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. 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, 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. 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)
9. 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. 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" 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)