Clueless

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." (Fred Dales at Microsoft Corp.)

  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 only be used for company business." (Accounting Manager, Electric Boat Co.)

  4. "This project is so important that we can't let things that are more important interfere with it". (Advertising/Marketing Manager, United Parcel Ser.)

  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".

  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 people doing what I say',". (Marketing Exec., Citrix Corp.)

  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 Exec., 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 Div.)

  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 discussed above."(Microsoft, Legal Affairs Div)

  11. Oneday 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 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 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"(pedophilia?) working in her company. Finally he showed me her copy of the memo with the 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 the 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 letter by pasting words together from the Sunday paper. (Taco Bell Corp.)

Contributed by <Eric Leeker>