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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.
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)
11.
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)
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, 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 (paedophilia?)
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)
