Business Jokes

Dilbert-Like 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 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 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 Computers)

7. Quote from the Boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing
what I say."(Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)

8. "How About Friday?" 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)

10. 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.)

11. Speaking the Same Language: 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 told that the executive
vice president wanted me out of the building by lunch.
Finally he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand
that I be fired - and a word 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)

12. This gem is the closing paragraph of a
nationally-circulated memo from a large communications
company: "(Company name) is endeavorily determined to promote
constant attention on current procedures of transacting
business focusing emphasis on innovative ways to better, if
not supersede, the expectations of quality!" (Lucent
Technologies)