THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

TRUE MANAGEMENT STORIES AND QUOTES:

No Molly is not making up what follows here. The following were entrants in a 'Dlibert quotes' contest for examples of the sort of "higher management thought" that Dilbert loves to lampoon. Enjoy...

*"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" (From the Microsoft office in Redmond, WA)

*"What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter" (Lykes Lines Shipping)

*"E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business"(Electric Boat Company)

*"This project is so important that we can't let things that are more important interfere with it" (UPS)

*"Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule. No one will believe you solved the 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." (3M Corp)

*"Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say" (Citrix Corp executive)

*"We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees" (AT&T)

*"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)

And now Molly's favourite:

*"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 (paedophiles ?) 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)