actual comments, notices, and statements coming out of different companies:

• 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.
• What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter.
• How long is this Beta guy going to keep testing our stuff?
• E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business.
• This project is so important, we can't let things that are more important interfere with it.
• 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.
• 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.
• Quote from the boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what 'I' say."
• 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."
• We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees.
• 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."
• 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!"
• 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.

The Office Happenings

• Quote from a recent meeting: "We are going to continue having these meetings, everyday, until I find out why no work is getting done".
• Quote from the Boss... "I didn't say it was your fault. I said I was going to blame it on you."
• A motivational sign at work: The beatings will continue until morale improves.
• A direct quote from the Boss: "We passed over a lot of good people to get the ones we hired."
• My Boss frequently gets lost in thought. That's because it's unfamiliar territory.
• My Boss said to me, "What you see as a glass ceiling, I see as a protective barrier."
• My Boss needs a surge protector. That way his mouth would be buffered from surprise spikes in his brain.
• I thought my Boss was an idiot, and quit, to work for myself.
• My new Boss is an idiot, too ... but at least I respect him.
• He's given automobile accident victims new hope for recovery.
• He walks, talks and performs rudimentary tasks, all without the benefit of a SPINE.
• Some people climb the ladder of success. My Boss walked under it.
• Quote from the Boss after overriding the decision of a task force he created to find a solution: "I'm sorry if I ever gave you the impression your input would have any effect on my decision for the outcome of this project!"
• HR Manager to job candidate "I see you've had no computer training. Although that qualifies you for upper management, it means you're under-qualified for our entry level positions."
• Quote from telephone inquiry "We're only hiring one summer intern this year and we won't start interviewing candidates for that position until the Boss' daughter finishes her summer classes.

Car Brake Trouble

Software Engineer, a Hardware Engineer and a Branch Manager were on their way to a meeting. They were driving down a steep mountain road when suddenly the brakes on their car failed. The car careened almost out of control down the road, bouncing off the crash barriers, until it miraculously ground to a halt scraping along the mountainside. The car's occupants, shaken but unhurt, now had a problem: they were stuck halfway down a mountain in a car with no brakes. What were they to do? "I know," said the Branch Manager, "Let's have a meeting, propose a Vision, formulate a Mission Statement, define some Goals, and by a process of Continuous Improvement find a solution to the Critical Problems, and we can be on our way. "No, no," said the Hardware Engineer, "That will take far too long, and besides, that method has never worked before. I've got my Swiss Army knife with me, and in no time at all I can strip down the car's braking system, isolate the fault, fix it, and we can be on our way. "Well," said the Software Engineer, "Before we do anything, I think we should push the car back up the road and see if it happens again."