Recently, a magazine
ran a contest. They were looking for people to submit quotes from
their real-life managers. Here are some of the submissions:
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. "How About Friday?" 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. Speaking the Same Language: 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 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" (pedophilia?) 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)
13. This gem is the closing paragraph of a nationally-circulated
memo from a large communications company: "(Company name) is
endeavorily determined to promote constant attention on current
procedures of transacting business focusing emphasis on innovative
ways to better, if not supersede, the expectations of
quality!" (Lucent Technologies). |
