What is yor company like?

[sceptic]

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)

 

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)

[helene_t]

1. "Please turn on the light in the idle office everyday at 9 a.m. and turn it off at 5 p.m. If some manager from another department notices that the office is iddle, we may loose the office." (1987, a Danish government institute)

 

2. "There were no qualified candidates for the position". I put a perfectly qualified candidates to the HRM's attention. "Yes, but he's a moslem". 1995, a large Danish data warehouse.

 

3. "We have decided that the new methodology for computing [....] indicators is more accurate than traditional ones. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to justify the costs of developing the methodology. Now you provide scientific evidence to support the decision". 1999, a major Dutch government institute. Happened to me three times during my one-year stay at said institute.

 

4. "How did you compile the list of citations for your article?" Well I googled on my keywords, read a some twenty articles from the hit list, included some quotes that actually improved my article, and cited those. "That's not the way to do. First you find out who are in the editorial board and who are their friends. Then you pick some random articles by those guys and cite them. Doesn't matter if there is anything to quote, just cite them". A professor and member of several editorial boards of scientific journals, 2004.

 

As for Wayne's quote 13, I used to work for a company that used exactly that phrasing. It was SEI. Could be a coincidence.

[Al_U_Card]

The job doesn't have to be done well, if there is a problem later we will redo it then.