posted 08-30-2001 02:06 PM         

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."
6. "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.)
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."
(Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)
9. My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When
I told my Boss, he said she died on purpose 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."
(Switching supervisor, 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 memo
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 manager, Hallmark Greeting 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 in 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)

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